It’s the end of an era.
Season 27 of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” opened by killing off an original character.
Spoilers below.
In the season premiere of the long-running NBC procedural, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) attends the wake of her old boss, Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek).
He was an original character who had been around since “Law & Order’s” premiere. The recovering alcoholic and veteran who rises from homicide captain to SVU head appeared in over 400 episodes of the franchise, including the first three seasons of “Law & Order” and the first 15 seasons of “SVU.”
He also appeared on “Law & Order: Organized Crime.”
“He was the best boss I ever had,” Benson says in the episode. “Everything that I know about being a captain, I learned from him.”
Fans online were distraught.
“This is yalls last season to piss me off,” one person wrote on Instagram.
“THEY F–KING KILLED MY PEEPAW,” one wrote on X, formerly Twitter, next to a photo of Cragen.
Another fan commented, “Me googling making sure Dann Florek didn’t pass away in real life lol. [He’s] alive and kicking,” referring to the actor, 75.
“Good morning to everyone except the writer who dared to write ‘Craigen’s [sic] dead,’” another irate fan said.
The details of exactly how he died are not revealed, but footage is shown of his retirement speech at his funeral.
“It’s been a long road. It hasn’t always been pleasant, and it certainly hasn’t always been easy,” Cragen says in the speech.
“I lived for my job, I don’t think that surprises anybody, and I can’t imagine my life any other way.”
Benson leaves his funeral to find Stabler (Christopher Meloni) waiting by her car.
“I just feel like we’re entering into our ‘All our friends are dying’ era,” she says.
Referring to their partnership, he says, “Not that you can go back, and not that I’d want to, but we had a pretty good run there for a minute.”
She says, “We still do, just different,” as they embrace.
Their never-ending will-they, won’t-they relationship also gets teased in the scene. Before he leaves, he says, “Love you. Good night.”
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