WARNING: The following contains spoilers for this week’s episode of Law & Order, “The Right Thing,” which debuted Thursday, Feb. 24, on NBC.
Law & Order fans were pleasantly shocked when Thursday’s Season 21 premiere featured the return of Carey Lowell as Jamie Ross. In “The Right Thing,” Ross was seen on video confronting rapist Henry King. New Assistant District Attorney Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) later discovered that the defendant she and her boss Nolan Price (former Hannibal star Hugh Dancy) were prosecuting had met with Ross before the murder. But longtime viewers probably noticed a big red flag: Ross was referred to as an ADA — which she hasn’t been since 1998.
Ross joined Law & Order in Season 7 as Jack McCoy’s (Sam Waterston) second ADA. She had a relatively short tenure, though, lasting just two seasons before Lowell opted to exit the show to spend more time with her daughter. The series handled her departure in the same way, having Ross quit the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to get remarried and focus on her own family. So how exactly did Jamie Ross end up back in the same job she quit 24 years ago?
“The Right Thing” featured an important scene between Ross and Price, who tracked her down at a restaurant and interrupted her date because he believed the defendant must have told Ross that she was going to murder King, whose rape conviction had been vacated by an appellate court. Ross refused to tell Price anything and later invoked the Fifth Amendment when he called her as a witness anyway. When the verdict was read, she was seen sitting grimly on the defendant’s side of the courtroom.
It was fantastic to see Lowell on Law & Order again; she made several guest appearances after leaving the show. The problem is that almost all of them have featured Jamie Ross in a new job. She appeared in Season 10, Episode 5, “Justice,” which revealed she’d gone back to her prior job as a defense attorney when she opposed McCoy in court; the two also went head-to-head in Season 11, Episode 22, “School Daze.” That was no surprise; Ross’s predecessor Paul Robinette returned as a defense lawyer, too.
But in 2005, the Law & Order spinoff Trial By Jury — which starred Kirk Acevedo from FOX’s sci-fi hit Fringe and had a recurring part for Jessica Chastain before she turned down a role in the MCU — established that Ross had become a trial judge. That gave Ross the most convoluted career trajectory of any franchise character: she’d gone from defense attorney, to ADA, to defense attorney again, to judge… and now back to ADA in Law & Order Season 21.
How did Jamie Ross return to the D.A.’s Office, and why did she decide to come back? “The Right Thing” offered no details, in keeping with Law & Order‘s tendency to reveal little about characters’ lives. The simplest explanation is that she resigned as a judge and her former boss McCoy offered her a job as a prosecutor again; Maroun says that the meeting happened in “our office,” suggesting Ross is employed in Manhattan. If Ross had been impeached while a judge that would’ve made it hard for her to get hired as a lawyer, and she and McCoy parted on good terms. Plus, audiences know from Price’s dialogue with Jack earlier in the episode that Jack was hand-picking at least some people to join his team.
But that theory isn’t flawless, because Ross’s job is super-vague. She’s referred to as “ADA Jamie Ross” throughout the episode, even on one of the on-screen title cards. But she has her own office when the cops interview her and ADAs usually don’t have offices; plus, she should be an EADA after this many years. The only reason she’d still be a junior is if she resigned to avoid being impeached and McCoy felt he couldn’t put her in a higher position because of whatever happened when she was a judge. Instead, he quietly hired her at a lower rank with the idea that she could earn her way back up the ladder.
That would add a great layer to the beat in “The Right Thing” in which Ross and McCoy shared a tension-filled look after she stepped down from the stand, suggesting that she might not have her job much longer. If he gave her a lifeline only for her to undermine his team, that’d be a bittersweet story. It’d also be a reason for Law & Order to bring Ross back again later in the season — to settle their bad blood in a Cobra Kai-type rivalry.
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