Law & Order Season 23 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the twenty-third season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from January to May 2024, featuring Det. Jalen Shaw, Det. Vincent Riley, Lt. Kate Dixon, Executive ADA Nolan Price, ADA Samantha Maroun, DA Jack McCoy and DA Nicholas Baxter.
Season 23 recap
Five episodes into Season 23, Jack McCoy leaves the district attorney’s office. After the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed production, NBC trimmed the order to 13 episodes, aired from January 18 to May 16, 2024. Reid Scott joins in “Freedom of Expression” as Det. Vincent Riley, taking Jeffrey Donovan’s place beside Det. Jalen Shaw under Lt. Kate Dixon, with Exec. ADA Nolan Price and ADA Samantha Maroun in court. The opener, set in the campus turmoil after October 7, ends with a professor acquitted of handing a student the knife that killed a university president.
Evidence turns slippery. In “Human Innovations” a confession is suppressed and the verdict leans on video that may be an AI fake, and in “Unintended Consequences” a security monitor caught selling sexual images of children gets immunity as the only eyewitness. Riley’s drinking and an old suspension come out on the stand in “Turn the Page,” though the serial strangler is convicted. In “Last Dance” the mayor pressures the office over a billionaire’s murder trial; McCoy takes it over, wins, and resigns, ending Sam Waterston’s run. Price is acting DA in “On the Ledge,” where Shaw learns that the man he talked off a ledge went on to kill an emergency room doctor.
Tony Goldwyn arrives as DA Nicholas Baxter in “Balance of Power,” dropping by a crime scene minutes after his swearing-in and telling Price he wants a team that shares his outlook. In “Facade,” which appears to draw on Jordan Neely’s death, Baxter overrules Price three times, once to shield an inquiry into a white supremacist network, and the chokehold killer is acquitted. Price pushes Maroun to toughen up against a Ukrainian surrogate in “Family Ties” and abandons his own case against an exoneration lawyer in “Inconvenient Truth,” drawing a confession from the lawyer’s wife. In “Castle in the Sky” Dixon testifies against a homeless guard after his daughter tells her the truth.
“No Good Deed,” the next-to-last episode, revisits one of Price’s plea deals: a rapist he let off with five years is accused of raping and murdering his former therapist. Facing an election in a month, Baxter takes first chair, vows not to follow McCoy’s example and leans on the judge to admit pattern evidence. The jury convicts, and the two men make peace, until word comes that the earlier victim has attempted suicide.
Episodes
- 1
Freedom of Expression
The stabbing of a Jewish university president who would not take sides after October 7 leads to a student activist, and then to the professor accused of handing him the knife.
- 2
Human Innovations
A tech billionaire who replaced hundreds of engineers with artificial intelligence is shot outside his office, and the clinching evidence against the programmer who built the AI may be fake.
- 3
Turn the Page
A woman strangled after a night at a sex club turns out to be the fourth victim killed the same way, and the trial puts Riley’s handling of an old missing-person case, and his own past, on display.
- 4
Unintended Consequences
A real estate agent is shot after a private showing, and the only eyewitness is a security-company voyeur whose testimony the prosecutors can get only by granting him immunity for child pornography.
- 5
Last Dance
The founder of a dating app is strangled in Central Park before dawn, and prosecuting one of the richest men alive for her murder sets McCoy’s office against the mayor in an election year.
- 6
On the Ledge
Shaw coaxes a suicidal stranger back from a ledge, only to learn he went on to open fire in a hospital emergency room, and the man’s lawyer argues that a lifetime of racism left him legally insane.
- 7
Balance of Power
A self-made investor is beaten to death after $25 million disappears from his accounts, and new District Attorney Nicholas Baxter’s first case tests Price when the accused offers to trade evidence against a movie star.
- 8
Facade
A young Black comedian dies in a chokehold on a late-night subway train, the white teacher who held him says he was rescuing a woman, and the trail leads to a gym that fronts for a white supremacist network.
- 9
Family Ties
A congressional aide who reported her boss to the FBI is bludgeoned in her apartment, but the killer turns out to be the Ukrainian refugee carrying the baby she and her husband hoped to raise.
- 10
Inconvenient Truth
A chef exonerated after 12 years in prison is stabbed in his pop-up restaurant, and the case against the lawyer who freed him and kept most of his settlement rests on a shaky eyewitness.
- 11
Castle in the Sky
A developer’s son is shot in his father’s unopened luxury tower, and the evidence leads to the building’s security guard, who had been secretly living there with his deaf daughter.
- 12
No Good Deed
A therapist is raped and murdered days after one of her clients, a rapist Price pleaded down to five years, leaves prison, and Baxter takes over the trial himself a month before his election.