WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 23, Episode 2, "Never Turn Your Back On Them'," which premiered Thursday, September 23rd, on NBC.
The extended Season 23 premiere of Law & Order: SVU continues, picking up immediately from the cliffhanger of the first hour, with news stations reporting Dr. Machado's death to be a suicide. Captain Olivia "Liv" Benson is investigating the crime scene when Chief Christian Garland shows up. She does not believe it to be an accident, and Garland agrees. However, there is no immediate sign of apparent foul play. Benson then informs Garland that Ortiz, who just testified against accused rapist and sex trafficker Congressman Howard, was found dead in his tub with slit wrists and that she has calls in to check on Paulie, another witness, in jail. Then there's Jenna, the high school girl Howard attempted to rape, who is not answering her calls. Benson knows Howard is cleaning house, and she knows he's using others to distance himself and his future presidency from this scandal.
The remaining witness, Rosa, answers the door to Detective Katriona "Kat" Tamin and tells her she's being threatened by men who say they'll hurt her son. She tells Kat she's leaving to Buffalo, but Kat begs her to stay under police protection. Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola is informed that Paulie was jumped and murdered in jail while the COs didn't intervene. Rollins and Velasco go to check on Jenna and meet her parents, who say she is asleep upstairs. When Rollins goes to check, she finds blood in the hallway and Jenna's room locked. Jenna is nowhere to be found and likely escaped through her bedroom window.
At Jenna's house, Detective Amanda Rollins and Officer Joe Velasco confirm that Jenna's bike is missing, so she likely fled. Velasco has Jenna's mom save his number in her phone, sensing some controlling tendencies from the dad. Accosted by reporters, Congressman Howard puts on quite a show of blaming SVU and his political rivals for framing him and says that he expects charges to be dropped. Chief McGrath is livid, while Garland reminds him that they were pressured to make an arrest too fast. McGrath insists they find Jenna expeditiously. Meanwhile, Velasco is DMed by Jenna on his Q account, a.k.a. his undercover persona. The squad traces the number to a house they suspect Jenna is in. While Rollins and Velasco get inside, Kat is shot outside. The bullet penetrates her vest and she is bleeding out.
Velasco and Rollins check out the house, looking for Jenna. The EMTs are on the way, and on the sidewalk, Kat is not doing well. When the EMTs arrive, Fin refuses to leave Kat's side while they help. Velasco gets upstairs just in time to see Jenna flee out yet another window, as she says she messed everything up. Velasco tries to reach Jenna on the roof, but she's afraid of how her dad will act if he knows everything she's done. Velasco tries to relate to her by sharing that his dad was physically abusive and how even after his dad died, he wanted to always remember to be nothing like him. Velasco says he does this job so he can protect others and help them learn how to protect themselves. This convinces Jenna, and later, with Jenna safe, Velasco tells Rollins he embellished his story about his dad to fit the situation, but Rollins knows better.
In the ambulance, Fin is on the phone with Benson, who confirms Kat is in a fight for her life. Kat's blood pressure is dropping rapidly while Fin tries to keep her alert with bad cop jokes. He assures her he's not going anywhere -- and neither is she. But soon, Kat is crashing as her vitals tank.
They rush Kat into the hospital as Benson arrives. Fin says her heart stopped in the ambulance. He's upset and blames himself for not covering her more. Meanwhile, reunited with her parents, Jenna says she thought someone broke into the house and so she freaked out and ran for her safety. Rollins says they believe an associate of Congressman Howard broke in to intimidate her, but her dad doesn't believe that Jenna would have anything to testify about. Velasco tells him that Jenna ended up in the hospital, so clearly it wasn't "nothing." Her dad takes offense to that and insists they leave now.
Howard's lawyer has filed a motion to dismiss, while Carisi, Olivia and Rollins discuss their dwindling leads and witnesses. They want to see if Velasco can convince Jenna to testify. Benson then gets a call that Kat is out of surgery and awake. Fin is sitting with her in the hospital, while Kat muses that she died in the ambulance and was disappointed with a lack of out-of-body experience. She says when she came out from anesthesia, her mind was racing, thinking about how Carisi had once told her he had no regrets about leaving the force. She's questioning if she's where she's supposed to be as a cop. As part of SVU, she hates getting to the victims after they're already traumatized. She's disillusioned, too, with rich perpetrators getting off with no consequences. Fin calls Liv to tell her that he thinks Kat's not going to come back to the force. Velasco then comes in and says Jenna's mom has proof Howard had sex with her daughter -- and that he got Jenna pregnant at fifteen.
Jenna's mom, Lauren, meets with Benson and Velasco but says her husband can't know she was there. She says Jenna met Howard on a class trip and he immediately started texting her about an internship, which she took. Everything seemed fine until her fifteenth birthday when the Congressman threw her a party in New York. She says they were concerned, but it seemed innocent. However, she could tell that something had happened that night. Jenna came back a mess and upset. Laura found Jenna's dress later in the laundry room, stained with blood, so she saved it and hid it in the closet. Six weeks, later, she found a positive pregnancy test in Jenna's trash and then a few days later a car picked her up and when Jenna got home, she was white, sick and depressed. She knows Jenna had an abortion.
Carisi and Benson tell Howard about the dress and reveal a picture they have of Jenna sitting on his lap in that dress, so they know his DNA will be on it. They tell Howard Jenna had an abortion and Howard is genuinely shocked. Benson shows him records of Howard's own driver taking her to the clinic. It's revealed his lawyer, Myron Gold, arranged for the abortion without telling Howard. Myron then tells Howard he's stupid, so Howard cracks and tells the cops that Jenna's abortion and the witness' murders were all Myron. Bendon and Carisi ask Howard to walk them through everything. He claims he's ultimately a puppet and that Gold pulls the strings and orchestrated the hits, initiated Jenna's abortion and hid finances. As he's interviewed by an ADA, Gold is confident they won't be able to convict him, but he offers up a deal: he will tip off the cops to other high-profile murders, including dirt on presidents, royalty, Hollywood elites and more.
Carisi and Rollins discuss how they can't tie Gold to Ortiz or Machado's deaths, and the fact that their deep dive indicates he can indeed give them the information he claims he can. Carisi, Garland and McGrath get calls that make them upset. It's revealed that Congressman Howard was arrested after all and the sacrificial predator -- he's taken a plea and Gold's deal is off the table. They're not surprised Gold was protected, since he said he could take down an ex-president.
Kat comes into the office to speak with Benson, who knows she's not here to deliver good news. Kat says it's more than being shot -- it's the disillusionment of nothing changing in the system, even after the promises of last year. She can't stomach guys like McGrath holding onto power. She sees the whole system as corrupt and unbeatable. Benson wants her to believe that change is coming, but Kat doesn't see it. Kat says she doesn't have twenty years invested like Liv, and she needs to get out while she still can. She's happy the victims have someone like Liv, but she can't stay in a corrupt system. Kat's time at SVU is officially done.
Carisi and Rollins discuss how Gold was protected from high-up, but Carisi was worried he would not have been able to convict anyway. He then tells Rollins they need to disclose their relationship -- because he's taking it seriously. Rollins wants to hold onto the privacy a little bit longer, but they affirm their commitment to each other.
In Garland's office, we see him packing up. Benson says she feels like, with Kat leaving, they win battles but lose wars. Garland says he went to argue against letting Gold off and McGrath threw him under the bus. From that Garland inferred that his time was coming, so he's leaving the force before they can fire him. He spoke with his father, a former NYPD member, who encouraged him to move on and bring more trouble from outside the department than within.
McGrath comes to visit Benson in her office to tell her Chief Garland put in his papers - and it was totally his own decision. He thinks SVU has gotten too political and they need to focus on the "real rapes." Benson is enraged by his dismissal of victims. McGrath then insinuates that if Benson plays nice, she might have the job of Chief one day. In the meantime, though, while they search for Garland's replacement, McGrath is the acting chief, setting up a new season's internal villain.
Law & Order: SVU stars Mariska Hargitay, Ice T, Kelli Giddish and Peter Scanavino. New episodes air Thursdays at 8 p.m. on NBC.
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