‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’ Finale: Did Stabler Get Emery — and Revenge for His Brother’s Death?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 finale, “He Was a Stabler.”]

How far will Stabler (Christopher Meloni) go after Julian Emery (Tom Payne) killed his brother, Joe Jr. (Michael Trotter)? Well, early on in the Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 finale, he seems very serious about setting Emery’s muscle, Vincent (Paul Gorvin), on fire to get the crime boss’ location.

Stabler is out ostensibly on bereavement leave — he must really be hurting, Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt) and Reyes (Rick Gonzalez) agree — when really, he and McKenna (Jason Patric) are holding Vincent in an abandoned building. “You have no idea the lengths I’m going to go to to get what I want,” Stabler warns, covering Vincent with lighter fluid and lighting a match. “You’re in a very bad situation, but so am I. I don’t want to be here. You brought me here. You and Emery. You made this happen. You’re going to answer my question. Now, you can do it now or after I put out the fire.”

While Bell, Tanner (Olivia Thirlby), and Vargas (Tate Ellington) are trying to find leads on Emery, Stabler has Reyes meet up with him and McKenna. (The smell of lighter fluid on Vincent, who has not been burned? New cologne.) “You know I’ll ride for you. But CTB’s running the show now, and Tanner’s already on us about you. Look, we can take care of Emery, just go home and be with your family. What are you doing?” Reyes asks. Stabler needs him to work his contacts to find links to the shell company that paid Emery to broker a recent deal and is snatching up real estate. He’s also handing over Vincent but wants him to take time with the paperwork. “It don’t take a genius to see where this is headed,” Reyes knows and tells him to call it in if he gets to Emery before the NYPD. Stabler notably doesn’t agree.

He does open up to McKenna a bit. “Knock on the door, can’t get it out of my head,” he admits. “Twelve years at SVU, the worst part of the job was knocking on that door. Telling the family that their loved ones weren’t coming home. When they’re finally able to look at you, the light’s gone. The light in their eyes, it’s vanished like their soul’s left their body and you’re the one who’s killed them.” He has yet to tell his mother his brother’s dead. McKenna gets it: “It’s like a heaviness that never leaves you. There’s no end to it, there’s no fix for it, and you think that if you off the guy that’s done this to you, that somehow it’s going to end your suffering, bring you some little peace to your heart, maybe your head, family. Am I getting close? What you’re planning on doing, I’m with you, but you gotta know: Revenge doesn’t bring light. Just a different kind of darkness.”

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Reyes gets them the name of a construction company that supplies that shell company, and Stabler threatens to rip the guy’s ear off if he doesn’t tell them where Emery is. He shares he gave Emery a list of properties and cash. Stabler has Reyes run through that list, insisting that he give him a head start once they have the location.

Randall (Dean Norris) has been holding the family together and tries to talk Stabler into coming home and not getting himself killed. He also gives him an envelope that Joey mailed to their mother with a note that said it was for the detective. Inside is a flash drive (which Stabler then gives to Vargas). Stabler has his brother take the family up to their house in Montauk while he goes after the person who killed Joey, even as Randall tells him their brother wouldn’t want him to do that. It’s in that house that Bernie (Ellen Burstyn) finds a box of Joey’s stuff and inside is an NYPD police academy application.

Reyes is torn once he gets Emery’s location. He wants to move before Emery leaves, but Stabler says to give him 20 minutes … and right after, Bell warns Reyes that while it’s admirable to help a fellow officer, don’t let him pull him into the deep end, too. By the time Stabler and McKenna get to the address, however, Emery is gone. He has, however, left the phone he threw in anger, and McKenna puts the SIM card in his own to pull up his call logs, texts, and search history. Messages with his ex-wife, Allegra, reveal she and their son are in New York. Here, again, the question of how far the detectives are going to go comes up. Stabler stresses to McKenna that they’re just going to have a conversation with Allegra once they find her house.

Once Allegra wises up to the fact that they’re not there about a bomb threat that’s probably a hoax, she calls Emery and gives him their names. She also decides to let him deal with it himself and puts him on speaker with Stabler. The detective threatens to arrest Allegra and leave their son to foster care. Emery thinks he’s bluffing, but Stabler warns, “Turn yourself in, or I swear to god, this will be the last time you ever talk to your son.” Emery seemingly says goodbye to his son and hangs up, and McKenna tells Allegra they were bluffing. Stabler then tells Giles that his dad will do everything he can to see him again.

Thanks to that call, Vargas has a location for Emery. That’s when Randall calls Stabler and tells him about Joe’s NYPD application from a few years back. McKenna asks how Stabler wants to play this, given that going in on their own, versus calling it in and getting backup, would be like Butch and Sundance. And so Stabler returns to the OCCB and takes the blame for Reyes and Vargas going behind Bell’s back. Bell warns him that there will be “many” consequences coming his way.

When the NYPD finds Emery, Stabler takes off after him when he runs and Bell follows. Just as Stabler has told Emery to turn around and look at him, Bell steps in and grabs his gun, cuffing him. After, she tells Stabler he made the right choice. “Choice was taken from me,” he points out. All they can do is let this play out.

David Holloway/PEACOCK

So you can imagine just how angry Stabler is when Emery offers to give the names of Hezbollah’s top leaders in return for his assets being unfrozen and house arrest on his estate — and an FBI agent agrees to it because of how valuable an asset he’d be. “He killed my brother!” Stabler yells. “How much misery has he brought into this world? How many people has he killed? And you want to let him walk?” But that’s the game.

Then, Joe Jr. comes through, thanks to that flash drive he sent before his murder. Joe was collecting evidence against Emery (texts, photos, documents, and recorded conversations going back six months). It’s so damning that they got Emery and no deal will be made. When Stabler goes to inform Emery of that, the crime boss thinks he’s there to be punished more, like his brother. “He hated himself so much he chose to wallow in drugs and debauchery, but he was weak, he was a worthless wretch,” he says. But that’s when Stabler informs him what Joe had on him. Whatever his problems, “he was a Stabler,” and he’s the reason he’s going away for the rest of his life.

“I learned recently my brother Joey wanted to be a cop. I think the choices he made in life got in the way of that. Today, he was a cop. And a good one,” Stabler tells the team before taking his bereavement leave.

Stabler then tells his mother about Joey and takes the family to take the plaque that is now up in his honor, for his work as a criminal informant and what he did that saved lives. The finale ends with Stabler and McKenna having a drink and toasting, “To Joey.”

So, will Stabler be facing any consequences? That’s apparently a question for Season 6, if it happens. What did you think of the finale? Let us know in the comments section below.

Law & Order: Organized Crime, Streaming now, Peacock

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