Stephen Amell’s time leading Harvey Specter’s Gabriel Macht.

Per Deadline, NBC has officially cancelled Suits LA after just one season. Despite considerable interest in the project thanks to the original show’s streaming resurgence, viewership numbers for the show are reported to have sat consistently just over the 1 million mark on linear in Live+Same Day, following the series debut that pulled in 2.6 million viewers. The latest cancellation also coincides with NBC’s decision to axe other shows, including The Irrational, Found, Night Court, and Lopez vs Lopez.

What This News Means For The Suits Franchise

The Franchise's First Spinoff Also Failed To Attract Viewers

With the original Suits racking up a record-breaking 57.7 billion minutes of streaming viewership in 2023, four years after the show came to an end, this latest news will likely come as a bitter disappointment for those keen to see more of showrunner Aaron Korsh’s unique brand of high-powered legal drama. However, this is not the first time the franchise has seen a spinoff fail to capture the same widespread attention as the original show, with 2019’s Pearson also cancelled after just one season.

While Korsh and NBC had seemingly put a great deal of effort into tying their new show back to the original, by luring Suits cast Macht, Rick Hoffman, and David Costabile back to reprise their respective characters, the show’s lackluster numbers would suggest that the new spinoff never quite managed to recapture the same kind of widespread appeal. Instead, Suits LA now seems set to Pearson as another unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the original, despite its concerted efforts to reintroduce many of its most beloved characters.

Our Take On Suits LA’s Cancellation

Most Of The Franchise's Newest Fans Are Used To A Streaming Model

While the original Suits had its fair share of audiences during its original nine-season run on the USA Network, the show would also attract a much greater number of new viewers during its streaming resurgence. Responsible for introducing the world of Pearson Specter Litt to a whole new cohort of devotees, perhaps much of the reason for Suits’ 2023 renaissance was the benefit of being able to offer viewers a vast repository of 134 episodes, spanning multiple seasons, something that is an increasing rarity in the modern landscape of streaming television.

With many of the franchise’s more recent viewers already accustomed to being able to binge entire seasons at a time, perhaps the weekly network model of Suits LA was always doomed to failure. However, whether Suits LA may have fared better as a new streaming title, one that would have allowed viewers to binge the entire season on its release, is a matter of some debate, and it is likely one that will never be resolved now after the show’s cancellation.

Source: Deadline