Something that Law & Order: Organized Crime has done so well, and we hope it’s able to continue to do even more with the move to Peacock, is showcase the Stabler family. Detective Elliot Stabler’s (Christopher Meloni) relationships with the members of his family are just as complicated as the cases he works as part of the Organized Crime Control Bureau, as was especially seen in Season 4. But considering how dark the show can get and how it was even launched as a two-parter with SVU (with Elliot’s wife’s death), we also can’t help but expect tragedy. And with the addition of two Stabler brothers last season (and us refusing to even think about Ellen Burstyn‘s Bernadette getting killed off), signs seem to point towards one of them.
To say that Elliot’s relationships with his brothers Randall (Dean Norris) and Joe Jr. (Michael Trotter) are complicated and tense is an understatement. There’s the family history, what Randall knew about their father, and then everything in the present day, with Joe Jr.’s addiction. At the end of Season 4, the last to air on NBC with the drama moving to the streaming service, Joe Jr. was embedded with the big bad, Julian Emery (Tom Payne) and in some serious trouble. And Norris has been upped to series regular for Season 5, suggesting we’ll be seeing even more of him (after he was in a majority of the fourth season).
But it’s easy to see how either or both Stabler brothers might not make it out of Season 5 alive, leading to even more tragedy and trauma for Elliot.
Not only did Joe get on a plane to Cuba with Emery in the middle of a shootout with the NYPD, but it was once they were in the air that the arms dealer revealed that while a suitcase of a nerve agent was secured, he had a backup plan. Joe became his new delivery man and was cuffed to another case with the nerve agent. It’s easy to see how that could end badly for him. (It also has to be said: Being an informant for the OCCB has not ended well in the past.)
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But maybe it will be his actions (going with Emery) that will eventually lead to the death of someone else in the family: Randall. Norris being a series regular doesn’t make him safe, and imagine the tension and conflict that would arise between Elliot and Joe if Randall dies because of the younger brother’s choices. Also imagine the heartbreak of one or both—depending on what happens to Joe in the aftermath—having to tell Bernadette of Randall’s death.
Either way, if one of his brothers die, it could lead to a grieving and potentially even darker Elliot—just as the show has the platform on a streaming service versus network TV to fully explore that.
What do you think? Do you think Organized Crime will kill off a Stabler brother? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Law & Order: Organized Crime, Season 5 Premiere, TBA, Peacock
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