Spoilers forward for Episode 11 of Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26, known as “Deductible.”
Regulation & Order: SVU continued within the 2025 TV schedule with a case that was unhealthy sufficient to begin with one sufferer, solely to get even worse for Captain Benson and Co. once they found a string of girls who had been coerced into sexual favors within the office over a few years. Carisi wasn’t getting the proof he wanted to be 100% sure of a responsible verdict, main Benson to method the one lady whose testimony might put the unhealthy man behind bars. Within the course of, SVU known as again to Mariska Hargitay‘s character’s profession even earlier than the present began, and I need to know extra about these pre-Particular Victims days.
When Benson tried to attraction to Grace‘s conscience and get her to testify, Grace tried to argue that an NYPD cop might by no means perceive the company tradition that had led her to guard a rapist for therefore lengthy. That clearly did not work, prompting Benson to say:
Oh, I perceive what it means to be a lady in a male-dominated area. I have been with the NYPD for 30 years… I survived.
Fortuitously, Benson did efficiently speak Grace into testifying, serving to Carisi to earn one other win after just lately getting a much-needed wake-up name. However that is not the takeaway from the dialog or the episode as an entire that leaves me wanting extra from Olivia Benson’s backstory. Her point out of being with the NYPD for 30 years jogged my memory that despite the fact that SVU has been on for a whopping 26 seasons and (hopefully) counting, the character’s time as a cop goes again additional than we have seen.
In spite of everything, she was already a junior detective within the pilot of SVU again in 1999, and one does not change into a detective straight out of the academy. In reality, each Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Munch (the late Richard Belzer) had seniority on her. Even when Benson was simply rounding up or down in “Deductible,” there are years of her profession that have not been absolutely explored on display screen.
And I am prepared for SVU to revisit these years in some kind or different past what has occurred thus far. Within the scene from the newest episode, she even acknowledged to Grace that “issues have modified,” which simply makes me need to be taught extra of the established order Benson was working in earlier than the pilot. (You’ll find the pilot streaming with a Peacock subscription now.)
After all, anyone who has rewatched SVU‘s older episodes in recent times (like how I rewatched the pilot for its twenty fourth anniversary) is aware of that the present tackled sure topics in ways in which actually would not fly in 2025, starting from how the unit addressed subjects of gender and sexuality to police brutality. I might see Benson alluding to her earlier years in a dialog with Fin, since Ice-T did not be part of SVU till Season 2, or even when Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni ever share the display screen once more for Regulation & Order: Organized Crime crossover.
For now, SVU seems to be going about enterprise as standard forward of the subsequent episode on Thursday, February 13 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. Check out the promo:
Watch On
Will Regulation & Order: SVU go in-depth on Olivia Benson’s pre-Particular Victims years within the NYPD within the foreseeable future? Solely time will inform on that entrance, however at the very least the promo proves that followers can sit up for Regulation & Order‘s Tony Goldwyn crossing over and apparently sharing at the very least one scene with Mariska Hargitay and Peter Scanavino.