In the season 8 finale, Suits finally gave fans what they’ve been clamoring for: Harvey (Gabriel Macht) and Donna (Sarah Rafferty) getting together romantically. Thankfully, their steamy hook-up wasn’t just a one time thing and they’re going to give this romantic relationship a try when the ninth and final season begins. In fact, the season 9 premiere doesn’t waste any time diving into this uncharted territory
“We pick-up that night. The time jump is like hours later,” creator Aaron Korsh tells EW of where the season opener begins. “There was a notion to start the next morning. I remember having a conversation with Sarah about when Harvey comes to the door, there were some unspoken things between Harvey and Donna. At one point, we had written a version of that scene where they said the things out loud. Then, we thought, what if put those unspoken things and say them out loud in the first scene [of season 9], which is before the morning. I think it was just to give a little glimpse into what intimacy looks like between them.”
From there, the season will explore all of the big moments in this new relationship, from Harvey and Donna deciding when to tell their coworkers and friends at the firm, to how this will affect their working relationship, too.
“I think it’s really dynamic. I think the characters, at this point, are meant to be together,” says Macht. “They had to stumble along the way and go through these other relationships to ultimately understand what they really need is right in front of their face. Moving into season 9 and being in the office together, [they have to figure out] what is kosher, who finds out when, and how they make decisions now being a couple. You know he’s got serious abandonment issues that are slowly disappearing but they come up, and they come up in decisions being made when it comes to them [working] as a team but also independent thinkers. There’s some good questions that arise for people who work together and are intimate.”
He continues, “We’ve dealt with [how to be a couple in the workplace] a few different ways where some of the characters are making decisions and Donna will speak up first and Harvey just goes along with what she says, because he thinks she’d like that. Before, he wasn’t afraid of losing her. Here, he thinks this is the way to go, but she doesn’t want him to be a doormat. She really wants him to be the independent thinker that he is.”
Macht has been on the fence about Darvey for years, going as far to tell EW in 2017 that he thought the fans would want it until they got it. Because the show only has 10 episodes left, he’s fully on-board with it now; however, the thought of fans potentially getting tired of it is still on his mind, too. In fact, that’s a concern shared by Korsh, too. “I want a lot of Harvey and Donna, but I didn’t want every scene to be Harvey-Donna. For me, that doesn’t work right,” says Korsh.
So in addition to the Darvey it all, fans can expect Robert Zane’s recent disbarment to have massive impact on the firm, which gets put under the supervision of Faye Richardson (Denise Crosby), a lawyer from the New York Bar Association. “It really just gives you a new dynamic that we’ve never seen before and breathes life on all levels, comedic and dramatic. There was a lot of funny stuff, in particular in the first three or four episodes that is born out of her presence,” says Korsh. “The person that is probably most affected by by Faye is Louis [Rick Hoffman], both dramatically and comedically. He really does not react well because he’s managing partner.” Sounds like quite a storm is coming to Zane Specter Litt Wheeler Williams.
Suits returns Wednesday at 9 p.m. on USA Network.