Major ‘SVU’ Character Almost Dies in ‘Law & Order’ Crossover

Things weren’t looking so good for a member of the Law & Order: SVU squad as they teamed up with the Law & Order team for Thursday’s midseason crossover premieres.

As Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Lt. Jessica Brady (Maura Tierney) brought their squads to investigate a case that started with an injured woman fleeing the hospital, and one member of the SVU team nearly died from a gruesome injury.

Spoiler Alert: The article below contains spoilers for Law & Order Season 25 Episode 9, “Snowflakes” and Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 9, “Purity.”

The winding two-episode case kicked off when a woman named Nadiya appeared bloody at the hospital before running away. Later, Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Brady spotted her, but they didn’t get any answers as to what was going on before Nadiya saw someone behind Brady, pushed her aside, and was shot and killed.

The department’s investigation then revealed that Nadiya arrived in the U.S. about two months prior, and that while she wasn’t sexually assaulted, she had given birth recently. The detectives soon found themselves at an abandoned Brooklyn power plant that had been turned into a makeshift maternity ward for women who were being trafficked as surrogates to give birth to U.S. couples’ babies.

The leader of the trafficking effort was Sarah Tandon, who fronted a fake charity providing black market adoptions for a profit, and going through her messages led the detectives to an embryo delivery location that was covered with white supremacist imagery as well as illegal firearms and explosives.

It’s then that Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane) heard a quiet ticking noise and rushed everyone out of the building before a bomb went off. Bruno might have saved his squad’s life, but he ended up being impaled with a piece of debris from the explosion and was rushed to the hospital with Benson.

Things looked touch-and-go for a little bit there, with Bruno needing a lengthy surgery to repair the damage the shrapnel caused to his body, but ultimately, Bruno stabilized as the team tracked down the tech millionaire who was funding the embryo trafficking as part of his genetics company’s eugenics experiments.

While the millionaire ultimately made a deal with the prosecutor to walk free in exchange for helping the detectives nail Sarah, the original donor families were not thrilled when they found out what his role in this whole scheme had been, and they filed an injunction that would keep him from having the embryos returned to him.

Toward the end of the episode, Bruno assured his colleagues that he was on the mend as he visited Benson for an update on the cast.

“Oh my stars, look who’s up and about,” Captain Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) said. “How ya feeling?”

“I’m still a little sore,” Bruno answered. “Won’t be wearing any bikinis this year, but otherwise I’m good.”

Law & Order airs Thursdays on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.