Spoilers ahead for Episode 6 of Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, called “Unforgivable.”
The plot has continued to thicken for Elliot Stabler while he remains undercover in the second season of Law & Order: Organized Crime, and it seemed at first like his cover was going to be completely blown by the end of “Unforgivable.” Luckily – for him, anyway – he avoided suspicion as the rat among the Albanian mobsters, but the son of the real-life Eddie turned up out of nowhere, knowing that Stabler is definitely not his dad. Still, the biggest problem for Stabler moving forward may be the loss of his closest undercover ally: Reggie.
While Reggie has clearly been one of the bad guys of this first arc of Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, he hasn’t seemed so bad when compared to the likes of Albi and Jon Kosta. Reggie just isn’t sharp enough to hold his own among those higher up the ladder within the mob organization, to the point that Stabler as Eddie was already getting recognition independent of Reggie’s support for him.
But Reggie’s status as a man on the inside with absolute faith in “Eddie’s” loyalty and perhaps not the most observant meant that he was an incredibly important figure in Stabler’s undercover life. As long as he had Reggie believing all of his declarations of loyalty, he had somebody to vouch for him. And that’s certainly not the case anymore after the events of “Unforgivable,” when Reggie went so far that the authorities had to arrest him rather than let it slide to 100% protect Stabler’s cover.
A man by the name of Teddy Garcia was running for governor of New York, and made what was ultimately a deadly mistake by specifically calling out the Albanian mob as part of his plan to crack down on organized crime. Jon Kosta took this as a very personal insult, and Garcia had a target on his back. Unfortunately, Garcia was also convinced that his personal security would be adequate to protect him, and turned down Bell’s efforts to convince him to accept police protection until it was too late to keep everybody alive.
And despite Stabler interfering as much as he could on his end and the cops getting their hands on Garcia when it was clear that the situation was escalating, Reggie stressed himself out more and more while circling Garcia’s home, waiting to make the kill. Despite Stabler trying to stop him over the phone – and the fact that Garcia himself wasn’t home – he shot and killed the person who answered the door: Garcia’s wife. Reggie was arrested shortly thereafter, and the future doesn’t look good for him.
Garcia just reiterated his plan to take down organized crime, and Jon Kosta simply plans for somebody else to kill him after Reggie botched the first attempt. Albi will handle the second attempt at a hit himself. As for Reggie, he’s presumably either going to have to flip on his family and the others in the mob now that he's in custody, or spend time in prison where he could easily be murdered. I’m not sure I see him flipping, and a lot may depend on whether or not Stabler outs himself to Reggie now that Reggie is behind bars.
What fans can be reasonably confident of is that Stabler lost his most reliable ally within the organization, just when suspicions are running high about rats and somebody is on the scene who knows that he’s not Eddie. Plus, I still say that Stabler is being way too casual in paying visits to his mom and Eli, especially now that his life as Eddie is starting to overlap with his life as Stabler more. If he’s followed, and/or the bad guys find out his name, it would be only too easy to do harm to Eli.
Only time will tell, however. Stabler can still kinda sorta count on Albi as an ally, even without Reggie to back him! New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime will continue releasing on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, following new episodes of Law & Order: SVU at 9 p.m. ET. SVU just hit its 500th episode milestone and is still guaranteed at least one more season; throw in the upcoming revival of the original Law & Order, and this corner of the Dick Wolf universe is going very strong.
