At the halfway point of Thursday’s Law & Order: SVU/Organized Crime finale crossover, we had an Internet baddie on the lam and no real way of finding him. But how did the big event end? And how much ‘Bensler’ love did the show’s writers cram into the episode? (Spoiler alert: A lot!) Read on for the highlights of Organized Crime‘s Season 3 finale, “With Many Names.” (And make sure to read our recap of the SVU finale that got the night underway, as well.)
The episode starts with a flashback to Shadowërk’s origin story. Six months before the events of the episode, Kyle, the adult son of one of the women who worked in the Ohio escrow office where the site’s server was housed created the crime-for-hire portal. Then he spent a lonely Christmas with a stranger at a diner, came home, and hanged himself. But just as he did so, someone posted Shadowërk’s first job — and the “ding!” that accompanied the post rallied the suicidal young man to save himself.
The feds, Stabler and Benson realize Kyle’s connection to the escrow office and get a warrant to search his mother’s house, even though she swears he’s innocent and that that they don’t live together anymore. They find his suicide note… but not much else.
Meanwhile, Liv and El have lunch at a diner with the feds. Benson has barely had two bites of her macaroni and cheese when a guy wearing a respirator mask gasses the agents standing guard in a car outside the restaurant, then marches in and gasses everyone in the place. Olivia thinks quickly and places a wet napkin over her eyes, but Elliot’s vision is blurred really quickly. The gasser then pulls out a giant gun. Liv stands to shoot at him, but he fires first, knocking both Stabler and Benson to the ground. Stabler, gun pulled, says he can’t see — but Benson can, so she grabs the hand holding his weapon, aims and helps him fire a bullet right into the dude’s forehead.
But Olivia was hit! She tells Stabler that her hip is hurt — and it is bleeding copiously — and that she doesn’t think she can walk. So he picks her up and carries her out like a blind damn boss, with her verbally steering him past the pastry case and out the door.
Bell and Fin question Kyle’s mom while Rollins and Whelan watch. (Side note: You’ve gotta wonder what, exactly, this woman was thinking when she looked at that wispy little side piece of hair and thought, “Yep, THIS is the best look for getting interrogated by a federal task force.”)
Good news: Liv’s hip injury wasn’t as bad as it looked, and an urgent care doctor is able to remove all the pellets. She’ll be sore, and off physical duty for a few weeks, but she’s fine. Elliot, however, looks pretty shaken (and gets all up in Liv’s personal space) as he helps his former partner off the exam table. “I thought I’d lost you,” he says gravely. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve brought up for you,” she replies. There’s a loaded moooooooment between the two of them, and thought it feels like we’re one “I’m sorry, sir, there’s only one room with one bed left in this whole hotel!” away from fanfiction-dom, I’m not mad about it! But then there’s a new lead on Kyle, and Stabler’s gotta run — but not before hugging her one more time.
Everyone, including Reyes but obviously not Olivia, heads to a wooded area to pursue Kyle. And you know as soon as Whelan talks about the train trip he’s got planned across Canada that he’s so dead — and yep, he takes a bullet in the neck when Kyle starts firing on the group. Eventually Bell corners the kid… who runs a sword through himself rather than be taken alive. Stabler knows that they need Kyle alive in order to take the site down, so he yells for a medic. And Jamie selflessly tells the medic helping him to go to Kyle, essentially damning himself to bleed out on the forest floor while Reyes cries in his rapidly darkening vision.
Bell and Stabler ride with Kyle as he’s airlifted to a New York prison hospital. They are irked when he is unrepentant, and horrified when Reyes calls to tell Bell that Whelan is alive, but the bullet severed his spine.
Whelan is, understandably, at an all-time low as he realizes that he can’t move his body, and he can’t even breathe without a device that shocks his muscles into moving. Jet calls and tells him she loves him, but it does little to make him feel better; immediately after she hangs up, Jamie asks Reyes to kill him by turning off the device. Reyes won’t do it. When Whelan’s father arrives at the hospital, Jamie tries, and fails, not to cry. Soon after, it seems very much like Jamie’s dad did what Reyes would not: Whelan flatlines, and a sobbing Reyes calls Jet to deliver the sad news to the team in New York.
When Carisi threatens Kyle with loads of legal trouble for his mother, he acquiesces and pleads guilty, agreeing to shut down the site. And back at the Special Victims Unit, Fin hugs Muncy goodbye as she packs up her desk and leaves the precinct for a new position.
Just before the end of the episode, Stabler swings by Benson’s office to tell her that he’s about to head out on a new case, and he’ll be gone for a while. (Uh, a LONG while.) But he’s got a gift for her before he goes. They make a deal that he can open the Christmas gift from Noah’s half-brother’s family, then she’ll open his gift. The Christmas gift turns out to be a wooden “Live, Laugh, Love” ornament, but as Liv is chuckling, Elliot breaks off the “e” in “Live” so it reads “Liv, Laugh, Love.” He gazes at it fondly. “You can always fix things,” he says. “Now I’ll treasure it.” GUYS.
His gift to her? A golden compass necklace. “Is this supposed to lead me somewhere or to something?” she wonders, though she’s clearly touched. He says it should lead her to happiness, and she says she’ll try. “Me too, partner,” he says with a meaningful look as he heads out the door.
And on that ‘shippy note, I’l leave you. Grade the finale and the season as a whole via the polls below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
This story originally appeared on TVLine
