Danny Pino's exit from Law & Order: SVU as Detective Nick Amaro in season 16 was heartbreaking for fans, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Pino is set to return in a new television show for CBS. Deadline reports that the actor will be playing the lead opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead in BrainDead. The show is being written by the genius duo -- Robert and Michelle King -- behind The Good Wife. Pino will play the part of Luke, Laurel's (Winstead) older brother and the Democratic Whip Senator from Maryland.

Here's a reminder about Pino's bittersweet exit from Law & Order: SVU. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Warren Leight spoke about Pino's departure and how tough it was to write him out of the NBC procedural.

"It's tricky. It was almost in the wind a year ago. Danny did four years here and seven before this on Cold Case. That's 11 years straight [years] of procedurals, and he lives in LA and has a home there so there was some question about whether he was going to stay last year. Then as the season went on, it became something of a questioning process and then [a] decision of: Where can this character go? Because we've put his character through the ringer and in some ways, he probably went through more changes in four years than the entire cast of Mad Men did in eight years.

I tried to be very careful about making sure when Cragen left and Munch left that there was a sense of closure, so that fans weren't left in the lurch, and Danny felt the same way. We weren't even sure until the last four or five episodes of the season that that's where we were going to go. These things are hard. No one likes separation. In his first episode, he almost put his life on the line to rescue Rollins when he thought she was in trouble. He has that gear that if a woman is in jeopardy, he will fly in front of a bullet to try and save her. That's something that's been in his DNA from early on. I wanted him to go out in character, doing something heroic, and I didn't want him to die. For a number of reasons, I didn't think that was necessary."

The fall finale episode for season 17 of Law & Order: SVU was air on Nov. 18.

Watch the preview:

Tags: Law And Order SVU nbc television Danny Pino