How SVU’s Showrunner Actually Feels About Tynan After That “Final Showdown” with Benson

SVU showrunner Michele Fazekas unpacks Benson and Tynan’s power struggle that came to a head in the Season 27 finale.

When it comes to standing with victims, Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is an immovable force. That doesn’t mean she isn’t met with resistance from time to time. 

Benson doesn’t view the pecking order of the NYPD as something that should get in the way of helping victims, which caused major tension with her new boss, Chief of Detectives Kathryn Tynan (Noma Dumezweni). After Tynan found a moment to justify suspending Benson, the friction between the two came to a head in the Law & Order: SVU Season 27 finale “Monster.” (Spoiler: Things do not work out in Tynan’s favor).

NBC Insider spoke with SVU showrunner Michele Fazekas, who returned this season to steer the ship after working as a writer and co-executive producer in the early 2000s, about the characters clashing, why she doesn’t view Tynan as a typical villain, and what it could mean moving forward after Season 27’s shocking finale. 

Benson and Tynan’s power struggle officially came to an end in SVU’s Season 27 finale

Earlier this season, Chief Tynan tried to recruit Benson to oversee a consolidated Special Victims Unit for all five boroughs. The move would take Benson out of the field and into more of an admin role, which she resolutely turned down. 

“I wanted to bring in somebody who wasn’t just a villain,” Fazekas told NBC Insider. “I actually don’t think Tynan is a bad person. She’s just different and she’s more political and she really values the hierarchy, and Benson does not.”

However, Tynan lost her way in the power struggle by making it personal, according to Fazekas.  

At the start of Season 27, Tynan placed Detective Jake Griffin (Corey Cott) into the SVU squad while Sgt. Fin Tutuola (Ice T) was recovering from an assault. Griffin’s late father Jimmy was Tynan’s former partner, and leveraging their history, Tynan asks Griffin to snoop into Benson’s older cases. 

“That’s why she ends up failing,” Fazekas said, explaining Tynan’s antagonistic mindset towards Benson. “She makes it a thing that is her versus Benson versus about the job.”

However, the strategic moves on Tynan’s part proved unfruitful. Her attempt to make Captain Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) take the role of Chief of Detectives after Benson declines backfires. Curry also declines and later tells Benson about the exchange before being reassigned. Griffin questioned Tynan’s motives and began to trust the SVU team as he worked cases with Benson — and made his allegiance clear in Season 27’s finale. 

In “Monster,” Griffin reveals that he “traced the gun” he found in his late father’s storage unit that was used in an off-duty shooting. “Tynan helped him cover it up,” he tells Benson, who asks what he plans to do with the information. Griffin tells her that he’s going to “put it away for now” and focus on their investigation. 

Griffin, however, had other plans as he later met with Tynan, his longtime mentor, and secretly recorded their conversation where she admits to helping her former partner cover up the crime. Jimmy Griffin was taking payments from a mobster named Dennis Reeves “to look the other way” for years until he shot him in the knee, planting a gun on him. 

“I had two ways it could’ve gone in that situation,” Tynan confesses. “Turn my partner in, he goes to prison, and I get labeled a rat and my career is over. Or, plant a gun on a lowlife who deserved it and the world’s a better place.”

As Griff reunites with his squad to continue their investigation into a dangerous kidnapper and serial killer, he gets shot in the line of duty. Face to face with the evil criminal, the SVU’s newest detective is tempted to just shoot him, until he sees Benson and lowers his weapon.

Later in the hospital, Tynan races to see how Griffin is doing as Benson and the squad are already there waiting in the hallway. Benson informs Tynan that Griff will be okay.

“I’m gonna have your badge for this … Your career is over and I’m no longer sorry about that,” Tynan angrily tells Benson. 

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Benson retorts. 

“Because you think you have some dirt on me? Whatever Jake told you is not relevant and can’t be proven in any event.”

“You sure about that?” Benson asks as Tynan’s eyes widen, realizing Griffin recorded her admission. 

“I’m not interested in ruining your career, chief, I’m really not,” Benson said before getting in the last word. “But I’m not gonna let you ruin mine.”

“[Benson] has this sort of final showdown with Tynan, but Benson has the power in that scene,” Fazekas explained. “You’ve seen Tynan all along be very cool and unemotional and by the end, she’s so — she’s not really in control. Benson is in control.”

SVU showrunner Michele Fazekas says Season 27’s finale “recommits” Benson to the job

The tug-of-war for the control “dovetailed” into a theme Fazekas wanted to tackle this season. 

“You’re looking at a show that’s been on for 27 years … and you do start to ask the question, ‘Well, how much longer are you gonna do this?’” Fazekas said, pointing to a moment in the first episode this season when Benson acknowledges to Fin they’re closer to the end than the beginning. Still, when Fin asks Benson are they going to do this forever, “it doesn’t compute for Benson,” Fazekas explained. 

“What I liked about that theme — and I always wanted to do this — is by the end of the season, it really recommits Benson like, ‘I am here because I can be nowhere else. I can do nothing else,’” Fazekas said. “She sort of embodies that by the end.”

Each member of the close-knit SVU team were tested this season, but it brought them closer together. The final scene of SVU’s finale shows the core team gathering around Griffin’s hospital bed, which Fazekas says symbolizes their bond. 

“I wanted that last scene to be was like, let’s leave all that behind and focus on what really matters, which is we are all okay,” Fazekas said. “We are a family and just sort of watch that moment being like, ‘Oh, okay…they’ve really gelled together as a family.”