Fin seems downright untouchable after two decades on the force — but that wasn’t the case in the Season 25 finale.
The stakes were high during Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Season 25 finale as the squad tackled a serial rapist case with a mystifying trail of evidence. It was a life-risking investigation for the entire SVU, but Sergeant Fin Tutuola (Ice T) truly took one for the team.
It all began with the introduction of a new Trial Division Chief, Heidi Russell, who encouraged the squad to hit the gas on a case to find the “Wire Hanger Rapist.” After a fingerprint was found at the scene, it seemed like the squad closed the case with the suspect in prison. That is, until another victim was reported with the same MO as the Wire Hanger Rapist. Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) realized the SVU made a big mistake, leading to intense consequences for its sergeant.
Read on, below, to find out what happened to Fin on SVU’s Season 25 finale.
Fin was shot by a suspect’s son — but let him go free
Any detective’s worst fear is arresting the wrong person, and in SVU’s Season 25 finale, viewers saw the devastating fallout of a wrongful conviction. After Benson briefed the NYPD about an at-large serial rapist responsible for four assaults, later escalating to five, Chief Russell encouraged the squad to search every nook and cranny of the latest crime scene. After finding a strangely located fingerprint in the home of a victim, DNA testing led the detectives to Billy Hedges, a sanitation worker with a prior record.
Despite Hedges’ insistence that he was innocent, his fingerprint and lack of alibi were damning evidence that Russell zeroed in on. Despite the evidence, Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino) couldn’t connect Hedges to any of the prior assaults. Russell didn’t care — she told Carisi to “take the win” and move forward with a trial. Upon realizing he was set for a jury trial with a horrible alibi, Hedges accepted a plea deal for seven years in Rikers.
And they all lived happily ever after! OK, definitely not. As soon as Hedges entered Rikers, another assault was reported matching the Wire Hanger Rapist’s MO. Benson and Fin instantly knew — the rushed investigation led them to convict the wrong man, and the real perp was proving that the NYPD screwed up. As news outlets swarmed Benson and Fin, they were heartbroken to realize their mistake.
The escalation didn’t end there. After heading home after a wash of a work day, Fin was taking out the trash when a young boy cried out for him to not move. Fin was shocked to realize he was being held at gunpoint by the boy. Fin began bargaining with the armed boy, offering him his wallet. This child had no interest in money — he wanted revenge.
“You put my dad in jail!” the boy cried out. “I saw you on TV today! I found your address online.”
“Your dad?” Fin asked, it all clicking. “Let me guess, your last name is Hedges.”
“He didn’t do those things the police are saying!” the boy told him.
“I know that,” Fin gently agreed, asking the boy his name: Toby. Despite the back-and-forth, Toby refused to put the gun down.
“Toby, do me a favor: Please take your finger off that trigger,” Fin begged.
“Why shouldn’t I just shoot you?” Toby frantically asked.
“Because if you do, both you and your dad will be in jail, and I won’t be able to help get him out,” Fin explained.
“His lawyer is stupid, you’re stupid!” Toby yelled. “But if I shoot you, at least my dad will know how much I love him.”
Fin moved faster than a bullet to disarm the young boy, but the gun was a tad quicker. As Toby and Fin fell to the ground, Toby was horrified to see he had successfully shot Fin in the arm.
“I didn’t mean to!” Toby panicked.
“Drop the gun,” Fin barked in pain.
“You’re bleeding!” Toby cried, instantly dropping the firearm.
“Get out of here,” Fin commanded. “I won’t say anything to anyone. Go!”
Fin twisted the law to make sure justice was served
As Toby fled the scene, Fin made swift work of stitching himself up. Fin’s shot wound was a doozy — but he had a bigger clean-up job to worry about. After wrapping himself up and wiping the fingerprints off Toby’s firearm, Fin headed to the precinct, still bleeding through his shirt. Arriving at the evidence locker, Fin told the officer that an elderly woman turned in the gun to Fin after finding it in the trash.
As the officer took the gun into evidence, Fin successfully covered up Toby’s actions. However, that blood loss quickly caught up to him, leading him to pass out in the evidence locker. Fin was whisked to the hospital, and it took no time at all for a visiting Benson long to sniff out lies in Fin’s cover story.
“Really, Fin?” Benson quipped after hearing his excuse of a Keto-inspired fainting spell. “We’re going to play this? Who shot you?”
After a beat, Benson realized this had to do with the Hedges case. Fin confirmed her suspicions, telling his captain that Hedges has a kid the same age as Benson’s son, Noah (Ryan Buggle) who was responsible, but he wanted to keep the shooting hush-hush.
“What did you tell the doctor?” Benson asked.
“I walked into a mirror,” Fin retorted.
“Well, you’ve always been your own worst enemy,” Benson quipped.
Fin recovered and got busy proving Hedges’ innocence while Benson tracked down the actual assailant. Fin visited Hedges at Rikers, where the detectives learned he had a brief gig as a home renovator a few years ago, where he frequently installed glass doors. After confirming the fingerprint was from when Hedges installed the victims’ door, Carisi had grounds to drop the charges. That got even easier when Benson cracked the case and took down the real Wire Hanger Rapist.
The case wasn’t closed for Fin, however. Upon Hedges’ release from Rikers, Fin took Toby to reunite with his father, just as he said he would. Toby was elated to be back with his father again, but Fin asked for a moment alone with the boy for a long overdue lesson that only Fin could give.
“You know why I brought you here?” Fin asked him, gazing at the Rikers inmates across the yard. “I never wanna see you anywhere near a place like this, you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Toby said.
“And if I ever catch you touching a gun, you’re going to wish you hadn’t,” Fin explained, encouraging him to join his father on their way back home.
Fin might be rough and tough around the edges, but in the final installment of Season 25, we saw that he still has a superhero empathy for others, which makes him an outstanding detective and even more upstanding person. Find out what happens to Fin and the squad next when the action continues during Season 26 of Law & Order: SVU, returning to NBC this fall.
