Make it happen!
For years, Law & Order:SVU fans have been begging for Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler to act on their obvious feelings for each other. Two years ago, the will-they-or-won’t-they pair almost locked lips in a season 24 episode of SVU. But Benson pulled away at the last moment.
“Elliot, I want to,” she said. “I want to, but I can’t.”
“What if it doesn’t work out?” she added.
Christopher Meloni returns to ‘SVU’ in season 27
Now, recent photos from the set of the NBC drama’s 27th season suggests that the two former parters are closer than ever.
In the images, Christopher Meloni’s Stabler has his arms wrapped around Mariska Hargitay’s Benson, and the two are looking into each other’s eyes. While there’s no proof that a kiss actually takes place, the very cozy moments certainly suggests that it could happen when Meloni returns to SVU next season. (SVU vets B.D. Wong, who played Dr. George Huang, and Dann Florek, who played Captain Donald Cragen, will also appear in season 27.)
Just a few days before photographers captured that Benson-Stabler moment on the NYC set, Meloni responded to a fan on X who was tired of waiting for a “Bensler” moment.
“For f*ck sake, kiss her already,” the person wrote.
“I’m f*cking trying,” Meloni responded.
“Try harder,” multiple people replied.
Mariska Hargitay says Benson and Stabler could kiss ‘in the last episode’
Stabler’s unresolved feelings for Benson came up again in Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5, which aired earlier this year on Peacock.
“I think we and the writers are trying to find the way, a satisfying way home. We just don’t know what that home is,” Meloni told TV Insider of his NYC detective character’s slow-burn with Benson, adding that there’s enough material there to created “a whole new spinoff.”
Meanwhile, Hargitay has hinted that she does see Benson and Stabler as endgame.
“Maybe on the last episode,” Hargitay told Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper in June when asked when the two would finally act on their sizzling chemistry. “I think that’s when they should be together.”
“If it’s right,” the My Mom Jayne director added. “We’ll see when we get there.”
Law & Order: SVU Season 27 premieres Thursday, September 25 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
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