The 27th season premiere of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” started on a somber note: with a loss of one of their own.

The episode, which aired Thursday night, revealed that the unit’s beloved former captain, Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), has died.

The current captain of the team, Olivia Benson ( Mariska Hargitay), who started out over 25 years ago with the squad under Cragen, walks into a bar filled with current and former colleagues gathered to remember their former leader.

She’s greeted first by George Huang ( BD Wong ), a psychiatrist who previously assisted the group during the early years, and then embraced by Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), who was a detective alongside Benson during the show’s first season in 1999. It was also a romantic reunion of sorts since Benson an

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