After Law And Order: SVU Name-Dropped Benson’s Biggest Nemeses Yet Again, Is A Big Reveal Coming In The Season Finale?
Benson has had a lot of enemies, but these have to be the worst of them.
Law & Order: SVU is on the verge of ending its shortest season ever with the upcoming finale, and not a whole lot of details are available about the last episode of the spring 2024 TV schedule. After the events of the penultimate episode of the milestone 25th season, however, I have to wonder if there’s a reason why the show has name-dropped Benson’s two biggest nemeses twice over the course of a month… and if there will be payoff reveal of some kind in the finale.
How “Marauder” Mentioned Benson’s Enemies
Admittedly, the good captain has no shortage of enemies after 550 episodes of investigating sexually-based offenses and vicious felonies, but two stand out after their names were dropped earlier in Season 25: William Lewis and John Drake, a.k.a. Johnny D. Earlier this year, Noah of all people mentioned the two men, having googled his mom. In “Marauder,” the mention came from an entirely different person under entirely different circumstances.
Agent Sykes, who was one of the two women Benson brought into Special Victims in Season 25 to address one of my biggest issues with the show, had her tragic backstory brought into the spotlight in “Marauder,” although not by her own choice. Benson decided to investigate a series of disappearances like what happened to Sykes’ sister decades earlier, and the team did indeed catch the killer and close what had been a very cold case.
Sykes wasn’t thrilled about it, though, because Benson went behind her back to reopen the investigation when Sykes herself didn’t want to dig any deeper. She finally found out about it from some of her old contacts, and visited the SVU squad room to see the evidence for herself. In the process, she confronted Benson and demanded that she leave the investigation alone.
Benson pointed out that there are five other girls who went missing in addition to her sister, and she couldn’t just drop the case. Sykes didn’t take it well, saying that it was a mistake to embed with the NYPD team, and then took one last parting shot:
Good luck with your open cases. I hope they help distract you from your own endless amounts of baggage. Johnny D. William Lewis. You think you’re the only one who can look into someone’s background?
Now, I was totally sympathetic to Sykes up until this point. She was wrong to want Benson to drop an investigation into the disappearances of six missing girls, but emotions were running high and she had a point about Benson going behind her back and doing exactly what she’d asked her not to. Who wouldn’t be at least a little upset under those circumstances?
