“A Two-Hour Movie”: ‘Law & Order’ Showrunner Reveals What To Expect From the Can’t-Miss Crossover With ‘SVU’

With just two days to go until the highly anticipated Law & Order and Special Victims Unit crossover event, we’re getting a clearer picture of what to expect. Law & Order showrunner Rick Eid sat down with TVInsider ahead of the crossover to talk about the dynamics and possible hiccups that may come with seeing the 2-7 and 1-6 join forces again. Eid explains:

“The episodes will feel like a two-hour movie,” says Eid, “while it’s still in keeping with Law & Order‘s format of the police investigating a crime and the attorneys prosecuting the offenders. We’ll also find the DA’s office conversing with detectives as they get closer to arresting a suspect, and some of our detectives will take the stand in court.”

The two-parter, “Play With Fire” will revisit the SVU case from the episode “911” after the girl Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) rescued in Season 7, has now been murdered. The murder of Maria Rencinos is the linchpin in the joint investigation, drawing the teams together, and it’s not just the cops, as Eid says, Hugh Dancy

‘s ADA Nolan Price and Peter Scanavino‘s ADA Dominic Carisi will be sharing the screen as well. Eid explains that for the crossover, Benson receives an anonymous call and “she hangs up before Benson can find out who she was or how she got her number. … Benson hurries to the crime scene and meets up with [Homicide’s] Det. Riley (Reid Scott), and the mystery of who this anonymous caller is, and who the murder victim is, begins.”

Benson and Brady Will Butt Heads, But They’re Also the Reason for the ‘L&O’ Crossover

As Eid explains, the reason the crossover even came about was due in part to Hargitay’s guest appearance in the most recent season of Law & Order. He says, “Mariska filmed a few scenes with us at L&O earlier this season, and we knew we wanted to see Maura [Tierney]

 and Mariska together again on the screen. So both writers’ rooms came up with a storyline in mind, which also teamed up our lead ADAs Price and Carisi for some terrific courtroom moments.” But just because they wanted an opportunity to see the pair on screen together, that doesn’t mean the course will run smooth. In both promos, we see Benson butting heads with both Brady and Price. “Benson and Brady have the same goal,” Eid says, “but may not always arrive at it in the same way.“