Another Suits Actor Is Coming Back For The LA Spinoff, And I’m Pretty Sure Their Character Is Only Going To Cause Trouble

Just several days after Suits LA brought back Gabriel Macht’s Harvey Specter for its flashback storyline, another Suits alum has been announced for the NBC spinoff. David Costabile, who played Daniel Hardman in the original series, will reprise his role sometime later on the 2025 TV schedule. However, given the character’s history, it’s hard for me to imagine he’ll do anything besides cause trouble.

This casting update comes to us from Variety, although no specific details were provided about Hardman’s return. All we know for now is that he’ll have a “guest role” in a future episode, though it’s unclear if it will be as part of the show’s 2010-set flashbacks or in the present day. Costabile is the third Suits actor to come along for the Suits LA ride, as Rick Hoffman is also set to reprise Louis Litt for an episode separate from the two others Macht has lined up.

Introduced in Suits Season 2, Daniel Hardman was the co-founder of the Pearson Hardman law firm with Gina Torres’ Jessica Pearson, whom he’d mentored. However, when it was discovered that he was embezzling money from clients to finance his affair rather than to pay for his wife’s breast cancer treatments like he claimed, he was pressured into resigning from the firm. Following his wife’s death, he returned to the firm and attempted to take full control of it. Hardman’s scheme was foiled and he was ousted once more, but he continued to be an antagonist in Seasons 4, 5 and 8.

As indicated earlier, Suits LA has been delving into the life of Stephen Amell’s Ted Black in 2010, when he was still a federal prosecutor in New York. That’s how Harvey Specter factored into “Batman Returns,” as he tipped Ted off that someone from the Pellegrini crime organization was inside Ted’s office. Although Suits gave conflicting information about when Daniel Hardman left Pearson Hardman (it was said in Season 2 to be in 2007, yet a later flashback showed him still there in 2009), my gut tells me that David Costabile’s was already out of the picture during Harvey’s meet-up with Ted.

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Having said that, I find it hard to believe that Daniel Hardman will somehow factor into what’s happening in Suits LA’s present day storyline. Like Harvey and Louis, Hardman doesn’t work in entertainment law. He also primarily works in corporate law, so it’s hard for me to imagine how he would get involved with the prosecution of Ted’s client, Lester Thompson, who’s been charged with murder. So for now, I’m going to assume that we’ll be seeing Hardman in 2010, and however this comes to pass, his presence surely won’t lead to anything good.

I always enjoyed seeing Daniel Hardman’s smug face transform into a defeated expression during the Suits days, so I welcome seeing more of that in Suits LA. While we wait for his return, stream the spinoff’s first four episodes with a Peacock subscription, which you can also use to access Suits.