Three years ago, in Law & Order: SVU Season 24, fans were convinced that an episode would feature former partners Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), at the time on his own spinoff, Organized Crime (since canceled), kissing. The promos were all about it. Then when the episode aired, it didn’t happen, with Benson being the one to pull back.
It’s a moment that remains in the news now, with Hargitay addressing it — and the fact that she and Meloni did film a kiss — in two recent interviews.
“It was years ago,” she said to People in May. “We had that kind of near kiss, and so we did a take the way it was scripted and then we thought about it for so long, and we just felt like, after all these years, there was just so much between us that it was a moment that happened. But Dick [Wolf] didn’t think so, so he cut it. So we went to the other one. That’s all it was. But the fans will probably be happy. There was a moment.”
“I think we felt that this moment was earned, that this thing could happen for a second — and so that’s how we shot it,” she shared, explaining that she and Meloni “disagreed” with Wolf’s decision to cut it. “We thought that it was earned and the way it was dealt with was really complex and very beautiful and very human and showed the complexity of their relationship and all the different ways that they’re connected … [But] no matter what I want, Dick Wolf can totally just say, ‘Uh, no.’”
Peter Kramer/NBC
The moment came three seasons ago, when Benson had been worried about her son because of a case. She had Stabler pick him up and bring him home, but she didn’t let him help with the actual threat.
“I knew that you would try to protect me,” she told him, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that. “I care for you,” he said. That was when they almost kissed, but she stopped it. “I want to, ” she said. “I want to, but I can’t,” because “What if it doesn’t work out?” He argued, “What if things work out?” Still, she insisted she wasn’t “ready.”
And so the slow burn continues to this day, with SVU going into its 28th season, as we’ve continued to see how important Benson and Stabler are to each other; she rushed to his side when he ended up in the hospital during Organized Crime‘s final season. But both have also been through a lot since then, and so we do have to wonder what a kiss back then between them would have meant. Would they have been “ready” for what a relationship between them would have to entail?
SVU showrunner Michele Fazekas hasn’t ruled out seeing Meloni again, but noted it does depend on his schedule and that she’d want to “bring him in with purpose,” not “just drop him in an unimportant scene.”
Even without seeing Stabler, he still looms large on the series, which hasn’t given Benson another love interest in some time — and it doesn’t sound like there will be one anytime soon.
“When I was on the show, it was Benson and Stabler, and I personally don’t know about a love interest for her,” Fazekas explained to TV Insider. “I think that is a really important relationship that I do want to serve as much as we can. Chris works a lot. There were a couple of episodes this year, I was like, ‘Hey, is he around?’ and he was working.”
She added, “I think it’s important to service that relationship for me personally and also for the fans. It’s a super important relationship to Benson, and Benson is a different person than she was when I was on the show before. She has grown in so many different ways, and that relationship is very different, and Stabler is a different person. So, what are they now together? And so exploring that would be great if Chris Meloni is available.”
Do you wish that kiss had been left in? Let us know in the comments section below.
Law & Order: SVU, Season 28 Premiere, Fall 2026, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC
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