‘Law & Order: SVU’: Carisi Breaks Down in Court, Questions His Future After Hostage Crisis

Law & Order: SVU is back, and with it comes a really bizarre new case and some major PTSD for one ADA Dominick Carisi Jr., who is dealing with the brutal aftermath of being held hostage in the mid-season finale. But as he questions his future, will justice slip through the cracks? Spoiler-filled recap ahead for Law & Order: SVU Season 26, Episode 9 “First Light”.

We kick off the episode with Katharine Vernon and her husband Harris. They seem like a normal loving couple until the word “whore” shows up on their garage door, and on a USB that contains a video of Katharine being intimate with a man who isn’t her husband. It’s already weird, but it’s getting weirder because Katharine, she doesn’t remember any of this!

Enter the SVU. And Carisi, who is really having trouble grappling with his return to work after being the victim of a hostage situation in his beloved bodega. It doesn’t help that the suspect in the rape and robbery is now pleading not guilty. Captain Olivia Benson can tell Carisi’s not OK, but his wife, Amanda Rollins, thinks working on a case will help him find his way.

There’s definitely more to this case than meets the eye. Katharine does look like she’s responsive in the video, but she was on a heavy sleep aid and says she doesn’t remember a thing about the intimate encounter. So it’s time to find out who took the video of the whole affair — and it turns out it was a private investigator hired by the man in the video’s wife. Who may have been the one who took some artistic license with the garage door.

The man, whose name is Tommy Gallagher, admits to police that he met Katharine on an online forum for bored married couples called “Roommate Syndrome,” and claims she asked him to come over and do a kind of Sleeping Beauty fantasy with her. But again, Katharine has no idea what’s going on, and a little investigating determined that it wasn’t her who set up the account in her name… it was her husband. Yes, it looks like the man who painted over the garage door and was so supportive of his wife’s search for the truth was the perpetrator.

Carisi needs more evidence, so the SVU tracks down one of Harris’ university colleagues, who admits that he had sex with Katharine while Harris watched. And he admits she seemed a little out of it, which made him uncomfortable. The investigators then discover that Harris has been drugging his wife with double doses of sleep medication and watching her be assaulted for fun. Now Carisi just needs to prove it in court — which is tough when he’s suffering from serious PTSD and making some major mistakes in the courtroom.

A big courthouse flub, in which Carisi fails to re-examine his biggest witness, has Carisi seriously considering walking away from his career and everything he’s worked for. But Benson is quick to give him a pep talk and tell him to snap out of it. And it works. Carisi doubles down on the man in the video, offering him a deal for 7 years in prison if he confesses the truth — Harris was actually in the bedroom while they were having sex. This confession forced Harris to plead guilty, taking 15 years behind bars. And Katharine is now free.

Carisi also seems to be doing better after redeeming himself, and the episode ends with him reassuring Rollins that they’re going to be OK after it all. What a return for Law & Order: SVU!

This article was adapted from the latest episode of PopCulture Social Call, streaming weekdays on PopCulture.com’s YouTube channel. You can now watch this episode, which is embedded in the above article.