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Ryan Eggold’s Law & Order Character Forces Detective Riley To Make Heartbreaking Decision
Things didn't go as planned when Det. Vincent Riley offered his troubled brother, played by Ryan Eggold, a shot at fixing a mistake on Law & Order.
Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) may have spent his career upholding the law — but his brother proved that he has no qualms about breaking it.
In the Season 24 "Big Brother" episode of Law & Order, Riley was forced to make a heartbreaking decision to bring his brother Matt in to the precinct after his troubled sibling threw away his shot to get out of some criminal charges, opting instead to be loyal to a friend accused of murder.
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It was the first time Law & Order fans got to meet Matt Riley.
Ryan Eggold of New Amsterdam — who is Scott’s close friend in real life — played the conflicted sibling, caught between his law-abiding brother and a pal on the wrong side of the law.
“It really lets us in to who (Vincent) Riley is and the kind of man he is at the end of the day, what he really stands for,” Scott told NBC Insider of the emotional episode.
Who is Matt Riley, Det. Vincent Riley’s brother?
Fans first met Matt after Vincent was called away from the high-profile murder scene of a college basketball coach by a detective in a neighboring squad, who had just arrested his brother.
Vincent learned that his brother had been caught trying to sell the undercover detectives two guns on the street.
Matt tried to insist from his holding cell that he had been set up, before finally offering a more likely explanation. “Come on, man, I didn’t have a choice,” Matt told Vincent. “I needed the money.”
“You didn’t have a choice, but to sell guns? Is that what you’re saying to me?” a visibly frustrated Vincent shot back before leaving Matt in the cell so he could hash it out with the detectives.
Although Vincent was still fuming, he still had empathy for his brother and did his best to try to help him out of the mess. The detective in charge was sympathetic to his plight, but also acknowledged that the serious nature of the charges made it “hard to make a case like this disappear.”
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So, Vincent came up with another option: he suggested that Matt, whom he said ran with a “colorful crowd” full of “some real criminals,” work off the charges by becoming an informant to help police with other cases.
How Det. Riley’s brother got involved in a murder case
With the mess seemingly handled for the moment, Vincent turned his attention back to the murder case, but not before opening up to his partner Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks) about his complicated relationship with his brother.
Although Shaw tried to remind him that he was “not your brother’s keeper,” Vincent explained that he still felt a need to protect Matt because he was a “good guy, sometimes.”
“95% of the time, he’s alright,” he told Shaw. “You know, like when our dad got sick, he stepped up. He took care of him, no questions asked. He wasn't looking for a medal. He just did it. It’s the other 5 percent with Matt and he just has a way of finding trouble, man. He just digs himself into hole after hole and I’m always the one that has to dig him out.”
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That sentiment proved true once again later that day after Matt became embroiled in their murder investigation.The detectives discovered surveillance footage that showed Matt leaving a bar with the victim just minutes before the popular coach was killed.
After tracking Matt down, he told the detectives that just before he parted ways with the coach, he spotted the bar’s owner Jack Costa, a seasoned criminal with prior charges of racketeering and gambling, standing outside, smoking a cigarette and seemingly waiting for the coach.
Believing they now had the perfect way to ensnare their killer and get Matt out of his own legal trouble, Vincent and Shaw recruited Matt to wear a wire to try to get a confession from Costa, a man he had been friends with for years.
The sting operation was going well, until the feed from the button camera on Matt’s shirt cut out just as Costa appeared to be about to confess. Matt first tried to claim that the camera “fell off” before confessing his own role in the botched mission.
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“What happened was I realized I’m not a snitch,” he admitted to Vincent and Shaw. “Alright, look, I’m not ratting out a friend of mine, a friend who’s been good to me, who’s lent me money, who's helped me find jobs, unlike some people by the way.”
Even after Vincent told him that he had “put my name on the line for you,” Matt refused to give any more information up in a tense scene between the two brothers that nearly came to blows.
Tensions rose between Det. Riley and Lt. Brady
That wasn’t the end of Vincent’s troubles. Back at the precinct, the detective found himself in hot water with his new boss, Lt. Jessica Brady (Maura Tierney), who asked, "What does that mean, his wire malfunctioned?"
Vincent responded that his brother “got nervous," then said they still got some useful information out of the undercover mission before the camera cut out, because Costa told Matt that one of the basketball coach's former players owed him some money.
But Brady continued pressing. "I'm still trying to understand what happened with your brother's wire," she said. "... I know what you said, but now I want to know what happened."
Vincent said that the button camera fell off and Matt stepped on it.
"To protect himself?" Brady asked.
"That's what he said," Vincent responded.
“And do you believe him?” she asked.
“No,” Riley finally admitted.
“Ok, well, next time, lead with the truth and then we’ll get along better,” his boss said.
Detective Shaw wasn't happy with how Riley handled Matt
Shaw also made it clear repeatedly throughout the episode that he didn’t agree with Vincent’s continued attempts to try to dismiss his brother’s bad behavior, and urged his partner to stay focused on his own reputation.
According to Scott, the friction between the partners who “clearly work really well together” in most settings may carry over to other episodes.
“They see things differently from time to time, but they also really respect one another and really count on one another," Scott told NBC Insider. "But there are moments, just like in the real relationships with detectives, where they are going to come down on very different sides on these issues."
“It’s hard not to, then, imbue future situations with what you know about this person from the past,” he continued. “I think our writers do a really great job of trying to carry those threads throughout so that you really do feel that these aren’t cardboard cutouts of cops, but these are real guys that sort of take each case with them into the next week.”
Even without Matt’s help, Costa was eventually arrested and charged with second-degree murder. But the prosecution’s case began to fall apart during the trial because they couldn’t provide jurors with a solid motive for the killing.
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In one final attempt, Vincent visited his brother and urged him to testify about what he knew, telling him it was the “only way” for Matt to get out of the gun charges against him.
“Let me tell you something, this is not some (Martin) Scorsese movie, where you and your friends kick it around the neighborhood, spouting off all this tough guy talk, with no consequences,” Vincent told him. “This is real and you need to look out for yourself right now, you understand me? Not some punk named Costa, who doesn’t care about you. This is the moment man. This is your moment and this is your last chance.”
The tough love seemed to work and Matt agreed to testify against Costa, explaining to Executive Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) that one of the coach’s former players owed Costa a $75,000 gambling debt. The coach agreed to pay it off, but when they met, Costa demanded more money from the wealthy coach. When the coach resisted, Costa killed him.
It was the exact testimony Price needed to tie his case together, but on the stand, Matt suddenly reversed course and refused to testify against his friend, claiming he didn’t know anything about the murder as a furious Vincent sat fuming in the courtroom. Prosecutors still got their conviction, but the stunt may have caused irreparable damage between the brothers.
What happened to Det. Riley’s brother Matt?
In the heartbreaking final scene of Season 24's "Big Brother" episode, Vincent arrived at his brother Matt’s home to bring him into custody on the gun charges.
An astonished Matt told his brother that he thought he was going to “make a call and make it go away,” but Vincent explained that he’d changed his mind.
“Look Vin, I’m sorry, alright, but you gotta help me out, you gotta give me another chance here. I’ll come through,” Matt begged.
“I can’t do it anymore, man,” a resigned Vincent told him, before leading him off to the car.
The emotional episode pitted Det. Riley’s commitment to the law against his loyalty to his brother and put him at odds with Shaw and Brady.
His tension with Brady only added to the already rocky start with his new boss, but Scott doesn’t believe that friction will last.
“I think they’re both consummate professionals and in their own ways, they’re both kind of hard asses,” he told NBC Insider. “So, it stands to reason that there was going to be a little bit of friction up front.”
Over time, however, he said both “prove to each other that they are worth each other’s while.”
“I think Riley really proves to Brady that at the end of the day, he’s a good cop and he’s someone that you can rely on. He’s a detective first-grade for a reason. He’s a man of honor, he’s gonna get it done and he cares and he really feels that he is a sentinel for justice,” Scott said.
At the same time, Vincent realizes that although Brady might have a different approach to running a precinct than her predecessor Lt. Kate Dixon (Camryn Manheim), she is an “absolutely formidable” investigator, according to Scott.
“You know, Maura, who we love, we like to tease that she’s small but mighty and she brings that to Brady every single day and in every case,” Scott said. “The choices that she makes with this character are just so interesting and so layered. You get to see Brady just pick apart suspects in interrogation rooms, and I think Riley specifically has just nothing but the highest respect for her when he sees that she’s kind of an investigative genius in a way.”
It's unclear whether Matt will be seen on Law & Order again in Season 24, but if Scott has anything to do with it, it won’t be the last time we see the troubled sibling.
“There’s already been talk, even if it’s just sort of wishful thinking, that we want to see more between these two brothers and see what other layers we can pull back,” Scott told NBC Insider.
Scott also hopes the show's writers will reveal more about the detective’s current personal life.
“We’ve established that he’s a father, he’s separated from his wife, so I think there’s a lot to explore there too,” he said.
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A theme on this season of Law & Order — according to both Scott and showrunner Rick Eid — will be to dive deeper into the personal lives of the detectives who investigate crimes and the prosecutors who bring the criminals to justice.
“We’re going to get to know our team in a way that’s never been done before on Law & Order and the intention of that is to really draw the audience in even further,” Scott told NBC Insider. “For 24 Seasons, the audience has loved these cases, how they’re written from the headlines. They hit hard, they challenge the audience, they foster social conversations. But now it’s like, well, what would happen if you added a further element of really caring about the people who are investigating these crimes? If you are caring about the people who are trying these cases, if you know what’s at stake personally for these characters in these situations, that is just going to heighten the stakes and make all of the tension and all of the drama hit even harder.”
To catch all of the latest Season 24 developments, watch Law & Order Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on NBC or stream episodes the next day on Peacock.
