Law & Order: SVU has always done a great job at taking ripped-from-the-headlines cases and placing a fictional spin on them. It has also done a great job at advocating for survivors of sexual assault, even in some of the most explosive episodes.
The first 12 seasons of the show had a relatively consistent cast with four actors playing the main detectives for most of those seasons. Cast members who have left the series since then have returned to the show in recent years, and SVU fans are always up for a bit of a reunion.
Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Stages An OG Reunion
The SVU Season 27 Reunion Comes At One Character’s Expense
Law & Order: SVU season 27 capitalized on that fan nostalgia in the premiere by staging another reunion of some of those original cast members. Though actors like Dean Winters left the show in season 1, they have continued to guest star when their characters have been written back into the story.
Winters returned in the past to play Detective Brian Cassidy, who ended up leaving the Special Victims Unit in season 1 when dealing with victims became too much for him. He was transferred to another unit within the NYPD and resurfaced on the show during the middle of an undercover operation.
This time, he stops by Don Cragen’s (Dann Florek) funeral. He is not the only one. Olivia Benson runs into Cassidy, Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), and her original partner, Detective Elliot Stabler (Chris Meloni). The entire group might not interact on camera, but Olivia gets a run through her past with each of them.
While Meloni was a series regular as Elliot Stabler for the first 12 seasons of the show, he has returned to guest star over the last five years and leads the Law & Order: Organized Crime spinoff.
Wong made his Law & Order: SVU debut in season 2. He appeared regularly in the series through season 15 as Dr. George Huang, a psychologist who worked for the FBI and consulted on SVU cases. He has not appeared on SVU since season 17.
All three actors were spotted on set when season 27 began filming, though NBC only officially confirmed the return of Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, likely believing they could keep the reason for the reunion a surprise. Fans, however, speculated that SVU season 27 would lead off with a funeral.
Still, that many characters from the original era of the show, or SVU 1.0 as fans call it, appearing in SVU season 27 is certainly exciting for the series. Bringing all of those familiar faces into the same room 25 years after they were all on the show in the same era is a great nod to long-time fans.
The Law & Order: SVU Season 27 OG Reunion Is Incomplete Without Jeffries
Monique Jeffries Is The Show’s Most Underrated Detective
The original roster in Law & Order: SVU included Captain Cragen, as well as Detectives Stabler, Benson, Cassidy, Munch (Richard Belzer), Briscoe (Chris Orbach), and Jeffries (Michelle Hurd). Of those characters, Detective Monique Jeffries is the only one who has not appeared on SVU since her departure.
Cassidy and Briscoe both left the unit during season 1, Stabler decided to leave the NYPD between seasons 12 and 13, and Cragen and Much both retired in season 15. All five men have returned to appear in at least one episode of Law & Order: SVU since. Benson, of course, has continued to lead the show.
That’s why it’s surprising that Law & Order: SVU would be leaving Jeffries out of a season that involves the return of so many faces from the same era in which she appeared in Law & Order. Jeffries has not even been mentioned since her original absence from the show, and her story feels incomplete, unlike so many others.
While Jeffries’ former partner Munch is not part of the reunion because of Belzer’s real-life passing, and Orbach has not appeared on screen in several years, that does not mean Jeffries should continue to be left out.
Bringing in Jeffries in SVU season 27 would help to make the reunion feel like a full one and really bring the show full circle.
How Jeffries Can Still Return In Law & Order: SVU Season 27
Michelle Hurd Is Open To Returning
Because the Law & Order franchise relies mostly on the episodic nature of procedural dramas, it is hard to predict how the stories of SVU season 27 will continue to play out. Very little information has been shared by NBC about SVU season 27 as a whole.
When Detective Monique Jeffries left SVU in season 2, she was not on the best of terms with the squad. Assigned to desk duty because of a psychological evaluation, she wanted to sue the department for discrimination when Stabler was still allowed to be in the field, and she was not. She also directly confronted Fin about taking her job.
Because she was so angry with Cragen for not fighting to get her back on active duty, it’s understandable that she would not have been on speaking terms with him in the seasons immediately following her leaving SVU. It’s not completely surprising that she would not attend Cragen’s funeral.
As Stabler points out, however, even someone that Cragen hated attended his funeral, and the series did reuse season 1 footage to bring Jeffries in on a Vice case the same season that she left the squad, so the character was clearly still open to working with SVU when needed.
Jeffries and Benson, however, were on good terms in SVU season 1, even visiting a rock climbing wall together in their downtime. It is possible the two have kept in touch all this time, even if Benson has not been mentioning her former coworker on screen. Captain Benson could be the key to a return from Jeffries.
In the past, when actor Michelle Hurd expressed an interest in returning to SVU, she floated the idea of Jeffries coming back as a lawyer instead of a police officer (via TV Insider). That idea is not without precedent since Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino) began his time on SVU as a detective who was also in law school.
Whether she returns to SVU as a detective, a lawyer, or something else entirely, it only makes sense for Jeffries to be drawn in because of a case.
Her only remaining personal or professional connection to SVU is Olivia Benson. Benson could be the one to reach out to her former colleague for help with a case in which Jeffries has a unique perspective.
With her move to Vice from SVU, that could involve something like a human trafficking ring, or taking down a long-term madame, or something similar. SVU has tackled plenty of those storylines in the past without involving Jeffries, though, so the writers would need to come up with a convincing reason for her to be called in.
