Even Mariska Hargitay still longs for Benson and Stabler. A clip of the Law & Order: SVU star reacting to Christopher Meloni’s final scenes has resurfaced on X (formerly Twitter), and it’s a great reminder of the chemistry those two had and still have to this day.
The clip is from a video released by Entertainment Weekly in February, and it features Hargitay and co-star Ice T reflecting on the show and watching a few old clips. They spend a fair amount of time on Meloni’s exit, which happened at the end of Season 12 in 2011. When his final episode was filmed, no one knew it would be his final episode, but his last scene hit hard. It featured him on the floor, cradling the child he was just forced to take down because she shot a gun in the precinct.
“I say thank God we didn’t know. Because we filmed it just like a regular episode,” Hargitay says in the video, after watching and admiring the scene. “Nobody knew that things would break down over the summer before we started the new season. Everything would have been very different had we known.”
Hargitay has a much larger reaction to a clip that didn’t feature Meloni at all. It was the Season 13 scene in which Captain Cragen (Dann Florek) tells Benson that Stabler has resigned from the force. Hargitay is visibly moved to tears as she watches, and has to take a deep breath before weighing in.
“I remember that,” she says, wiping tears away. “You know, it was so hard because that happened. It happened, so it was sad. It just brings me back.”
Meloni left the series after contract negotiations broke down, and he announced he was leaving in May 2011. He didn’t return to the Law & Order universe until Season 22 in an April 2021 episode titled “Return of the Prodigal Son.” In that episode, Stabler returned to New York briefly only for his wife to end up dead in a car bombing. From there, Stabler moved over to Law & Order: Organized Crime, which allowed him to avenge his wife’s death and begin a new phase of his life and career. It was a welcome return, but those Stabler-less years were felt hard by fans.
“It’s so sad when an actor leaves a show where their character is best friends with some other character that stays,” said the X user who inspired the clip resurfacing, “And their character ends up missing a lot of important moments in the other character’s life when you know they would never do that.”
Stabler definitely missed some important moments in Benson’s life, including the adoption of her son and her horrifying ordeal with a serial killer.
Benson and Stabler have now reconnected thanks to Organized Crime, and Hargitay revealed that at one point, they were supposed to get closer than ever before. A promo released in January 2023 teased a kiss between the two longtime friends, but when the episode aired, there was no kiss to be found.
“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,” Hargitay told Variety in May. “Obviously [creator Dick Wolf] gets final say. It’s his show and he didn’t want that.”
“We want to hold the tension,” she continued. “And do what’s right and truthful for both characters.”
Law & Order: SVU is heading into its 26th season on October 3, while Organized Crime is on Season 5, but for the first time, the two shows won’t be airing together. SVU will remain on NBC, but Organized Crime is moving to Peacock. While that makes crossovers more complicated, NBC plans to continue making them.
“We know that when we do something, specifically with [Organized Crime] and SVU, it’s bold,” said NBC Universal Television president Erin Underhill at ATX. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of preparation, a lot of money, but it is something that delivers every time. So we do plan to do more of that.”
