Law & Orderended Season 24 with a slammed door and a big question mark. Did Sam Maroun (Odelya Halevi) just participate in a man's murder? When Price (Hugh Dancy) arrived at her apartment to ask her, she didn't say yes, and she didn't say no. She didn't say anything, but she shut the door in his face and left all of us to wonder if she could recover from what went down in this finale. The episode centered around a young woman found murdered, three days after she had been raped. There was another person's DNA found on her body, but it didn't show up in the normal police database. Brady (Maura Tierney) decided to check it against a private database, like the kind built by people sending in their DNA to find out their ancestry. That led to a relative, the aunt of a "handsome man" who had recently become friendly with the murdered girl at an art gallery, and the same DNA was linked to a cold case. Both Riley (Reid Scott) and Shaw (Mehcad Brooks) questioned the ethics of Brady's decision, but if it got the job done and caught a murderer and rapist, what was the harm? 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 The harm was pretty significant, but before that could be dealt with, there was a bit of a twist. Brady informed Maroun that the cold case with the same DNA as this case was actually that of Maroun's sister. Her sister was murdered 12 years ago but her murderer was never caught, and now there's a chance this "handsome man" could go down for two murders and at least one rape. Maroun lost it–in a good way–but things quickly went awry. The defense quickly got the judge to throw out the DNA because the way it was obtained violated privacy laws, and would mean that it was possible for one person's decision to submit their DNA for testing to mean that they were deciding that for all of their relatives, too. It was a fair ruling generally, but the prosecution team was forced to rethink their case so that one rich guy wouldn't just get away with rape and both murders. Despite Price telling her to keep some distance between her and this situation, Maroun went hunting for witnesses and found a doorman who, according to security footage, had seen the killer's face and spoke to him. She convinced him to help identify the guy whom he saw. What we apparently didn't see was another conversation in which she revealed too much about the suspect, which pointed the doorman in the direction of the right person to identify. In the lineup, all he had to do was look for a guy she apparently described as a model. Baxter (Tony Goldwyn) tried to tell Price he simply didn't have to have known about this in favor of putting away a criminal, but Price couldn't do it. Related:'Law & Order: SVU' Star Kelli Giddish Shares Special News That Has Fans 'Jumping With Joy' In the end, they lost. The jury found the suspect not guilty, letting a murderer and rapist go free because, to be fair, the cops and prosecution really screwed this up. They did everything wrong, and the defense did their job correctly. But clearly, someone couldn't deal with the result, and the handsome man was found dead on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. There were multiple people upset by the verdict, including both the victim's father and her stalker, but the look on Maroun's face in the courtroom was so scary that even if she's not responsible for handsome man's death, she likely won't be mentally recovered from this trial for a long time. When Price confronted her about manipulating the witness, she essentially told him the law doesn't matter, which is wild to say as a lawyer. Price was also clearly shaken by this whole thing, but he also wasn't wrong. This finale is the kind of thingLaw & Orderdoes best. There's no morally right answer, and even when the judicial process functions exactly as it should, everything can still turn out totally upside down and shake even the most aggressive prosecutors to their core. It wouldn't be much of a surprise if one of them, especially the one denied justice for her own sister, can't come back from a case like this. Related: NBC Announces Its Fall 2025-2026 Schedule