Mariska Hargitay Is ‘Planning’ Benson and Stabler Reunion: ‘It’s Time’

By Emma Chance | TV | May 21, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | TV | May 21, 2024 |

While Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler has been spreading his wings at Law & Order: Organized Crime (now moving to Peacock for Season 5), Mariska Hargitay is plotting for him and Olivia Benson to be reunited in a crossover with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

“I’m actually planning on it,” she said. “I just told him the other day. We had a party the other night, we saw each other. It was heavenly. I met his showrunner. They want us together, and Chris and I were talking about it, and it’s time. It’s time now for us. This was a long time not being in each other’s universe. That’s why we did the calls and stuff like that.”

She’s referring to a scene in Season 25 when Benson calls Stabler to tell him she gave the compass necklace he’d gifted to her to a victim’s mother, whom she felt needed it more than her.

“I thought that was such an intimate scene and I wanted to get his blessing. That was why we wrote that scene,” she said. “It’s very much our relationship. It’s underneath. There’s so much that words don’t do. One of the things that Chris and I do that’s so beautiful is when we read a scene, we’re always like, ‘Too much, we don’t need that much.’ Because so much of our communication is here [motions to her eyes].”

That kind of communication almost led to a kiss in Season 24, but she says Dick Wolf didn’t want that.

“To be honest with you, Chris and I thought it should go one way and the powers that be didn’t, so it got changed at the last minute, that near kiss. Obviously, Dick [Wolf] gets the final say. It’s his show and he didn’t want that.”

But, she assures, “We want to hold the tension and do what’s right and truthful for both characters…I think that we’re sort of irrevocably locked.”