Duty to Hope (Season 25, Episode 13)
Premise: When the wrong man is charged in a string of gunpoint rapes, the real attacker strikes again and SVU races to free one man and catch another.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 25, Episode 13
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Capt. Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Judge D. Serani (Michael Mastro)
- Guest stars
- Kate Loprest as Trial Division Chief Heidi Russell, Spenser Granese as Billy Hedges, Max Malas as Toby Hedges, Amber Stonebraker as Ariel Bradford, Eric Olsson as Glenn Duncan
- Director
- Norberto Barba
- Writers
- Story: Gabriel Vallejo; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Duty to Hope” follows a serial attacker the press calls the Wire Hanger Rapist, who unscrews the light bulbs in single women’s apartments, waits for them, binds their wrists with a coat hanger and assaults them with his gun. Heidi Russell, the new chief of the DA’s Trial Division, interrupts Benson’s briefing and soon leaves. The next victim, Ariel Bradford, is attacked as she gets out of the shower and loses a fifth of her blood. CSU finds a thumbprint on her sliding glass door belonging to sanitation worker Billy Hedges, who has a groping arrest and no alibi and insists he has never met her. Ariel picks him from a photo array, and Hedges, under pressure from his public defender, waives the grand jury and agrees to a deal of at least seven years.
With Hedges at Rikers, Sara Gomez is attacked the same way; when a neighbor knocks, the man runs, and she kicks his holster, marked “MAR,” under the stove. Russell praises the police on camera but stands by the case against Hedges. That night Hedges’s son, Toby, who saw Fin on the news, confronts him on his way home with a gun, which goes off and grazes him. Fin sends the boy away, turns in the gun with a story that a neighbor found it in the trash, then collapses in the evidence room; he tells only Benson the truth.
Benson sends Fin with Carisi to see Hedges, who mentions an old job at Home and Hardware Direct. Bruno and Fin learn he briefly stocked the sliding glass doors there around the time the same model was put into Ariel’s building, which explains the print. Touch DNA on the holster identifies Glenn Duncan, a former Marine dishonorably discharged in 2019, and Ariel picks him from new photos. When police close in, Duncan opens fire and hits an officer, Montero, whom Benson pulls to safety. On the phone he tells Benson that he and Jane, his girlfriend, will go out together; ESU storms the apartment and Jane is brought out alive.
Spoiler, the ending: Duncan’s discharge papers say he sexually assaulted a female soldier, and Jane says she found women’s underwear locked in his toolbox; DNA on it matches all six victims, who all pick him out. Carisi calls Russell to drop the charges against Hedges, and Fin brings Toby to meet his father on his release from Rikers, warning the boy never to touch a gun again. At Maddie Flynn’s 16th birthday party, the Flynns thank Benson, and she lends Eileen her compass necklace. Later she tells Elliot she has lent the compass he gave her to a victim’s mother, and he says he understands.
Why it stands out
- The finale of the 13-episode 25th season, the shortest season in the show’s history.
- Christopher Meloni is heard as Elliot Stabler in the closing phone call, a voice-only, uncredited appearance.
- Officer Montero is played by Eddie Hargitay, a cousin of Mariska Hargitay.