Stephanie March reprises her role as Alexandra Cabot who was a main character on SVU from seasons 2-4 and has been a recurring character ever since, she returned as a main character in seasons 10, 11 & 13, to stack up over 90 appearances throughout the series. Her last appearance before this episode was in season 13's Learning Curve (2012).
This is the fifth time in the series that the former ADA and the current ADA appear in the same episode, in this case Alexandra Cabot and Peter Stone. The first was in season six's Ghost (2005) with Cabot and Casey Novak, the second was in season ten's Lead (2009) with Cabot and Kim Greylek, the third was in season eleven's Turmoil (2009) with Cabot and Sonia Paxton and the fourth was in The Undiscovered Country (2018) with Rafael Barba and Peter Stone.
The episode Desperate (2003) also deals with a battered wife, Kim Hoffman, who stages her disappearance with the help of a rescue group. Coincidentally, Cabot was the one who prosecuted the case.
"Sunk cost fallacy" is a financial term for dropping an unlikely or lost investment in order to walk away with the already-obtained profits.