Law & Order is going through yet another shakeup.
Ahead of its 25th season, the NBC drama is losing a lead detective as Mehcad Brooks, who plays Jalen Shaw, won’t be returning. Deadline was the first to share the news, and reported that other cast members Reid Scott, Hugh Dancy, Tony Goldwyn, Maura Tierney and Odelya Halevi will be back when the show returns this fall. Of course, this kind of change is fairly familiar to the franchise, as cast members regularly come and go. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard to say goodbye.
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Brooks joined the series in Season 22 after the departure of Anthony Anderson, who was one of the few cast members from the show’s original run to stick around for its revival. Shaw was partnered with Senior Detective Frank Cosgrove (Jeffry Donovan) until his departure at the end of Season 22, and Cosgrove was replaced with Detective Vincent Riley (Scott) in Season 23. Riley will now likely get a promotion and a new partner in Season 25.
While Dancy and Halevi have been part of the show since it was revived, Goldwyn and Tierney are both recent additions. Goldwyn replaced longtime Law & Order star Sam Waterston when he retired from playing DA Jack McCoy in Season 23, and Tierney replaced Camryn Manheim as the lieutenant in Season 24.
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Season 24 ended on a cliffhanger that actually suggested it was ADA Maroun (Halevi) who might not return. The identity of her sister’s killer was finally uncovered, but the suspect was only connected to that murder via inadmissible DNA evidence uncovered through a private database. It caused a rift and a huge debate among the cops and the prosecution team, and everyone had different arguments about how to approach a case where the most significant evidence is ironclad, but unusable.
Shaw and Riley were troubled by Brady (Tierney) and her decision to use the database, and Maroun struggled to see the case from a legal perspective. When the murderer turned up dead, Price (Dancy) was worried she had gone off the deep end. It doesn’t seem likely that she’d kill a person, but at the very least, Maroun and Price were both deeply affected by the situation.
While Brooks may not be back on Law & Order, he’ll be back on screen in a major way thanks to Mortal Kombat II. He played Jax in Mortal Kombat, the 2021 film adaptation of the video game, and he returns in the sequel, which is scheduled to release on Oct. 24, 2025. He is also recurring on Season 3 of the Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That as Marion Odin.
Related: ‘Law & Order’s Season 24 Finale Sets Up One Cast Member’s Possible Exit