Law and Order: "Into the Mystic" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired October 15, 2026)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit show my husband Charles and I stayed on NBC October 15 to watch a quite grim Law and Order episode called “Into the Mystic” (though what it has to do with the Van Morrison song that gave it its title is something of a mystery). It was startling in that it actually showed one of the series’ two lead detectives, Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), not only getting shot in the line of duty but actually dying from his bullet wounds. If they’re going to kill off a series regular, they usually do it at the very end of a season so they can groom whoever’s going to take over as his or her replacement, not just two episodes into a new season. Riley was shot by Eddie Biller (Orion McCabe) as part of an elaborate mistaken-identity gimmick; Biller’s brother had previously been convicted of robbery and prosecuted by deputy district attorney Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy). Now the brother has been killed in prison by a fellow inmate, and Eddie is out for revenge against Nolan, only he shot and killed Det. Riley instead because the two men looked quite similar. (I should have known that Dick Wolf and his writers – here Rick Eid and Will Lapp – would someday do something with the striking physical resemblance between Reid Scott and Hugh Dancy.) Riley’s partner, Detective Theo Walker (David Ajala), originally tells the investigating police that he didn’t get close enough to see the shooter’s face, but Riley’s brother Matt (Ryan Eggold) pressures Walker to change his testimony and say he did see Eddie Biller well enough to identify him. Because Vincent Riley is personally involved in the case, DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn) pulls rank on him and insists on trying the case himself. We don’t actually see Walker on the stand “testilying” (as it’s colloquially called whenever police lie on the witness stand to secure a conviction), but we assume that’s what happened because Biller is indeed convicted. There’s also an interesting subplot in which Biller’s attorney tries to sow reasonable doubt about his guilt by claiming that the D.A.’s office framed him just when he was about to expose their corruption. It was an O.K. Law and Order, most striking for the sheer surprise in seeing one of the series regulars bite the big one just as a new season is getting underway!