Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fans have seen the last of Capt. Donald Cragen. The Season 27 premiere of the long-running NBC series revealed that the fan-favorite character, who has been with the Law & Order franchise since the very beginning, has passed away.

In the SVU Season 27 premiere, “In the Wind,” Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson attends the memorial service for Capt. Donald Cragen, with the character remembering her former captain as “the best boss that I ever had. Everything I know about being a captain, I learned from him.” Portrayed by Dann Florek, Donald Cragen is one of the few Law & Order characters to have been a main part of more than one installment, having started as a series regular on the original show before being written off at the end of the third season. Six years later, the character was brought back for SVU, with Florek appearing as a series regular on the spinoff for its first 15 seasons.

While episodes centered around an older character’s death, especially one who hasn’t been a regular on the show for over a decade, are typically done to reflect the passing of the actor in real life, Florek is still alive, having celebrated his 75th birthday this past May. In fact, he reprised his role of Donald Cragen just last year for a two-episode arc in the spinoff Organized Crime, which is centered around Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler, who made a guest appearance in the Season 27 premiere. Other former cast members who returned for the memorial were Dean Winters as Brian Cassidy and BD Wong as George Huang.

Law & Order: SVU Enters Its 27th Season

With its Season 27 premiere, SVU cements itself as the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television, a record it has held onto since 2019. SVU has changed quite a bit since it first premiered back in 1999, having undergone multiple showrunner changes and cast member departures. This has continued into Season 27, which made SVU history for being the first season run by a female, Michele Fazekas. Season 27 also featured a noticeable cast shakeup, with Juliana Martinez and Octavio Pisano departing as detectives Kate Silva and Joe Velasco. In their place, Aimé Donna Kelly, who plays Captain Renee Curry, and Kelli Giddish, who plays fan favorite Sergeant Amanda Rollins, were promoted to series regulars.SVU has been on the air for almost 30 years, a remarkable achievement that Hargitay does not take for granted. At the recent NBC Preview Event, the actor touched on why she believed audiences have continued to tune in each week for SVU, explaining that “part of the story, because we’ve been together for so long, is really built on history, and the love and the pain that comes from building these relationships and then losing some of these relationships. So we start off there with some high stakes at a very painful loss.” At the time, fans did not know that she was likely referring to the death of Capt. Donald Cragen.