The streets of New York are safe once again. After 10 long years, detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler finally reunited Thursday night on NBC’s crossover event for Law & Order: SVU and the new spin-off starring Christopher Meloni, Law & Order: Organized Crime. The fictional cop duo, iconically played by Mariska Hargitay and Meloni, fought sexually based offenses and especially heinous crimes together on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for 12 gritty seasons between 1999 and 2011.
Ahead of the season 13 premiere, NBC was unable to reach an agreement with Meloni regarding his contract—and thus Detective Elliot Stabler abruptly retired from the force, off-camera. Hargitay has dutifully served as SVU’s solo star ever since, helping the series reach 22 seasons and along the way become the longest-running U.S. live-action series in the history of prime-time television.
But now the prodigal detective has returned. To mark Stabler’s reentry into the Law & Order universe, executive producer Dick Wolf rolled out the red carpet, with a special crossover event between Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime. In classic Law & Order fashion, it began with tragedy. On Thursday night’s episode of SVU, Benson sees Stabler’s wife, Kathy (Isabel Gillies), rolled into a hospital, the victim of a car bombing targeting Stabler. Stabler, who’s been working overseas as an international liaison handling terrorism, sex trafficking, and, yes, organized crime, had returned to New York with his wife to testify in a case. Unfortunately, Kathy does not survive her injuries, dying in the hospital of a ruptured spleen.
Kathy’s untimely demise thrusts Stabler and Benson back into each other’s orbit for the first time in a decade. During the crossover it’s revealed that the onetime will-they-won’t-they partners haven’t spoken in the 10 years since Stabler abandoned Benson without saying goodbye.
“Are you sorry for leaving, or are you sorry for walking—for not giving me the courtesy of telling me?” Benson asks at one point. “You were the single most important person in my life, and you just…disappeared.”
“I know,” Stabler responds. “I was afraid if I heard your voice, I wouldn’t have been able to leave.”
And so instead of returning to Rome, Stabler decides to stay in New York City to avenge his wife and track down the organized crime ring he believes is responsible. The series—which has had its share of behind-the-scenes drama, firing writer Craig Gore after he threatened on Facebook to physically harm looters this past summer—also stars Dylan McDermott as Richard Wheatley, the suave son of a notorious mob boss who’s involved with a COVID-19-inspired fake-PPE-selling subplot and serves as Meloni’s main antagonist. As of now, Hargitay is set to appear in at least one more episode of the series.
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