Not that spending a whopping 22 seasons on the air is anything to sneeze at, but by far the biggest thing for Law & Order: SVU fans to celebrate as of late is the impending reunion between Mariska Hargitay's Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler for the big Law & Order: Organized Crime series premiere crossover event. (Presumably with an apology scene involved.) The big day is coming very soon – Thursday, April 1, to be exact – and SVU showrunner Warren Leight is already hyping fans up for more Benson and Stabler team-ups down the road.
That's right, as excited as we definitely are to see how Law & Order: Organized Crime's crossover with SVU will jump-start Stabler's story anew, we can already take comfort in knowing the April 1 primetime event won't be the only time this season that Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay will share scenes together. Here's what Warren Leight shared recently on Twitter:
Considering Law & Order: Organized Crime is debuting in just over a week, it would have already been safe to assume that the SVU showrunner couldn't have been talking about filming scenes for either that SVU episode or that corresponding Organized Crime installment. But thankfully, Leight's followers inspired him to clarify the matter by asking if they were scenes for future episodes, and here's how he responded on Twitter:
Yesterday's scenes were for an SVU down the road.
So boom, there you have it. Law & Order: SVU's powers that be are extremely aware of the advantage they have with Christopher Meloni back in the saddle as Elliot Stabler, both from a storytelling perspective and from a fan-attracting perspective. As such, it only makes sense to keep the crossover elements alive while they're able to happen. After all, there's always the chance that Law & Order: SVU and/or Organized Crime will face cancellation news later this year, so it's definitely smarter to bring Benson and Stabler together as many times as possible while the iron is available for striking. (Not that cancellation news is likely, especially with rumors about another spinoff being in development, but still.)
So at this point, we know that Law & Order: SVU is setting up to give fans the cherished Benson and Stabler connection for at least one more episode after the April 1 crossover, but when will it fall in the O.G. spinoff's twenty-second season? It'll probably be a Sweeps Week move, though it's hard to tell what Sweeps Week even is anymore during pandemic times. While waiting to hear more updates, we'll be sitting back and hoping that Mariska Hargitay is allowed to make a similar jump over to Organized Crime once or twice more during that show's 13-episode debut season. Hell, if Hargitay and Meloni wanted to bring their characters together for a musical spinoff, that'd be fine, too.
The wait to learn what happened to Elliot Stabler's family will soon be over, as Law & Order: Organized Crime is set to debut on NBC on Thursday, April 1, following an all-new, all-crossover episode of SVU.
