USAWell, that certainly wasn't what we were expecting, Suits fans.
We knew the big reveal of who turned Mike Ross in would be surprising. Stars Patrick J. Adams and Meghan Markle even told us so. But did we think it would come from as far left field as it did? Not exactly.
When tonight's episode kicked off with a flashback to Donna's (Sarah Rafferty) childhood, we had a sinking feeling that it might be everyone's favorite redhead who ratted Mike out. But we were kicking ourselves for even doubting her a moment later when she basically told Anita Gibbs (Leslie Hope) where she could stuff her threats, even as her father was on the hook for troubles of his own. So, then our suspicions moved to Jessica (Gina Torres). Why? It just seems like something she might do—make a deal to turn Mike in to guarantee protection for herself and the firm.
But, no. Again, we were wrong.
It turns out that the person behind the anonymous email was none other than Shiela Sazs (Rachael Harris). That's right—Louis' (Rick Hoffman) Harvard admissions officer ex-girlfriend who hadn't been on the show since 2014 set this whole thing into motion. Why? As she revealed to Louis, she was approached for a magazine article about Mike's meteoric rise in the legal world so soon after graduating from Harvard Law, which confused her because she had no memory of him ever being on campus. After investigating his file and realizing it was fraudulent, she wrote the email, keeping it anonymous because she was mortified that it happened on her watch.
The good news? Gibbs still needed someone to corroborate the accusations on the record. The bad news? Louis' admission to Shield that he knew about Mike all along was all she needed to go on the record. Oops.
So, why Sheila? And why the anticlimactic mid-episode reveal? Creator Aaron Korsh explained his reasoning with reporters on a recent visit to the show's Toronto-based set.
"I did not realize that it would be such a huge thing that people would wonder who turned Mike in. I really didn't. Because I kind of thought of it like, if I were Harvey and Mike, I thought what's more important than who turned him in is how they're gonna get out of this thing. I didn't think it would be as massive a deal as it seems to be," he admitted. "The writers saw it differently than me, and probably more accurately in terms of how the audience would feel about it. They were like, 'It's got to be this big search and we need to find out who it is.' And that would be the way—to get Mike out of it was by finding out who it was. But I thought it doesn't really matter. Once the cat's out of the bag, you could kill the person who did it or make them retract what they said, the investigation's still been started, so it doesn't really matter that that happened."
Korsh added that the appeal of Sheila being the one to turn Mike in lays in her motives. "I wanted it to be a person that wasn't doing it for vindictive reasons, not a person that was trying to take Mike down and get him. I wanted it to be someone who, it's just the first person that did it just because it was the right thing to do," he said. "They weren't getting anything out of it. They weren't able to be cajoled into not doing it out of pity. They just did it because they found this out and it's like, ‘This is not right.' And they just did it."
What did you think about the big reveal? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Suits airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on USA.
(E! and USA are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)