‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 15 spoilers: More on Alana de la Garza’a appearance

While Wednesday night’s new “Law & Order: SVU” episode is going to be about the emotional return of William Lewis to the show, there is still plenty of storytelling to come after that. Specifically, we are talking here about what is going to happen later on this season when an old face in Connie Rubirosa turns back up on the scene. A lot has changed for Alana de la Garza’s character since he last appeared on the show, and one of the interesting parts of this episode is going to be finding out how this character has evolved, and what her interactions with the team moving forward are going to be.

Before we do anything else, let’s get the basic details out of the way. This episode airs on January 22, and the title of it is “Jersey Breakdown.” (As you would expect, we’re not talking about those horrible jerseys that basketball players wore on Christmas Day last year.) Instead, the synopsis below teases that there is an enormous trafficking case that the SVU is going to get involved in that requires some of the power that Rubirosa has at her disposal in New Jersey:

“The SVU teams up with federal prosecutor Connie Rubirosa (de la Garza) after an underage runaway is found raped and beaten under the Highline. The sex trafficking investigation leads to New Jersey strip club owner Perry Cannavaro (guest star Chaz Palminteri), who does all he can to keep the victim out of the SVU’s jurisdiction. When ADA Barba (Raúl Esparza) fails to get the help he needs from Jersey law enforcement, he suspects a cover-up involving some high ranking court officials.”

In other words, this is going to be a heck of a complicated episode, and one that could bring forward all sorts of corruption talk and really taking out a whole mess of bad guys. Translation? This should be right in this series’ wheelhouse.

Photo: NBC