Return of the Prodigal Son (Season 22, Episode 9)
Premise: A car bomb nearly kills Kathy Stabler, bringing Elliot Stabler back to New York and into an uneasy reunion with Benson as SVU hunts the bomber.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 9
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Deputy Chief Christian Garland (Demore Barnes), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Judge Colin McNamara (Stephen C. Bradbury)
- Guest stars
- Isabel Gillies as Kathy Stabler, Alex Breaux as Jacob Peters, Jess Barbagallo as Sacha Lenski, Thomas K. Belgrey as Yuri Lenski, Matthew Rauch as Jay Cochran
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Brendan Feeney & Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Melody Cooper; Written by: Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“Return of the Prodigal Son” opens as Benson, late for a ceremony in her honor, answers an emergency call near Center Street and finds that the victim of a car bombing is Kathy Stabler. Kathy’s husband, Benson’s former partner Elliot Stabler, is at the scene. The couple now live in Italy, where he serves as the NYPD’s international liaison in Rome, and came to New York for a task force meeting and Benson’s award. Kathy was thrown clear of the blast and goes into surgery with burns, a concussion and a broken pelvis. Benson, who has not spoken to Stabler in ten years, persuades Chief Garland to give SVU the case, on the condition that Stabler stays out of it.
Protesters firebombed police vans nearby that night, and the rental car carried an NYPD placard, so suspicion falls on Jacob Peters, an anti-government agitator caught with explosives in his backpack who says he was half a block from the blast. Stabler turns up demanding to question him; Benson takes him into the interrogation, then throws him out when Peters taunts him about his wife and he loses his temper. At the hospital, Kathy, briefly awake, remembers nothing. Benson tells Stabler he simply walked away without a word; he says he feared that hearing her voice would have kept him from leaving. Garland, having read Stabler’s file of shootings and IAB complaints, warns Benson against such behavior. Kathy later goes into cardiac arrest and is revived.
Arson recovers a phone used as the trigger, a device more sophisticated than Peters’s firebombs and common in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Stabler, whose European work spans terrorism, trafficking and organized crime, tells Fin he must testify against two extortion suspects he caught in Puglia. DNA on the phone matches a relative of Yuri Lenski, a Green Haven inmate who refuses to help Carisi. A mistress names his nephew, Sacha Lenski, who works at an auto-body shop in Willets Point and is caught after a chase. Carisi presses Sacha’s unprepared lawyer, Stephen Cryer, toward a deal, but Jay Cochran (called Spencer Cochran in the episode), a high-priced attorney the squad believes was sent by whoever hired Sacha, takes over.
Spoiler, the ending: Sacha pleads not guilty and is held on $10 million bail. Kathy’s spleen ruptures, and she dies before Stabler can say goodbye; he asks Benson to make sure the bomber goes down for murder. Sacha is then found dead in his Rikers cell from what the squad believes is a staged overdose, and Yuri still will not say who paid him. Garland pulls SVU off the case and hands it to Intelligence. The story continues in the premiere of Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Why it stands out
- Christopher Meloni returns as Elliot Stabler about ten years after the character left the series, in a two-part crossover that concludes with the premiere of Law & Order: Organized Crime, “What Happens in Puglia.”
- Isabel Gillies returns as Kathy Stabler, and Allison Siko and Jeffrey Scaperrotta return as the Stabler children Kathleen and Dickie.
- The episode drew 8.03 million viewers, more than double the previous episode and the most for any SVU episode since 2015.