‘Law & Order: SVU’ Season 27 Locks Up a Fall Release Date
Just a week after production officially began on the landmark 27th season of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC officially announced that the Mariska Hargitay-led series will return September 25, that’s according to Deadline. The announcement also comes just a week after the news that Aimé Donna Kelly was promoted to series regular. She joins Kelli Giddish as a re-upped series regular. The series returns in September for Thursdays, airing alongside Law & Order and a re-air of Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5.
The series comes with a lot of changes both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. The series now has a new showrunner Michele Fazekas, who served as both a writer and an executive producer from seasons 3 through 7. The series also sees the exits of Juliana Aiden Martinez and Octavio Pisano, though Deadline confirms Pisano will at least be returning for the first episode of Season 27, after eagle-eyed fans spotted him in a video posted by Hargitay last week when production began.
‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ Season 27 Needs This One Thing to Be Successful
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit consistently saw ratings fall behind that of the original Law & Order, and fans point to one chief issue: a lack of personal moments. Where Law & Order showrunner Rick Eid has specifically emphasized the need for them, they’d been lacking in a show that has an ostensibly darker tone, dealing with more heinous crimes, and it desperately needs that balance. There were a few moments during the season, such as seeing Giddish’s Amanda Rollins and Peter Scanavino‘s Sonny Carisi with their family, but those moments should also be seen, in a positive light, with the show’s lead, Olivia Benson. One standout moment was Olivia visiting her mother’s grave, who died early on in the show, working towards forgiving her mother for her dysfunctional childhood. Olivia is the mother to a now fourteen-year-old, Noah (Ryan Buggle), who fans only saw briefly twice during the season.
If there is anyone who needs the levity, the balance in her life of the horrors faced in a unit like SVU, it’s Olivia. So let her go out to dinner more with her best friend Amanda, let her have movie nights with her son, mention or even see her going out on a date with a certain bald-headed detective fans have been waiting for decades to see her be together with. Fazekas, as a writer on the show, crafted stories that beautifully interwove the interpersonal relationships of the characters with the plot of the episode. If that energy is brought to Season 27, it could very well be the most successful season of SVU in years.
You can watch past episodes of Law & Order: SVU now on Peacock. Season 27 premieres September 25. Stay with Collider for the latest updates.