Avatar (Season 9, Episode 2)
Premise: A young woman vanishes from her bed, and her avatar in an online virtual world leads the squad to an ex-convict reliving an old abduction.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 2
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Chester Lake (Adam Beach), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Kevin Tighe as Julian Cooper, Christina Brucato as Rachel McGarrett, Lisa Joyce as Kristi McGarrett, Ryan Lynn as Dan Friedich, Florencia Lozano as Lauren Molby
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Paul Grellong
Summary
“Avatar” begins with a 911 call from Kristi McGarrett, a teenager visiting from Boston, who says her sister Rachel’s boyfriend, Dan Friedich, raped her in the night. Rachel, 21, has vanished, leaving blood in the bedroom. Dan, cut by a glass Kristi swung at him, says he remembers nothing, and his lawyer says he has sexsomnia, a disorder that leads to sex during sleep. The blood proves to be Dan’s, the squad concludes it cannot charge him, and the detectives decide someone else took Rachel. Her father attacks the squad on television and offers a $50,000 reward.
Rachel’s friend Ginger explains that the two play Another Youniverse, an online virtual world, where Rachel’s avatar, a 14-year-old named Vixy Platinum, runs a virtual sex club. The game’s designer, Erik Winton, finds a post in which Vixy complained of a stalker, Wit Billions, whose account belongs to Tobin Willis. Willis, who collects books about executioners, was at a ballgame at Shea Stadium during the kidnapping and says his card was stolen. Game records tie his avatar to one used by Nestor Buchanan, an assistant at a rare-book shop where Lake is a customer, and Nestor says he got his boss, Julian Cooper, into the game. Cooper has fled, and clues in his storage locker and apartment lead to a warehouse rented under Willis’s name, where Benson finds Rachel barely breathing.
Rachel says a masked man drugged and raped her and spoke of a cabin in the woods. Cooper’s fingerprints identify him as Gregory Searle, who served 20 years for kidnapping 15-year-old Lauren Molby 25 years earlier; she was never found, and Vixy looks like her. Fin and Lake catch him at a bus terminal, but Rachel dies of respiratory arrest caused by the drugs. Cooper denies everything and walks out. Inside the game, Benson and Winton find a cabin and lake he built, with a sleeping avatar named Lauren. Matching the lake to state maps points to Twin Island Lake near Pine Plains, and switching on the game’s sun shows which shore the cabin is on.
Spoiler, the ending: Police searching for Lauren’s body find her alive at the cabin, where she has waited 25 years for Cooper; she says she fled abusive parents and stayed with him by choice. Stabler stops Cooper at the airport for crossing against a red light. Told about Rachel, Lauren confronts him, finds him old and sick, and leaves after he says Rachel’s avatar reminded him of her. He then says he would have kept Rachel playing Vixy forever. No charge or trial is shown.
Why it stands out
- Kevin Tighe guest stars as Julian Cooper, and the virtual world the detectives search resembles Second Life.
- Reporter David Keeps, a friend of Mariska Hargitay, makes a brief appearance as an unnamed detective.