The Rundown: Welcome To The ‘Suits’ Extended Universe, Apparently

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

The Suits thing is still strange to me. Like, there was this show I watched on USA a decade ago, and it was fine, and then many years passed, and then it slid over to Netflix, and now it’s the biggest show in the world. Like, it’s set numerous records for a streaming series. And one of its characters married an actual prince, like one of Princess Diana’s kids. It’s been a wild ride for all of us, really. Especially the cast of Suits, though, I bet. That’s gotta be a weird experience for them.

But yes, to the shock of pretty much no one who knows how these things work, there is now more Suits coming. The creator, Aaron Korsh, a former investment banker who became a television writer and has episodes of Just Shoot Me and Everybody Loves Raymond on his resume, and who has apparently not been doing much since Suits ended in 2019, signed a deal to expand the Suits universe pretty substantially. It’s probably been a weird summer for him, too.

But this is where it all gets fun. The new stuff isn’t going to take any of the old characters and update viewers on the various comings and goings. No, this is going to be bigger and odder than any of that. We really are creating a Suits Extended Universe.

This is not a revival or reboot and, unlike the 2019 Pearson, the new legal procedural is not a spinoff either — it would be a Suits universe series in the vein of the CSI and NCIS franchises featuring new characters in a new location, sources said. I hear Los Angeles is a backdrop considered for the workplace drama.

So, a few things worth noting here, all of them equally important to me…

The first is that this is all just very funny and kind of cool to me, for a lot of the reasons I already outlined in the intro. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the world became obsessed with Suits. Not Burn Notice. Not White Collar. Not Royal Pains. Suits. I am very happy for everyone involved. Good for them for striking while the iron is hot.

The second thing is that, while I don’t know what these new shows will look like, it is going to be fun to picture the other characters just, like, existing somewhere else while all the action is taking place. I hope they just casually reference them in the other show once or twice a season, just to maintain continuity. “Wow, this is just like the big case Harvey Specter is working on in New York.” And then, blammo, right back to work.

And finally, while writing this I remembered Katherine Heigl showed up in Suits for a bit and now I need her to show up in every show in the Suits universe just to deliver this line.

Thank you.

Let’s all do this with Zoo next.

My sweet boy James Wolk deserves to thrive, too.

All Michael Schur has ever done is make cool stuff I like. He was a creative voice in the earlier seasons of The Office before things got sketchy and memed into oblivion. He created Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, two all-timer network sitcoms. He was the executive producer of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, another great network sitcom that introduced the world to Silly Andre Braugher, which I don’t think anyone even realized was possible until it existed and delighted us all. And before all or most of that, he was the main pseudonymous voice behind Fire Joe Morgan, still the greatest baseball blog ever created.

That’s why I was so excited when Peacock announced that he was making a comedy based on the movie Field of Dreams. And it’s why I was so bummed when Peacock announced that they were pulling the plug on the series, after the titular field had been constructed, which… I mean, it is a little funny that the movie that had “if you build it, they will come” as its most famous quote spawned a television show where they built it and then… nothing happened.

Anyway, good news and bad news. Good news: My goldfish brain had forgotten most of this until earlier this week. Bad news: Schur appeared on Pablo Torre’s very good podcast to discuss it all and now I’m a little mad again. Look at this. Or at least listen to it.