A Fairy Tale Themed "Law & Order SVU" Episode Fails to Deliver an Epic Villainess

[CEDAvsFan]

I was catching up on SVU, and one of the two episodes I watched was "Children of Wolves," the ninth episode of the current 25th season. The episode had a bit of a fairy tale theme, and Olivia Benson set the tone in the opening by reading Little Red Riding Hood to Noah. Sure enough, we do see a modern Red Riding Hood in the form of Renee Curry, who was our walking at night with her BFF, Sydney Lynch. Unfortunately, the girls are abducted and attacked by a trio of proverbial wolves, and regarding Renee, she's hospitalized and sadly taken off life support, while Sydney remained captive but was successfully rescued.

The episode featured an interesting character in the form of Denise Lynch, who was introduced as Sydney's stepmother. Soon as I heard that word, I beamed. "I'll bet she's behind it," I thought. You see a lot of evil stepmothers in episodes like this, plus, this episode had the fairy tale feel? Yeah, I paid a lot of attention to Denise. Sadly, Denise wasn't evil. They truly blew it. This episode had a fairy tale theme, yet the stepmother wasn't evil? Come on man. Denise Lynch was played by Kerry Butler, who also played one of my favorite Blue Bloods villainesses:  divorced mother turned terrorist Mary Joe Clarkson.

I was really hoping for some twist where it comes out that the boys abducted Sydney under Denise's orders. Maybe she would have been jealous of her stepdaughter, maybe she would have just been evil enough to have her harmed and abducted. Either way, while the episode was amazing, the ball was definitely dropped when it came to creating a potentially epic villainess.