Law & Order Season 22 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the twenty-second season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from September 2022 to May 2023, featuring Det. Frank Cosgrove, Det. Jalen Shaw, Lt. Kate Dixon, Executive ADA Nolan Price, ADA Samantha Maroun and DA Jack McCoy.
Season 22 recap
Season 22 opens in the middle of someone else’s story: “Gimme Shelter – Part Three” ends a crossover that started on Law & Order: Organized Crime and ran through Special Victims Unit. A hotel bombing leads to a Russian aide close to Putin, Price trades the bomber a deal for testimony and refuses the aide’s bid for immunity, and the aide is shot dead. The hour also brings in Mehcad Brooks as Det. Jalen Shaw, replacing Anthony Anderson beside Det. Frank Cosgrove under Lt. Kate Dixon. Exec. ADA Nolan Price and ADA Samantha Maroun prosecute for DA Jack McCoy over 22 episodes aired from September 2022 to May 2023.
Headlines drive many cases. A Texas governor’s daughter is killed after traveling to New York for an abortion in “Battle Lines,” and “Camouflage,” which appears to draw on the Sunset Park subway attack, has Price, long an opponent of capital punishment, win a federal death sentence. In “The System,” reportedly drawn from Kalief Browder’s case, a man held 18 months at Rikers is cleared of the original killing but convicted over a guard’s death during his escape. A patrol officer who stayed in his car during a nightclub shooting lies about it in “Heroes,” and news of his suicide comes right after the verdict. “Collateral Damage” recalls NXIVM’s branding.
The regulars’ lives keep intruding. Cosgrove orders his mentor, Det. Jerry Ryan, out of his home in “Benefit of the Doubt,” suspecting him of bending rules. Shaw is the one suspended in “Fear and Loathing” after reporting two officers who drew guns on him. Maroun leads a trial in “Second Chance” that coincides with the anniversary of her sister Christina’s killing, Price is called by the defense in “Bias,” where the victim is a former colleague he found dead and once dated, and Cosgrove’s daughter Lily (Alayna Hester) testifies over his objection in “Class Retreat.”
Cosgrove turns 50 and is shot in “Appraisal,” then weighs a Florida security job before telling Shaw he will stay, yet the finale, “Open Wounds,” is Jeffrey Donovan’s last episode. A teacher who survived a school shooting kills a senator whose vote sank a gun bill, defended by McCoy’s daughter Rebecca, played by Sam Waterston’s daughter Elisabeth. She refuses a manslaughter plea, the jury convicts on first-degree murder, and she leaves her father with one piece of family news, in Waterston’s 400th episode.
Episodes
- 1
Gimme Shelter – Part Three
A gangster’s bombing of a Manhattan hotel points the prosecutors to a Russian official close to Putin, and when their key witness slips out of reach they must bargain with the bomber to convict the man they believe gave the orders.
- 2
Battle Lines
A Texas governor’s daughter dies in an apparent Central Park mugging, but the case turns on the abortion she secretly traveled to New York to get and the family members who tried to stop her.
- 3
Camouflage
After a racially targeted shooting on a Manhattan subway, Price takes the case as a special federal prosecutor on the condition that he seek the death penalty he has spent his career opposing.
- 4
Benefit of the Doubt
The torture killing of a young memoirist leads to a movie star suspected in murders on two continents, and Cosgrove comes to suspect that his mentor bent the rules to convict him.
- 5
12 Seconds
A law student found dead by the river had been blackmailing a revered civil rights professor over a 12-second recording, and the professor’s wife and son become entangled in the lies that follow.
- 6
Vicious Cycle
A fashion designer is gunned down after following a shoplifter out of a pharmacy, and the prosecution uncovers a missed warning in the killer’s earlier arrest, one Maroun handled herself.
- 7
Only the Lonely
A crisis consultant is strangled after a night spent managing a tech mogul’s divorce scandal, and the case leads to a con man who preys on accomplished women and to one of them, a celebrated women’s rights lawyer.
- 8
Chain of Command
A retired Army colonel turned retail executive is shot behind his home, and the killing traces back to men from his old command who blame him for the burn pits that sickened them in Iraq.
- 9
The System
A young man who has waited 18 months at Rikers for a murder trial escapes from the courthouse, and a corrections officer’s death forces Price and Shaw to face what the system has done to him.
- 10
Land of Opportunity
A young Venezuelan migrant is shot after seeing a cover-up at a skyscraper construction site, and convicting the developer means relying on a witness who could be deported.
- 11
Second Chance
A model student with no record beats a recently paroled ex-con to death, the defense blames a psychotic reaction to high-potency cannabis, and Maroun’s drive for a murder conviction runs up against her own family’s grief.
- 12
Almost Famous
A 14-year-old is shot while kicking in a neighbor’s door for a social-media dare, and the prosecutors pursue the manager of an influencer house who profits from teenagers’ dangerous stunts.
- 13
Mammon
A graduate student who threatens to expose a prosperity-gospel pastor is shot dead, and Price must show the church is a fraud to break the clergy privilege protecting the pastor’s confession.
- 14
Heroes
A model is gunned down in a crowded nightclub, and the only witness who can place the suspect there is a patrol officer who lied to hide that he stayed in his car.
- 15
Fear and Loathing
A Black heart surgeon is killed by a man frightened by false crime-app alerts, and Price shifts his sights to the man who posted them, while Shaw presses a complaint against two officers who held him at gunpoint.
- 16
Deadline
A celebrated reporter is stabbed at home after his house is vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, and the killing leads back to a city contracting fraud blamed for a fatal housing fire.
- 17
Bias
Price discovers the body of a former colleague, a public defender, and the case against the judge she had been dating puts the biases of everyone involved, Price included, on trial.
- 18
Collateral Damage
A young woman from a wealthy family dies from an infected brand after joining a women’s creativity group, and the case uncovers a cult that controls its members with their own confessions.
- 19
Private Lives
The husband of a conservative congresswoman is beaten to death in his home office, and the case turns on puberty blockers he was secretly giving a 13-year-old trans girl.
- 20
Class Retreat
A teenager kills his girlfriend’s billionaire father after hearing she called him abusive at a school retreat, and Cosgrove’s daughter Lily becomes the witness who proves the motive.
- 21
Appraisal
An artist is shot dead and her gallery owner disappears after an opening, and the killing leads to a young crypto billionaire who needed the artist silenced before a fraud grand jury.
- 22
Open Wounds
A teacher who survived a classroom massacre assassinates a senator who voted against gun control, and McCoy’s daughter defends him on a plea of insanity from post-traumatic stress.