The Law & Order crossover event has certainly been worth the wait. At the time of writing this, the event hasn’t even ended. It’s just raised a lot of questions about a past Law & Order: SVU storyline.
Caution: There are SPOILERS from the beginning of the Law & Order crossover event in this post.
The episode opened with a woman finding a burned body and calling Olivia Benson. Benson immediately got to the crime scene, and homicide was called in. It turned out that the burned body belonged to a woman, but it would take some time to get the details.
Benson wanted to work the case because she got the call for it and she had a feeling about it. When the call came in with the identity of the body, Benson was going nowhere. The name Maria Recinos was too personal.
Benson saved Maria Recinos in the past in Law & Order: SVU
Benson told Brady a little about the woman, making sure those who haven’t seen the earlier days of the series could know why this person was so important to her. Maria Recinos was in Law & Order: SVU season 4, episode 3. As an eight-year-old Honduran child, she was illegally smuggled into America by a family member, but that family member decided to sell her into child pornographers.
She was locked in a basement, but figured out a way to escape. Once she could get a cell phone from her captors, she managed to call 911 and that eventually led to Benson on the case.
In fact, it was Benson who took the 911 call seriously. The SVU captain at the time, Cragen, believed the call was a prank, but Benson knew differently. There was panic in Maria’s voice, and she quickly jumped into action. If it wasn’t for Benson remaining on the phone for hours and building a rapport with Maria, the SVU team would have never found the young girl. It’s no wonder this case has stuck in Benson’s mind for so long.
Maria Recinos was inspired by Benson to become a cop
Benson thought of Maria after all of this, which again, isn’t that surprising. In fact, we learned about this in Law & Order: SVU season 25, episode 7, when Benson went to therapy to say that she didn’t know how Maria had dealt with everything that happened to her. Benson’s therapist suggest that she use her NYPD contacts to get information.
That’s exactly what Benson did, finding out that Maria had joined the NYPD. So, when Benson learned that Maria was the victim of a potential serial killer, she was naturally going to take this one personally. And we would too!
Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU air on Thursdays starting at 8/7c on NBC.
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