Ballad of Dwight and Irena (Season 22, Episode 2)
Premise: When an abusive boyfriend is electrocuted in his bathtub, his girlfriend’s bullied 14-year-old son confesses, but the squad suspects he is covering for his mother.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 2
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ME Dr. Abel Truman (Frank Wood)
- Guest stars
- Riki Lindhome as Irena Nowak, Christopher Cassarino as Dwight Wagner, Athan Sporek as Will McKenna, Elliot Villar as Marc Vargas, Jessica Phillips as Pippa Cox
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Denis Hamill & Melody Cooper; Teleplay: Julie Martin; Story & teleplay: Brendan Feeney
Summary
“Ballad of Dwight and Irena” finds Fin spending hours in a deposition: Andre Fuller’s mother is suing him over the night he shot and killed her husband, Leon, in front of their son. Meanwhile a school nurse reports bruises on 14-year-old Will McKenna (called Will Vargas in the episode), and Kat and Rollins find his mother, Irena Nowak, unconscious in her apartment with a black eye. Irena says she fainted. Her boyfriend, Dwight Wagner, a West Virginia trucker and the father of her six-year-old daughter, Leann, denies hurting Will, whom he calls a runt. Will claims he was mugged, but his father, Officer Marc Vargas, says Dwight bullies the boy.
Irena insists Dwight is staying to look after her. Hours later Dwight is found dead in the bathtub, electrocuted by a hair dryer. Advised by her lawyer, Tommy Calabrese, a former police union attorney, Irena says she found him alone and that Will was at his father’s. Then Leann mentions that Will cooked veggie burgers that evening. When Fin confronts Vargas, Will blurts out that he killed Dwight with the dryer because Dwight was about to hurt his mother. Fin suspects Irena did it and is letting her son take the blame. With her mother present, Leann tells detectives that Dwight was yelling at Irena and Will in the bathroom just before he died and that her mother told her to keep quiet.
Dwight’s pregnant wife, Sherry, arrives from West Virginia, which is news to Irena. With Calabrese still blocking any statement, Carisi charges Will as an adult. Will sticks to his story, which has Dwight lying in the tub, ruling out an imminent threat, and Dr. Abel Truman testifies that Dwight was lying down when he died. Will’s lawyer, Pippa Cox, gets Vargas to say his son was terrified of Dwight. Testifying for the defense, Irena says she heard Dwight threaten Will, but under Carisi’s cross-examination she cries out that she killed Dwight herself.
Spoiler, the ending: When Calabrese berates her, Irena fires him and explains that Will was holding the dryer while Dwight taunted him and threatened them both, so she took it from him and threw it in. Carisi drops the case against Will and accepts Irena’s plea to criminally negligent homicide. The judge gives her a year in prison on condition that the family gets counseling, as Sherry protests in court. The city settles the Fuller lawsuit for $2 million, and Fin, who joined the police hoping to change it, reflects that he has become the officer who shot a Black man.
Why it stands out
- Fin’s deposition follows from the Season 21 finale, “The Things We Have to Lose,” in which he shot Leon Fuller in front of Leon’s son, Andre.
- Jessica Phillips returns as Pippa Cox, the former prosecutor first seen in Season 17, now working as a defense lawyer for children.