Mehcad Brooks Leaving Ahead of Season 25

Law & Order is once again losing a detective.

Mehcad Brooks, who has played Detective Jalen Shaw since Season 22, having been introduced in the premiere, will not be returning, Deadline reports. The finale in the spring didn’t even hint at his exit, so the Season 25 premiere will have to explain what happened, likely in a conversation between his now former partner, Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), and the new detective or Lieutenant Jessica Brady (Maura Tierney).

The outlet reports that everyone else will be returning for Law & Order Season 25: Maura Tierney as Lieutenant Jessica Brady, Reid Scott as Detective Vincent Riley, Hugh Dancy as A.D.A. Nolan Price, Odelya Halevi as A.D.A. Samantha Maroun, and Tony Goldwyn as District Attorney Nicholas Baxter. Goldwin and Scott’s contracts had previously only taken them through Season 24.

Brooks’s Shaw won’t be the first character whose onscreen absence will have to be explained via a conversation between the others. Anthony Anderson reprised his role as Detective Kevin Bernard when Law & Order returned for Season 21 in 2022, after over 10 years off-air. He left after one season, and Brooks joined Jeffrey Donovan (Frank Cosgrove). Donovan then exited after Season 22, and it wasn’t until the Season 23 premiere that we learned how Cosgrove was written out. “Great cop, just got jammed up,” Shaw told his new partner, Reid Scott’s Vincent Riley. On? “Being too honest about things people aren’t too honest about these days.”

We knew that Camryn Manheim‘s final episode as Lieutenant Kate Dixon would be the Season 23 finale, but it wasn’t until the Season 24 premiere, in a conversation between Shaw and Riley, that we learned how she was written out (Tierney came in then as the new lieutenant). She joined her son in Miami.

How do you think Mehcad Brooks’ Jalen Shaw will be written out? What are you hoping to see from Riley’s new partner? Let us know in the comments section below.

Law & Order, Season 25, Fall 2025, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC