The new season sees the return of a fan-favourite character.
There are few series that continue to grip viewers and excite them multiple seasons in but when we’re talking about long-running crime dramas, Law & Order is a franchise that instantly springs to mind for many.
Aside from the original series, the world of Law & Order has seen numerous spin-offs, namely the successful Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The series follows a group of specially trained detectives in the NYPD who form the Special Victims Unit and the investigations they’re faced with, which are some of the city’s sexually based offences, including harassment and sexual assault.
Law & Order: SVU has been on our screens since 1999 and it doesn’t look as though the series is set to slow down any time soon, with the 25th season set to hit our screens this month alongside a new season of SVU spin-off Organized Crime.
Read on for everything you need to know about Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 25 release date
The new 25th season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is premiering on Thursday 18th January 2024 at 9pm ET on NBC in the US. Like with Organized Crime, a release date for the UK hasn’t yet been confirmed.
Previously, SVU has aired on Sky Witness and NOW but re-runs of the series can be found on 5USA, so there’s no telling which platform fans can expect to stream the series on when it does arrive in the UK. We’ll be sure to update you with more news when we have it.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 25 cast news
The main cast of SVU has remained relatively constant throughout its 25 seasons but the major character departure of Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) in 2011 really shook things up, with the detective now featuring in his own spin-off, Organized Crime.
The cast of SVU is led by Mariska Hargitay as Captain Olivia Benson, and we can likely expect the same regular faces of Ice-T as Fin, Peter Scanavino as Sonny and more.
We do know, though, that one previous regular face in SVU is set to make a reappearance in season 25, as Kelli Giddish is set to return for the season 25 premiere.
Giddish starred as former detective Amanda Rollins, first appearing in season 13 and leaving the series in December 2022. Since then, Giddish returned for the SVU season 24 finale, where fans learnt that she is teaching criminal behavior at Fordham University but life is a lot less exciting now.
So, could Rollins be coming back to the SVU team? While we’re not sure in what capacity Giddish is set to reappear, we’ll just have to wait and see if it forms part of a bigger subplot that brings her back in the series more regularly.
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit cast that we’d expect to make a return for season 25 are:
- Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson
- Ice-T as Odafin “Fin” Tutuola
- Peter Scanavino as Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr
- Demore Barnes as Christian Barland
- Octavio Pisano as Joe Velasco
One person that we know won’t be returning for season 25 is Molly Burnett (Detective Grace Muncy), who was in the show for less than a year.
News of Burnett’s departure was announced back in May 2023 (via Deadline) and so, with a gap in the SVU team now, it’s likely that either a new character or Giddish could be coming to fill that role.
What will Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 25 be about?
Exact series details are being kept under wraps for now but as with previous seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, we can expect Olivia Benson and the team to be taking on some of the city’s most harrowing sexually-based offences.
The last we saw of SVU, there was an epic crossover finale episode with Organized Crime – with Olivia and Elliot teaming up once more to take down the criminal at the centre of a dark website that advertised ‘rape and murder for hire’.
After the teams eventually shut down the site and nail the culprit, the finale saw the departure of Burnett’s Detective Muncy, who leaves SVU for a position McGrath (Terry Serpico) offered her on a task force.
As for what will happen in the new series, with the return of Rollins in the season 25 premiere, we can expect to learn more about her life post-SVU but also how she finds herself back with the team – could she be bringing a criminal case to them? We’ll have to wait and see.
Is there a trailer for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 25?
There are some epic teaser trailers but no official trailer just yet! The teaser, announcing the premiere date, was posted to Mariska Hargitay’s Instagram last November, giving us a moody look at our main batch of characters.
A longer 40-second teaser was posted to YouTube announcing the returns of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime, which you can watch for yourself below.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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