In Law & Order: SVU season 25 episode 7, "Probability of Doom," Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) and the SVU squad race to track down a suspect who has been killing off pedophiles. As they follow clues, their investigation leads them to a devastating story of abuse. Plus, Olivia is reminded of a case from her past and goes to find the victim at the center of it.
Here's what happened.
What happened to Maria Recinos?
Olivia is in a therapy session where her therapist uses a technique to get Olivia to work through her feelings. Through a flashback, viewers are taken to Law & Order: SVU season 7 episode 3 when Olivia was on the phone with a little girl named Maria Recinos who was asking for help as she was being held hostage by a man named Richard. Back in the present, Olivia's therapist asks why Olivia thinks she is reminded of the case? Olivia confesses she hasn't seen Maria since rescuing her.
Later, Olivia goes to an NYPD graduation ceremony for cadets where she spots a grown-up Maria Recinos (Dani Montalvo) decked out in a complete police uniform. Once the ceremony is over, Olivia is about to approach Maria to extend her congratulations when Fin (Ice-T) calls about a case. Olivia leaves without saying a word to the graduate.
Two wives, two dead husbands
Fin is giving Renee (Aime Donna Kelly) a hard time in the squad room when Velasco (Octavio Pisano) approaches and announces Lisa Miller (Anya Whelan-Smith) is there to speak with SVU. When Renee and Fin speak with the pregnant Lisa, she shares she and her husband Wayne are going through a divorce and he wants shared custody. The SVU detectives are confused as to why she came to them, but then she hands over images she found on her husband's computer. As it turns out, Wayne has viewing child pornography.
Renee and Fin waste no time getting a warrant and visiting Wayne's apartment. As they comb through the apartment, they find Wayne's body parts spread on a plastic tarp on the floor.
Later when Olivia and Renee speak to Lisa about Wayne, Lisa is quick to state she didn't kill him. They rule her out as a suspect.
Back in the squad room, Velasco shares they were able to pull a PG image of a girl in a vintage car from Wayne's laptop. Fin deduces the car in the picture was the old Plymouth found outside of Wayne's home. Olivia has the car towed to police impound and she and Renee go to look at it.
At police impound, the SVU captain rolls up her sleeve and gets under the car herself to see if she can find anything. She locates a tracker. When her team looks into it, they find it traced Wayne to the park. Park video footage shows Wayne sitting on a bench with another girl. Before the team can find out what happened to Wayne, Renee gets a call saying another wife found her husband Gary's body parts spread out on the floor.
On a trip to the medical examiner, Fin and Velasco confirm that both Wayne and Gary were murdered in similar fashions, leading SVU to believe they're looking for one suspect.
The teenage girl from the car photo is tracked down and brought with her mom into the squad room. The teenager and Wayne met on an app called K-Dome, which she and her friends use to find modeling gigs. However, as SVU looks more into the app they discover it’s used for various criminal things like scoring drugs and for pedophiles to find prey.
Additionally, police pull IP address info and see both Wayne and Gary were using K-Dome to talk to a man named James Brock. Olivia takes her team and goes to James' residence. While they don't find him at home, they do find his daughter Tori (Sarah Lynn Marion) and her teenage sister Nina (Fiona Morgan Quinn) the girl from the park video. Apparently, James is off working a job in Atlantic City.
What happened to James?
SVU is unable to locate James, but Tori claims to have talked to him the day before. Meanwhile, Velasco and Renee speak to Nina, who says she never knew Wayne before they met in the park. She was there waiting on Tori when he waved at her. Nina ignored him and sat on a park bench, but then he sat next to her and claimed to have condoms in his pocket. Nothing physical happened, but she told Tori about the weird incident, who shrugged it off. Furthermore, Nina claims not know anything about K-Dome.
The case is going nowhere until Velasco shares that police have found James' car in police impound and that it was towed six weeks ago. Plus, his phone was in the trunk. As the crime scene unit and SVU squad search the river next to the area where the car was towed from, they find body parts, which are later confirmed to be pieces of James. Having been caught in a lie, Tori becomes the prime suspect for all three murders.
Who is the killer?
Looking through Tori's phone, SVU discovers she has the K-Dome app and she messaged both Wayne and Gary. Tori admits to killing her father because she snapped after years of abuse. After her mother died when she was eight, James made a nightly practice of sexually assaulting his daughter. She only got a reprieve when he went away for work weeks at a time. When she got older, she noticed her father starting to look at her younger sister, so to spare Nina, Tori just endured more abuse.
Asked why Tori killed Wayne and Gary, she admits to doing so in an effort to save the world. Eventually, Tori is hauled off to prison and Nina gets the surprising news that she has a maternal grandmother who is willing to step up and take custody of her.
By the end of the episode, Olivia finishes what she started and pays Maria a visit at home. Maria doesn't recognize Olivia right away, but once Olivia shows a newspaper clipping about how the captain rescued her, Maria gives Olivia the biggest hug and invites her into the house.
New episodes of Law & Order: SVU debut on Thursdays at 9 pm ET/PT on NBC. Episodes become available the next day on Peacock.
