How ‘Law & Order’ Wrote out Riley in Reid Scott’s Final Episode

Ahead of this season, showrunner Rick Eid told TV Insider that Reid Scott‘s last Law & Order episode is “really emotional and powerful,” and they wanted to give him “a memorable exit.” Well, that’s certainly what happened. Eid also shared, “The genesis for the idea may have come from Reid himself.” The Thursday, October 15, episode is the farewell for Detective Vincent Riley, and the preview had us worried that he’d be killed off. So, was he? Warning: Spoilers for Law & Order Season 26 Episode 2 ahead!

It doesn’t take long for Law & Order to reveal Riley’s exit: He’s working late at night when he realizes something and tries to track down a man named Ray. He leaves messages for Price (Hugh Dancy) and Walker (David Ajala) on his way to the bar where Ray is, but when he calls out to the man and IDs himself, Ray turns and shoots him twice in the chest. Riley goes down but tries to get up to follow. By the time Walker arrives on scene, Riley’s fading — fast. “Stay with me,” Walker pleads with his partner. “Vince, stay with me, man, come on!”

Soon after, Brady (Maura Tierney) joins Walker at the hospital — he can’t reach Riley’s wife, Tara (Cadden Jones) — the doctor tells them she couldn’t save him. Law & Order kills off Detective Vincent Riley — and no, this isn’t a trick.

The rest of the episode focuses on everyone’s determination to nail the shooter, but Walker can’t work the case because Riley was his partner. (He’s pissed off about that, to put it mildly.) That’s where Detective Rob Calvino (James Badge Dale) comes in. He’s the one to ask the tough questions, like, if he could’ve been having an affair (no, he’s just been giving money to the wife of the man he accidentally killed on the job), and everyone’s trying to figure out why the detective called Price.

But once the cops find out about Ray, they put the pieces together. Price tried Ray’s brother for rape and murder, and his brother was stabbed to death in prison. Ray blamed Price, since he put him in prison and was following him. He was even just blocks away from Price’s apartment when Riley found him. He saved Price’s life. And with that, Brady and Rob arrest Ray for Riley’s murder, in the middle of his brother’s funeral.

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Ray insists he’s not guilty, but Brady doesn’t buy it — and she makes sure he knows just who the victim was to her. “Vince was my friend. He had a wife and two kids, and you are going to pay for what you did,” she tells him. “If there’s any justice in the world, you’re going to end up just like your brother, lying dead in a pool of blood on the concrete floor of some crappy state prison.” But they don’t have the murder weapon. Still, with what they do have, it’s enough to charge him with murder in the first degree, determines Baxter (Tony Goldwyn).

Riley’s brother Matt (Ryan Eggold) is sitting with Walker during arraignment, and he makes sure to let Ray know just who he is, telling him that he’s going to tell his friends on the inside all about him. (Baxter doesn’t blame him.) Since Price is going to have to testify, Baxter is trying the case, and he uses his opening statement to detail how Riley was a good cop, a good man, a good husband, and a good father. “Unfortunately, we can’t bring Vince back to life,” he says, “but we can get justice for him and his family.” Ray’s lawyer, on the other hand, Lee (Raphael Sbarge), argues that Ray opened a wrongful conviction inquiry into his brother’s case and was threatening to expose corruption in the DA’s office, and that’s why Baxter’s zeroed in on Ray.

After that day in court, Matt wants Price to tell him they’re going to win, but the ADA can’t, not without the murder weapon. “At least he went out a hero, right?” Matt says. “That’s gotta count for something, right?” But as he sees it, when Riley saved Price’s life, “it’s not right” that he can’t say they’re going to convict his killer.

And so when the case isn’t looking as strong as he’d hoped after Price and Rob testify, Matt talks to Walker before he takes the stand. He admits that he’s worried that if Ray walks free, he’ll kill him. He pushes Walker to say he saw the shooter’s face — especially for Riley’s wife and kids — and that’s exactly what the detective does when Price preps him to take the stand. But Price reminds him that he said he didn’t get a good look during his initial statement. Walker then uses the same argument that Price used on the stand: There’s a difference between memory and recall, and it’s easier to recognize someone you’ve seen. He insists he’s not lying.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Price goes to Baxter with his concerns, but the DA tells him he’s not sure if it matters and they can’t prove Walker’s lying. And with that, Walker does testify (though we don’t see it), and Ray is found guilty.

At the NYPD’s dedication for Riley (he died on August 12), with Matt sitting with his wife and kids, Brady says, “Though Vince is no longer with us, his courage, his humor, and his inherent sense of decency will live on through all of us, especially his two beautiful children, Bridget and Spencer. In many ways, it’s fitting that Vince died trying to help someone else, in this case someone he wasn’t even particularly fond of, but Vince didn’t pick and choose when to be a hero or when to do the right thing, that’s just who he was, and how he was. So in my humble opinion, there’s never been someone more deserving to have his name and legacy memorialized here.”

Price notices Matt and Walker exchange a nod.

When it came to the Riley brothers, Eid previously told us, “[Matt] is a complicated character and he’s had a complicated relationship with his brother, but I think, as we started seeing the last time we saw him, there’s real love there, and it’s probably mostly unspoken, but there’s a powerful bond between the two of them, and we’ll see that in this episode.” We certainly did.

How do you feel about Law & Order killing off Riley? What did you think of the episode and James Badge Dale’s introduction? Let us know in the comments section below.

Law & Order, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC