Capt. Donald Cragen Dies in ‘Law & Order: SVU’ Season 27 Premiere

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The 27th season premiere of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” started on a somber note: with a loss of one of their own.

The episode, which aired Thursday night, revealed that the unit’s beloved former captain, Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), has died.

The current captain of the team, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), who started out over 25 years ago with the squad under Cragen, walks into a bar filled with current and former colleagues gathered to remember their former leader.

She’s greeted first by George Huang (BD Wong), a psychiatrist who previously assisted the group during the early years, and then embraced by Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), who was a detective alongside Benson during the show’s first season in 1999. It was also a romantic reunion of sorts since Benson and Cassidy casually hooked up in some of the show’s first episodes, and in later seasons, they reconnected and had a more serious relationship.

Old video of Cragen giving a speech plays on a screen in the bar as Benson watches with her colleagues, including ADA Dominick Carisi (Peter Scanavino).

“I lived for my job. I don’t think that surprises anybody,” he says in the footage, which appears to be from his retirement party. “And I can’t imagine my life any other way.”

Cragen oversaw the unit until the show’s 15th season, when he announced his retirement. For most of those years, he dealt with antics involving Detectives Benson, John Munch (Richard Belzer, who died in 2023), Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T) and Elliot Stabler (Chris Meloni), who is waiting outside for Benson when she leaves the bar.


Benson and Stabler reminisce on the “pretty good run” they had in the olden days before realizing they’re entering their “all our friends are dying era.”


In real life, Florek appears to be OK. In fact, he was on the set with Hargitay and Meloni while they filmed that Benson and Stabler scene

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