“Suits LA” star Stephen Amell reveals Harvey Specter's connection to the spinoff (exclusive)

Suits LA star Stephen Amell is revealing important evidence about how his new NBC spinoff connects to the original Suits.

"You'll notice behind my desk that there's a picture of a young Ted Black with what can only be a young Harvey Specter [Gabriel Macht], so there's clearly a history between the characters," the Arrow alum tells Entertainment Weekly for our latest cover story. "We came up together in the D.A.'s office. So if I was going to have anyone [from the original cast] come back, I would want it to be Gabriel. I would really hope that that happens, because I am very much a fan of his character and I think that that dynamic would be something that the viewers would really enjoy."

Related: Case reopened: The unexpected story behind the making of Suits LA

Amell stars in Suits LA as Ted Black, a former federal prosecutor from New York who reinvented himself 15 years ago as a powerful entertainment lawyer. Last month, Suits star Macht teased his return as Harvey with a not-so-cryptic Instagram video set to the original show's theme song. As he showed off Harvey's monogrammed shirt sleeve before literally stepping into the character’s designer shoes again, he captioned the post, "When an old friend is in need…it’s time to take care of things and make those very 'things' right." Amell seemingly confirmed Macht's appearance in the spinoff by commenting on the Instagram post, "The Bat Signal does work!!"

EW has confirmed that Macht will appear on the spinoff as a recurring guest star. And Suits and Suits LA creator Aaron Korsh reveals to EW that the Suits character will ultimately appear in the first season after "a big hint" is first dropped in the premiere.

Amell loves the idea of welcoming back an original Suits star like Macht on the spinoff, because he knows the feeling after reprising his Arrow character in the final season of The Flash last year.

Related: Suits creator talks potential reunion movie: 'That could be fun' (exclusive)

"When [executive producer] Greg Berlanti called me up and asked me if I wanted to come back to The Flash, he said, 'You helped build this show by what you did on Arrow, so it seems only fitting that you would come back and take a victory lap,'" Amell remembers. "We want to play the hits. We want to have a lot of fun. We are only sitting in Black Lane Law group conference room at the moment right now because of Gabriel and Patrick [J. Adams] and Sarah [Rafferty] and Meghan [Markle] and Rick [Hoffman] and all of the people that comprised the original Suits cast. So all of them are welcome."

Amell adds with a laugh, "I'm not the one that invites them, but as far as I'm concerned, all of them are welcome."

Showrunner Korsh also reveals that "there may end up being several points of connection" to Suits as the spinoff continues outside of the first character appearance. "I just don't know yet what they are," he adds.

But Suits LA star Amell hopes that fans will tune in for more than just potential Suits crossovers. "We're going to do our own thing, and that's okay," he says. "We do things on this show that they couldn't do on the original."

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Suits LA follows a new group of ambitious (and attractive) lawyers led by Ted Black, who works side-by-side with his best friend, criminal lawyer Stuart Lane (The Walking Dead’s Josh McDermitt), after starting the Black Lane firm together 15 years ago. They oversee promising protegés Rick Dodson (One Tree Hill alum Bryan Greenberg) and Erica Rollins (The L Word: Generation Q's Lex Scott Davis), who are both vying for the company’s coveted title of head of entertainment.

Suits first premiered in 2011 and ran for nine seasons on USA Network. The series recently became one of the hottest things in pop culture in 2023 — four years after it ended — once it became available to stream on Netflix, and it smashed streaming records for months on end (Nielsen reported U.S. viewers watched 57.7 billion minutes in 2023) and suddenly became a global hit — bigger than it ever was during its original run.

Suits: LA premieres Feb. 23 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, on NBC.

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