As much as Law & Order audiences want to see Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler and Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson get together, Meloni might want it more.
After a fan on X suggested Monday that, “for f— sake, kiss her already,” he replied, “I’m f—ing trying.”
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There has long been a will-they-won’t-they vibe between the two characters in the beloved franchise. They two were partners for more than a decade on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and while Benson has stayed put, Stabler has moved to Law & Order: Organized Crime. However, they still communicate via appearances in one another’s departments. They’ve come very close to becoming a couple, but they haven’t actually gone there.
Not only Meloni but Hargitay, too, is hoping for that. But she just doesn’t want it to happen just yet.
“Maybe on the last episode,” she said in June on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “I think that’s when they should be together… if it’s right. We’ll see when we get there.”
The law enforcement officers are “soulmates, in a way,” Hargitay said, adding, “But let’s see where the story takes us, you know?”
Meloni himself has addressed a moment when the two nearly kissed in a season 24 episode of SVU that Stabler appeared on. That time, it was Benson who pulled away.
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“We were attempting something,” he said in April during a TVLine Spotlight conversation. “I don’t think it worked. But I’m not going to tell you why it didn’t work, because you all have your opinion,” Meloni said, before adding, “I know what transpired.”
In May 2024, Hargitay dished that the kiss was initially supposed to happen.
“To be honest with you, Chris and I thought it should go one way and the powers that be didn’t, so it got changed at the last minute, that near kiss,” Hargitay said in a May 2024 interview with Variety. “Obviously Raechal Shewfelt Dick [Wolf] gets final say. It’s his show and he didn’t want that.”
While Meloni’s Law & Order: Organized Crime wrapped up its fifth season last month, there will be plenty more Benson — and maybe some Stabler references or even encounters? — when L&O: SVU returns for its 27th season Sept. 25 on NBC.
