'Law and Order: SVU' Season 22: Will Melinda Warner's ‘hate’ for cold stop her from investigating body in freezer?
America’s longest-running crime drama 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' is back again to investigate heinous sexual crimes. While the show has given us some brave New York Police Department detectives, it has also given us some fan-favorite guest characters. Of them the astute and competent medical examiner Dr Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie) who is back in Episode 3.
Showrunner Warren Leight introducing Tunie's track said, “Also thrilled to welcome back Tamara Tunie to our third episode, ‘Remember Me in Quarantine,’ a story of four college students quarantined in an apartment, whose lives are forever changed by the pandemic." Leight said Tunie will reprise her role as the medical examiner that she has played in past episodes. She will feature in Episode 3 titled ‘Remember Me in Quarantine’.
The promo of the show hints that a brutal murder has taken place which is related to a sexual crime. The promo opens showing a person telling Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) “This year, people have lost their minds.” As the promo moves further it shows a newsreader saying how a gory crime case has “captivated the world” as a background noise drops words like “wild sex torture” unearthing what the episode will be around.
In another scene, a man can be heard referring to a girl saying, “She kept bringing random guys home”. The end of the promo shows detective Ice-T revealing to our shock that a victim of abuse was alive when she was put in a deep freezer. This adds another level of brutality to the gruesome murder at hand.
However, one may ask where does Melinda fit in all this?
As per Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Warner hates cold weather and always sends her assistants to crime scenes on cold days as reported by Fandom. With the murdered girl landing up in a freezer, will Melinda be able to steer clear of the cold in this case?
Warner’s past appearances
For the unversed, medical examiner, Melinda Warner had been admired by fans as she has assisted in the resolution of some of the most tangled cases the show has dealt with. She shares a bonhomie with NYPD elite squad especially with Benson and Sergeant Fin Tutuola (Ice-T), as she has worked with them in the past too.
Her past appearances as a recurring character on SVU began with Season 2 and later being a regular cast member through Season 12 have immensely helped the NYPD team in their investigations. Warner featured from Seasons 13 to 17 and came back for an episode in Season 19. Her last appearance was in Season 21 Episode 6, ‘Murdered at a Bad Address’. The episode showed a psychiatric doctoral student who is stabbed and Warner helping solve the controversial case. In Season 8, Episode 14 Dr Warner’s job played such a pivotal role that detective Elliot Stabler’s career depended on her ruling. In Season 9, Episode 5 that sheds light on military-sanctioned torture, Dr Warner vouches for a justice rendering opinion and even saves a life in the courtroom. Season 10, Episode 5 saw Dr Warner at her peak as she outwits an obnoxious defense attorney and even calls an AIDS denialist as a “false prophet”. Like this, the daunting woman has made her presence felt in subsequent episodes too. It will be worth a watch, how she makes a key addition to the team of investigators this season.
'Law & Order: SVU' returns to NBC on Thursday, December 3, at 9/8c.