‘Law & Order SVU’ might not be able to go on without Mariska Hargitay according to 1 familiar showrunner.
Law & Order SVU has been on the air for 25 years and it’s still going strong. Some have wondered if the series will ever really have an end. But one showrunner felt whether or not SVU reached its conclusion solely depended on Hargitay.
Only Mariska Hargitay had the power to end ‘Law & Order SVU’
Hargitay has been the face of Law & Order SVU since its debut in 1999. She’s seen many cast members come and go, but only Hargitay and Ice-T consistently remained with the series from the beginning. Even Hargitay couldn’t believe the show’s been around for so long. At the same time, however, she couldn’t imagine SVU ever ending.
“I have two diametrically opposed answers,” Hargitay once told People about the series’ 25-year journey. “One is I can’t believe it’s been 25 years, a quarter of a century. And the other is, I can’t see it any other way. I can’t imagine the show ending, and can’t imagine not going on this journey with my cast, my crew. I have so much to look forward to. And I’m still growing. I like that you can be so many things at one time. It’s learning to give yourself permission to be all of yourself.”
Hargitay has even outlasted many of the series’ fluctuating roster of show-runners. One of SVU’s most recent showrunners, Michael Chernuchin, shared his feelings towards the possibility of SVU ending. Chernuchin believed that SVU should continue as long as Hargitay wanted it to.
“I don’t see any reason why this show will end,” Chernuchin told TV Guide. “[We’re going to continue] until Mariska says, ‘let’s end it,’ because we’re dealing with things that are on the front page in the papers every day. Now, more than ever.”
How Mariska Hargitay pictured ‘Law & Order SVU’ ending
At the time, Chernuchin was so confident in the show continuing that he couldn’t even imagine a possible series finale.
“No, I have not,” Chernuchin said. “If we start to get a whiff of the network saying this is the last year, then we’ll dig our heels in and think about it. But until then, I don’t really see a reason to think about it. I don’t see the show going away.”
However, Hargitay has entertained a possible SVU ending. She’s often spoken about how she’d like her Olivia Benson to close out the series.
“I hope that she can get to a point where she feels like she’s done enough service and it’s time to rest and be and see the best that life has to offer,” Hargitay said in an interview with E! News. “Because she’s spent so much time in the darkest of what life has to offer.”
Mariska Hargitay once revealed why ‘Law & Order SVU’ will never run out of stories
It’s common for shows to end because they’ve simply run out of material. But Hargitay didn’t think that this would be an issue for SVU. Law & Order pulled from real-life news headlines to fuel its content, which gave the series an unlimited source of inspiration.
“I look at the news everyday and see the issues and crimes we deal with continually making headlines and being debated as legal issues pushing new and renewed legislation — such as the Violence Against Women Act — and as social issues affecting women and society as a whole. SVU is able to start conversations and humanize these problems,” she said in a separate TV Guide interview.
Hargitay gave real examples to further support her claim.
“We are able to show all sides of an issue, as we did with our Domestic Violence episode this fall, in an episode that portrayed of institutionalized racism [and was nominated for an NAACP Award], the episodes where we both educated and explored the rise in rapes on college campuses — and even in the episode that explored the problem of the rape kit backlog. I feel very fortunate that our show is in a position where we can start a conversation on national TV about these issues in a way that people can empathize with and see the human element involved.,” she added.
