Corey Cott’s Detective Jake Griffin was front and center for this week’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Titled “Frequency,” the episode — which aired on Thursday, March 5 — had the squad attempting to solve a case with a surprising connection to Griff. The latest installment of SVU started with a family discovering a young boy in danger through their baby monitor.
“I love that it’s not a typical format,” Cott, 35, told Us Weekly exclusively of the new episode. “It’s really a one long chase episode, trying to get this guy. It’s good to shake things up sometimes and surprise the audience.”
While attempting to communicate with the victim so they could find his location, Griff realized that the young boy had similar mannerisms to his own late brother, who was autistic. (Griff reveals elsewhere in the episode that his brother died in a car accident.)
As the episode progresses, it’s hard to ignore the parallels to one of SVU’s most iconic episodes — season 7, episode 3, “911” — so much so that Mariska Hargitay’s Captain Olivia Benson brings that case up to Griff.
SVU’s Corey Cott Explains His ‘Natural Connection’ With Mariska Hargitay
Cott is, admittedly, new to the SVU universe, so he was not privy to the connection.
“I asked Mariska. I was like, ‘This is just a story you’re telling me?’ She goes, ‘No, this is real and guess what? I won an enemy for it,’” Cott recalled. One of the SVU producers eventually “explained the whole thing” to him. The episode is now on the top of Cott’s watchlist.
Aside from offering more insight into Griff’s backstory, Thursday’s SVU episode also allowed him and Benson to (finally) see eye-to-eye.
“I think we made a massive improvement in their trust and relationship,” Cott told Us. “I’m excited to see where it continues to flourish for the rest of the season.”
Cott made his SVU debut as Griff in October 2025 after previously appearing as a one-off character in a 2016 episode. It’s since been announced that the actor has been upped to a series regular. This means, fans will be getting more answers about his character — and it seems they’re coming sooner rather than later.
The end of Thursday’s episode featured Benson alluding to a choice that Griff might have to make — between her and Chief Kathryn Tynan (Noma Dumezweni), perhaps.
“There’s some information that we’re going to learn about Griff’s Dad, and there might be some more skeletons in the closet than we know about,” Cott teased to Us. “It’s gonna force Griff to have to make a decision between the squad and his loyalty to Tynan, his mentor. … I think it’s a very complicated place for him to be.”
New episodes of Law and Order: SVU premiere via NBC Thursdays at 9 p.m. and are available to stream the next day on Peacock.
