Law & Order: SVU didn't hold back from delivering very personal drama early in the 2025 TV schedule, with the winter premiere picking up where the devastating fall finale left off on a traumatized ADA Carisi. He was back at work in the first episode of the new year, called "First Light," but off his game as he flashed back to his experience in the deli. It was clear why Peter Scanavino previously told CinemaBlend that his character needed some "tough love," which he ultimately got from Captain Benson. Following the episode, Scanavino opened up about Carisi's "wake-up call" and filming the emotional climax with Mariska Hargitay.
Carisi fumbled his first case of the new year, to the point that it was painfully possible that a rape victim wouldn't get justice, and that weight certainly wasn't lost on him when he got a phone call from DA Baxter, played on Law & Order by Tony Goldwyn. He finally got candid with Benson in an emotional scene in which they were alone in the courtroom, admitting that he couldn't "even smile while my kids are opening their Christmas presents" and "Maybe I don't have any feelings left," meaning that he didn't have the passion he needed to win a case.
He also admitted that he was angry, which Benson pointed out – not insensitively – was a feeling. She reminded him of all the work that he'd put in to get from being a detective to a prosecutor, and finally held his hand and say that she wants him to "wake up" and "come back." It was a relatively quick but powerful scene, and the conversation was what Carisi needed. Although he couldn't undo his earlier blunders in the courtroom, he did get the leverage he needed for a plea deal to give the victim some justice. (You can find the episode streaming with a Peacock subscription now.)
So, when I spoke with Peter Scanavino about the second big Carisi episode of Season 26, I asked for his thoughts on why Benson was the right person to get Carisi to wake up. After all, the winter premiere also featured Kelli Giddish as Amanda Rollins, Carisi's wife. Scanavino shared:
Because they have that relationship that's been built for so many years, and if somebody can speak very plainly and honestly with you, you have to trust that that person cares about you, or you're not going to hear it. That's built in with him and Benson. He knows that she cares about him and respects him and is not trying to pressure him and takes him seriously. So when she says 'You need to wake up,' he can hear that. If it had been somebody else, he would have just shut it down, as part of the noise. But from her, he's able to hear those words because they have this mutually respectful relationship that goes back more than a decade now.
The conversation certainly worked; not only did Carisi's plea deal guarantee 25 years behind bars for the husband who had arranged for the assault of his wife, but he also cracked a smile when the episode ended on him having dinner with Rollins and their three kids. It wasn't quite the SVU version of a therapy session that did the trick, though, as Scanavino went on:
Like she says, more of a wake up call, and also just the realities of the situation, that if you don't snap out of it, there's repercussions for this victim. You can't prosecute this case and be like you are. I think that's part of it too.
It was also meaningful that the scene took place between Mariska Hargitay and Peter Scanavino, and not just because Hargitay is easily the Law & Order actor who has been in the most episodes of the franchise. Benson and Carisi have a long history together, and according to Peter Scanavino, his co-star guided a lot of their emotional scene in the winter premiere. He said:
They say action, and then in every episode, you can tell that there's some scenes that are going to be pivotal for your character, and that was clearly one of them. [I was] not quite sure how I wanted to play it. Am I going to be annoyed? But then it's just nice to have somebody like Mariska, who I love so much and is such a good actor that I could just play off her. She dictated a lot of how that scene went. I was just kind of playing off her, and I knew where I was coming from. It just evolved organically, and there were some nice surprises when we did it.
While it remains to be seen if "First Light" truly was the end of this storyline for Carisi or the trauma of the deli hostage situation will resurface again, it seems that he's back to his old self for the time being. After finally smiling with his family at the end of the winter premiere, all seems fine with him in the next episode... or as fine as anybody ever is on Law & Order: SVU! Check out the promo for the next episode below:
Tune in to NBC on Thursday, January 23 at 9 p.m. ET for the next episode of Law & Order: SVU Season 26, called "Master Key." As always in the 2024-2025 TV season, SVU airs between Law & Order Season 24 at 8 p.m. ET and Found Season 2 at 10 p.m. ET. As for whether anybody from SVU will cross over with anybody from Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5... well, we're still waiting on a premiere date for when Christopher Meloni's show will arrive on Peacock as a streaming original.
You can also find the last two big Carisi episodes of SVU streaming on Peacock now, and I for one consider them to be two of the best episodes of Season 26 so far as well as two of Scanavino's best from his long run as the detective-turned-ADA.
