In the Law & Order: SVU season 26 finale episode, “Post-Rage,” Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) and her team are called to work a case where a therapist has been attacked in her home. When it becomes evident that the suspect is a patient, SVU has a hard time narrowing down who that patient is. Can they arrest the suspect before someone else becomes a victim?
Elsewhere, someone from SVU gets a job promotion. Does this mean this person is leaving the team? Here’s what happened in Law & Order: SVU season 26 episode 22.
A promotion and an attack
Olivia walks into the squad room and asks what Velasco (Octavio Pisano) is doing there alone, working late. She offers to take him for a quick drink, and when the shock wears off, he takes her up on the offer.
Walking to the bar, he thanks her for not giving up on him. Olivia notes there were a few times she thought about throwing him out, but it turns out he’s not a lost cause. As the smiling SVU captain and her detective walk into the bar, the rest of SVU is all there and surprises Velasco with a party, celebrating his promotion to detective second grade. He’s stunned by the promotion, as Olivia didn’t tell him she was making the recommendation to the higher-ups.
Meanwhile, across town, psychiatrist Dr. Gretchen Stewart (Betsy Brandt) is awakened by an intercom buzzer. She pulls a gun and gets out of bed.
The next day, Olivia, Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), Silva (Juliana Aidén Martinez) and Bruno (Kevin Kane) arrive at the scene of the crime. Dr. Stewart’s assistant found her lying on the floor, bludgeoned and the victim of an apparent sexual assault. Olivia and Curry survey the scene and surmise the suspect forced his way into Dr. Stewart’s home, and CSU finds gun shell casings. Additionally, Olivia finds one of Dr. Stewart’s notebooks, but pages have been torn out.
Bruno and Silva speak to the assistant, and she says Dr. Stewart didn’t mention to her about being afraid of patients. She comments that Dr. Stewart went to dinner with colleague and friend, Dr. Schwartz (Michael Torpey), the night before.
Bruno and Silva meet with Dr. Schwartz, and while he admits he’d like something romantic with Dr. Stewart, he doesn’t believe she’s interested. They’ve gone to dinners several times before. Additionally, Dr. Schwartz mentions that Dr. Stewart was counseling a couple where the husband was very problematic. SVU learns the couple in question is Anthony Fierro (Nico Coucke) and his wife Anne (Sarah Goeke), and Anthony has two prior arrests for domestic violence.
Did Anthony Fierro do it?
At the hospital, Curry and Olivia ask Dr. Stewart what she remembers. The psychiatrist says she was asleep when she heard the downstairs buzzer, the one from her office intercom panel. Sometimes she has patients with late-night emergencies, but she first got her gun and went into the office. The assailant lunged at her and pressed his thumbs into her eyes. She then blacked out.
Dr. Stewart can’t think of anyone who would do this. They show her a picture of Anthony, and she says he did a lot of ketamine and became increasingly paranoid. Anne took out a restraining order on her husband and was planning to leave him.
Silva and Bruno spot Anthony coming out of a store, but don’t approach him. He hops in an SVU and drives off, and Fin and Velasco in another nearby vehicle tail him. As Anthony in his SVU, Fin and Velasco in their SVU and Silva and Bruno behind them in their own vehicle approach a ramp, traffic stalls. Fin radios Olivia, and he suggests getting Anthony now before traffic picks up. Olivia okays it and sends Velasco and Bruno to apprehend him. Seeing the officers approach the SVU, Anthony flees on foot.
Velasco and Bruno pursue Anthony, and he fires a gun at them. He keeps running until he’s cornered on a bridge. Rather than surrender, he opts to jump off the bridge, landing on a car below and dying.
Olivia is confident the police chase signals Anthony’s guilt. However, when Silva and Bruno later meet with Anne, she’s able to pull receipts from the email account she shares with her soon-to-be ex that put him at a hotel the night of Dr. Stewart’s attack. Additionally, hotel camera footage shows Anthony on the property.
Back at the hospital, Curry and Olivia tell Dr. Stewart that Anthony didn’t do it. She is upset, and the detectives inform her that they have to look at the rest of her patients.
Who is Keith Sparks?
At the precinct, SVU narrows down the patient list to Keith Sparks, whom they can’t find. He only did a consultation with Dr. Stewart. As they continue the discussion, Silvia gets an alert about another therapist being attacked and sexually assaulted, so the squad takes off. Dr. Laura Wright was murdered by blunt force trauma to the head. Her eyes were gouged out, and she was covered with a blanket.
Oliva and Curry meet with Dr. Stewart at Dr. Schwartz's home and inform her of Dr. Wright’s murder. They ask how Keith Sparks scheduled his consultation, which leads Dr. Stewart to recall that the service Keith used sends appointment info to her laptop, which she doesn’t use often. On the computer, she only finds Keith Spark’s email. The detectives leave, thinking Dr Stewart may not be Keith’s first victim and wanting to widen the scope of their investigation outside of New York.
Bruno and Silva talk with Dr. Wright’s husband, and he shows them handwritten notes his wife took regarding her patients. The notes suggest one patient in particular had a previous physical altercation. Thinking that the person is Keith Sparks, Bruno and Silva pick him and interrogate him. The man admits to not only killing Dr. Wright, but also the former president of the United States. It instantly becomes clear he is unwell.
Later, Curry found a case in Danbury, Connecticut with the same M.O. Fin and Curry head to Danbury and go to the old apartment of the victim in that incident, and the son meets them. He shares his mom wouldn’t charge for initial consults of patients, and she gave discounts to those who made new patient referrals to her. Combing through a list of the victim’s past referrals, they’re led to a former patient, Mindy Davis (Leslie Black).
Mindy tells detectives that she referred her former coworker, Ted Schramm (Brian Krinsky), but he’s no longer working in Danbury. He’s taken a job with the Manhattan branch of their company.
Bruno, Velasco and Silva show up at Ted’s job to arrest him, and he takes off running. Bruno and Velasco chase him to the third floor of a parking garage, and he knocks Velasco before running to the roof. When Bruno corners him on the roof, Ted jumps to an adjacent building, and Bruno follows. Velasco eventually catches up and arrests Ted. Olivia and Fin interrogate him, and he's the right assailant.
As the season finale closes out, the entire SVU squad shows up to Velasco’s promotion ceremony. The episode scrolls through Velasco’s time with SVU, seemingly signaling his goodbye as Deadline reports Pisano won’t be returning as a series regular.
New episodes of Law and Order: SVU air on Thursdays on NBC and become available the next day on Peacock.
