Law & Order: Organized Crime follows complex mysteries involving mob bosses, gang leaders, and other violent criminals who are good at covering their tracks.
It's not the kind of show you can put on in the background while you do something else because you'll miss too much.
The characters can be complicated to follow, making it more challenging to enjoy this show and its intricate stories.
That's why we've put together this Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 cast and character guide to help you out before the new season begins.
Unlike the rest of the Law & Order franchise, Organized Crime doesn't often delve into the courtroom side of things.
Instead, the main characters you need to keep track of are:
- The cops who dedicate their lives to untangling complicated knots to get to the truth
- The current targets of investigations
- Stabler's family members
Related: Law & Order: Organized Crime Offered the Perfect Blend of Suspense and Family Drama
These three sets of characters will likely cross paths frequently during season 5 because Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4 Episode 13 ended with Stabler's wayward younger brother leaving the country with the drug kingpin the Organized Crime unit is trying to catch.
Let's take a look at all the major players for Season 5!
Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni)
Elliot Stabler is the lead character, though many stories are a team effort rather than relying only on his expertise.
He was one of the original cast members on Law & Order: SVU but turned in his papers after a violent case that led to several deaths in the squad room, after which he disappeared for ten years.
Related: 19 Favorite Elliot Stabler Memories from Law & Order: SVU
The Elliot Stabler, who returned at the beginning of Law & Order: Organized Crime, was very different from the man who had vanished a decade earlier.
His wife was murdered almost immediately, and he spent his time brooding, being angry, and obsessing over proving that Richard Wheatley killed her.
Stabler's PTSD was so bad that Benson helped stage an intervention, and even after getting Wheatley, Stabler tends to be a lone wolf who disregards rules more often than not and struggles to connect with his family.
Meloni may be best known as Elliot Stabler, but before that, he played criminals twice, once on eight episodes of NYPD Blue and again on the HBO drama Oz, which is about life in prison.
He filmed the final season of Oz and the first season of SVU simultaneously.
Meloni has also guest starred in several hit TV shows and movies, including as a pediatrician who battled Dr. Cox in an episode of Scrubs.
Most recently, this talented actor voiced a character in the fantasy movie If.
We can expect more intense scenes from Meloni during Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 as Stabler fights to get his brother away from a drug kingpin.
Sergeant Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt)
Sergeant Bell heads the Organized Crime unit. She is the first Black lesbian woman to hold this position and constantly fights to ensure the NYPD doesn't cut funding for her task force.
Bell and Stabler initially didn't get along, mainly because Stabler insisted on doing everything his way and ignored her orders.
Over the years, they have become close friends and confidantes and have earned one another's respect.
Bell has a similar storyline to FBI: Most Wanted's Sheryll Barnes, as she initially was married and had a baby with her wife but lost everything when her wife filed for divorce.
Although she misses her daughter, she is not looking for a new romance or family and focuses entirely on keeping her team safe while working toward toppling mob bosses.
Bell is overly cautious sometimes, often threatening to pull agents from undercover assignments the second things get dangerous because of the heartbreaking murder of an agent she was close with during the first season.
Bell is a demanding, no-nonsense boss unafraid to stand up to the brass.
She spent most of Season 4 dealing with a rogue IAB agent who wanted to get Stabler after he killed a violent teenager who shot Bell.
Danielle Moné Truitt, who plays her, is no stranger to the Dick Wolf universe, as she played a doctor on Chicago Med Season 6 Episode 2.
Her character on that show was an OBGYN who attempted to stand up for a pregnant prisoner but to no avail.
Related: Hero or Smooth Criminal? These TV Characters Make It Hard to Tell
Truitt's accomplishments include being Miss Black Sacramento 2000, being nominated twice for an Ovation Award, and winning the NAACP Theatre Award for The Mountaintop.
Law & Order: Organized Crime is lucky to have her, and we can't wait for Bell to regain control of her department in Season 5!
Bobby Reyes (Rick Gonzalez)
Reyes was brought in as an expert in undercover work during Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 3, and not a moment too soon.
Before that, Stabler's undercover work had become a joke.
He was undercover so much that it didn't seem believable that the word hadn't spread among criminals not to trust a guy who looked like him!
Reyes took over that duty, proving he was so good at his job that he could infiltrate the unit without Stabler realizing it.
During Season 4, he and Jet had an affair borne out of their shared grief over the death of Jamie Whelan, an agent they were both close to.
However, Jet told Reyes to go back to his wife, as she knew their affair wasn't about anything more than shared heartbreak.
Rick Gonzalez was a guest on various shows throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Sharp-eyed fans of the Law & Order franchise spotted him on a 2000 episode of Law & Order: SVU. He has also appeared on shows such as Bones, Castle, The Closer, and NCIS.
Related: Law & Order: Organized Crime Review: Reyes and Jet's Surprisingly Compelling Relationship
He is also a musician who released a mix-tape album in 2011.
He called his album The Invisible Man because he felt invisible in the music industry.
That year, he also had a bit part in Lady Gaga's music video for her song "Judas."
Jet Slootmaekers (Ainsley Seiger)
Jet started as the tired TV trope of the cynical, wisecracking IT tech, but she's proven to be far more than that.
She is both a cop and an IT expert and has risked her life for several assignments.
She often helps Stabler look into things on the down-low, and she was kidnapped during Season 3 while investigating a target she fell hard for.
Jet is fearless, often taking risks that others wouldn't.
She is also a strong example of a woman in STEM, which we don't have enough of on television, even if her personal life is a mess.
During Season 4, she was the only one to admire new AI-powered tech instead of fearing it, which led to some interesting storylines.
Jet is Ainsley Seiger's first television role but not her first acting role.
She is primarily a stage actress; her first role was in high school when she played Wednesday Addams in a student production.
Seiger was born and raised in Cary, North Carolina, and moved to New York after getting the part of Jet.
Related: Law & Order: Organized Crime Review: Jet Vs Bell
Fun fact: because of COVID, she submitted her audition online, and after being chosen, she had only two days to move to New York before shooting began.
Nobody else can play Jet the way she does, and we're so glad she made the move.
Kyle Vargas (Tate Ellington)
Unlike the rest of the Organized Crime team, Vargas is not a full-time member.
He is an independent contractor supposed to help install and run AI tech.
Stabler is not a fan, for the most part, and many of the team members are skeptical about the tech Vargas is an expert in.
Jet, however, admires the technology and appreciates Vargas' knowledge.
Vargas longs to be accepted by the team, and if Jet wasn't prone to splits for the sake of drama, a Jet/Vargas ship might be interesting.
One of Season 4's funniest moments occurred when Vargas had to pick up Randall Stabler (Breaking Bad's Dean Norris) from jail and brought a tiny little car that Randall would never fit into.
Actor Tate Ellington is best known in the TV world as Simon Asher on Quantico.
He has also appeared as a guest star on many police procedurals, including Law & Order: SVU, where he played a character named Colin Baker (not the 1980s Doctor Who actor).
He has had small parts in many movies and TV shows and is best known for his role in Remember Me, which also starred Robert Pattison.
Ellington has said he'd love to become a full-time member of the Law & Order: Organized Crime cast, so let's hope that happens!
Julian "Redcoat" Emery (Tom Payne)
Emery is the bad guy the Organized Crime team is currently after, and there's no way he won't be back for Season 5 after the Season 4 cliffhanger!
Related: Cliffhangers That Made Our Jaws Drop to The Floor
The team had been eager to catch Emery, who is the mastermind behind a major drug sale operation, and ordered the murder of new agent Sam Bashir when Bashir learned what he was up to.
They'd taken the risky step of putting Stabler's wayward brother, Joe Jr., on the inside to spy on Emery, only for Emery to feed Joe false information before fleeing the country with him.
The Organized Crime Unit will be eager to get Joe back, but Emery is a smart, shrewd opponent -- possibly the most intelligent since Richard Wheatley.
Tom Payne is a British actor best known for his role on The Walking Dead.
If you love British TV, you've probably recognized him from various British shows, most famously Waterloo Road.
On that series, he played a teenager, though he was 24 years old.
He also starred in Marple: They Do It With Mirrors and Wuthering Heights before his breakout role on Walking Dead and played a serial killer's son on Fox's Prodigal Son.
It isn't clear how many episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime he'll be in, as this case could go on for all of Season 5 or be wrapped up quickly so the team can move on to something else.
Bernadette Stabler (Ellen Burstyn)
Stabler's mother, referred to affectionately by fans as "Mama Stabler," is Stabler's mother.
Her moving mental health storyline began on Law & Order: SVU Season 10 Episode 3, when she visited to convince Kathleen to seek treatment for bipolar disorder.
She returned on Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, and it was soon revealed that she now has dementia in addition to bipolar disorder.
Mama Stabler has lived with Elliot for a while, but he doesn't have the time or patience to take care of her, and his brother Randall has taken charge of her care now that he's back.
She seemed pretty lucid during Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4, so hopefully, she'll stay that way.
Mama Stabler is played by the one and only Ellen Burstyn, a veteran actress with many Oscar nominations.
Her acting career began in 1957 on Broadway, and she immediately won a Tony Award, followed by an Oscar for Best Actress for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
Burstyn was nominated for another Oscar several times, and is perhaps best known for her role in 1973's The Exorcist (and the recent remake on Peacock included her too.)
Her career, longevity, and theatre background would make her a perfect guest star on Only Murders in the Building, but we are lucky to have her on Organized Crime!
Joseph "Joey" Stabler, Jr. (Michael Trotter)
Stabler's youngest brother is on a destructive path, and Stabler has been trying and failing to get him off it.
All the Stabler siblings grew into troubled adults of some sort because of living with Bernadette's bipolar disorder and her husband's violence, but Joey is the least well-adjusted.
He was dishonorably discharged from the Navy after being accused of stealing cultural artifacts, which he tried to keep secret from Stabler, and returned home with a heroin addiction.
Stabler went undercover at the Boone farm to find out who was selling heroin, in a case that hit close to home because of Joey, and later Joey insisted on going undercover himself to help nail Emery.
Right now, Emery and Joey are literally in the wind, having taken off by private plane after Emery fed Joey bad info to give the Organized Crime Unit to throw them off the trail.
It's unclear which side Joey is on and how much danger he's in.
Michael Trotter appeared on Law & Order: SVU Season 24 Episode 17 before he got the role of Joey on Organized Crime.
He played Grace Muncy's (Molly Burnett) brother, who might have been involved in something shady.
Related: Law & Order SVU Review: Lime Chaser
Behind the scenes, Trotter is married to Jamie Gray Hyder.
Hyder played Kat Tamin on SVU for two seasons.
He likely will be part of Organized Crime for a while since Joey is Stabler's brother, though Joey's behavior might land him in jail.
Randall Stabler (Dean Norris)
Randall Stabler was the other brother introduced during Season 4, prompting Bell to react with surprise when she heard Stabler was at the airport getting him.
Randall doesn't get along with Elliot Stabler very well. The brothers never got past their childhood sibling rivalry, and it's unsurprising because they came from an abusive home.
Related: Law & Order: Organized Crime Review: Stabler's Brother Lands In the Middle of a Huge Case
Randall recently revealed that he rescued Mama Stabler from their abusive father while Elliot had no clue what was going on, which led to an explosive argument.
Later, the brothers bonded while working together to save Joey, but Elliot's recent realization that his son Eli is closer to Randall than him might blow everything up again.
Dean Norris plays Randall. He is best known for his role on Breaking Bad as DEA agent Hank Schrader.
He also had a role in the Under the Dome miniseries penned by Stephen King.
His role in Breaking Bad is ironic since Randall struggled with how to help Joey and was quickly overpowered by him during an intervention in which Randall and Elliot held Joey prisoner to force him to get clean.
Norris will likely appear on several Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 episodes.
Randall's relationship with Elliot and his involvement in helping care for their mother mean he's not going anywhere anytime soon.
What Recurring Characters Might Join Law & Order: Organized Crime?
Stabler's kids will likely appear in one or more episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime.
His son Eli (Nicky Torchia) recently moved back home and revealed that his girlfriend is pregnant, so this will likely be a subplot in some episodes.
Stabler's older children appear infrequently, with Kathleen most likely to appear.
There will likely be various guest stars playing villains and other cops.
Over to you, Law & Order: Organized Crime fanatics. Who is your favorite character?
Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know!
Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 will stream on Peacock, most likely in the fall of 2024.