Katherine Heigl has been a great addition to the Suits cast

We’re 6 episodes into season 8 of Suits and life after Mike and Rachel has been better than expected. Katherine Heigl is the reason why.

When it was made official that Meghan Markle and Patrick J. Adams would be leaving the show, many thought that it might spell the end for Suits. The creators had other plans.

Their first move was to craft storylines that made their exit seem natural. Mike no longer had a cloud over his head since he served his time and was no longer a fake lawyer. Rachel had completed law school and was ready to create her own name as a lawyer. It made sense for them to leave the city where Mike would have to deal with his history constantly and Rachel would have to work in her father’s shadow.

Phase two of the replacement plan was to give other characters bigger roles and introduce new ones. One of the obvious candidates for a bigger role was Dule Hill’s character Alex. As a person who had history with Harvey, he was an easy choice to fill some of the void left by Mike.

As for Rachel, it appears they are trying out two characters to fill her shoes. The first was the easy one. Amanda Schull’s Katrina was a known commodity that already had a strong relationship with Louis. The fans know and love her so she was naturally bumped up to series regular. The showrunners knew that might not be enough however so they introduced a new character as well.

Samantha Wheeler

By adding Katherine Heigl to the cast as Samantha Wheeler Suits did two things. They brought in an amazing actress with a HUGE fan base (1.2 million Twitter followers!!!), and they also added an element of mystery to the new season. We knew absolutely nothing about her except that she was going to be joining the firm and shaking things up.

She has definitely been delivering on the latter. Almost every episode of the six thus far has included a moment where Samantha does something to upset a main cast member. Initially, it feels like she’s going to be a villain but slowly we are starting to see the layers come off.

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In Episode 4, Louis (Rick Hoffman) is mugged at gunpoint and he spends most of the episode shaken up by this moment. During the episode, it was his turn to be upset by a decision that Samantha made but she came around and they worked it out.

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At the end of the episode, she shows up at his place to tell him that she too experienced something similar to what he had and to teach him some self-defense moves. The brilliance of the writing is that we met Samantha in a boxing ring so her self-defense knowledge didn’t come as a surprise. Instead, this moment served to show that she genuinely cared about her colleagues and to tell us why she was in that ring in episode one.

In last night’s episode, she had a similar scenario play out with Donna. After an episode where they butted heads over her handling of a situation involving a charity that works with young girls, Samantha comes to Donna to talk about why she was so passionate about the cause.

We don’t get that conversation in this episode but it’s another seed of mystery planted about a character who we’re slowly being fed information on. If tuning in to find out about where our established characters are going next isn’t enough, we are definitely tuning in to learn more about the mysterious Samantha Wheeler.

Suits returns next Wednesday at 9/8 Central on USA Network.