Friday, 09 May 2025

‘Law & Order’ Courts Controversy With Sympathetic Portrayal Of Luigi Mangione-Inspired Character

100 Percent Fed Up
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After allegedly gunning down a healthcare company CEO in broad daylight, Luigi Mangione became a folk hero of sorts to some Americans who apparently believe wealthy business executives deserve a violent death.

The narrative has sparked significant social debate and was clearly the inspiration for a recent episode of NBC’s long-running procedural drama series “Law & Order.”

From the name of the episode — “Folk Hero” — to the depiction of the crime itself, Breitbart explained that the storyline was essentially a retelling of the circumstances surrounding Brian Thompson’s death late last year:

The accused killer’s lawyer offers the novel defense that Weller’s crime is justified because he felt he was “saving lives” by killing the insurance company CEO.

“There is no question Ethan Weller shot and killed Logan Andrews,” the lawyer states. “But there’s a reason he did it, a legal reason. He was trying to save lives. Logan Andrews caused the death of thousands of innocent people. By denying their legitimate insurance claims. Thousands more were about to die, are about to die, because of Mr. Andrews’ callous disregard for human life. So Ethan Weller killed Logan Andrews before Mr. Andrews could kill again. And his actions are completely and unequivocally legal under the laws of New York.”

Later in the episode, several CEOs come together and point out that the judge who allowed the absurd defense of the killer has a history of donating to extreme left-wing causes and is attempting to paint all CEOs as mass murderers. Another of the CEOs is outraged, saying, “So now we’re all on trial for this?”

“Yeah, and for what? Because we had the audacity to make money for our shareholders? This judge and this defense lawyer are basically telling the world that it is okay to just hunt us down like–like we’re a bunch of pheasants,” a CEO in the meeting says.

The show ended on an activist note, as well. Instead of revealing a guilty verdict, the show ended with no verdict at all, leaving the audience the room to decide that murdering a CEO is justified simply because they are rich men who run big companies.

The episode also sparked some social media criticism after it aired last week:

The Daily Beast also covered some of the criticism, albeit from a notably different perspective:

“Law & Order finally dropped a Luigi Mangione episode, and it does not disappoint. He’s basically Jason Bourne. The whole city is complicit in thwarting the manhunt. Dan from Veep is SO mad that no one cares,” one viewer proclaimed on X, clearly happy with how it turned out.

Others, however, were less impressed, mainly because they believe the actor playing Ethan doesn’t come close to Mangione’s level of devastatingly good looks.

“This Law & Order episode is clearly based on Luigi. But this guy isn’t hot at all,” another person wrote.

To be fair, Mangione is so ridiculously handsome that a picture of him in loafers with no socks and his feet shackled caused the internet to implode in a collective thirst frenzy. So yeah, the bar is HIGH.

Meanwhile, many fans felt like it was a little too soon for a Mangione episode, especially considering how it could influence jurors’ impartiality in a future trial.

The recent episode was just the latest controversial take related to the ongoing story:

 

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport.

View the original article here.


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