When Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered in 1999, it quickly became a fan favorite. The show, a spin-off of Law & Order, focused on the sex crimes unit within the NYPD and followed the lives of partners Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay). Over the first twelve seasons of the show, fans fell in love with Benson and Stabler and their partnership, which made Meloni’s departure at the end of Season 12 both surprising and devastating. However, after Meloni left, the producers and writers centered SVU around Benson, which is part of what helped the show become television’s longest-running primetime drama.
SVU is five episodes into its 26th season, and while there have been some good moments, like the return of Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) as a sergeant in the Intelligence unit, there has also been sort of an odd absence. A recurring character — an important one — wasn’t mentioned once in the first three episodes and became noticeably absent in Season 26, Episode 4, “Constricted.” Olivia Benson’s teenage son, Noah (Ryan Buggle), hasn’t been around at all this season, and his missing presence was palpable in “Constricted.” The episode was about boys in the same age range as Noah, who assaulted two teenage girls, and Benson did not talk about being the parent of a teenage boy at all, not even when talking with Dominick “Sonny” Carisi (Peter Scanavino) or Captain Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) about their children. It left fans wondering — after all the time she waited and everything she went through to bring Noah home, why does it feel like Olivia doesn’t have a son anymore?
Who is Noah Porter-Benson?
Olivia expressed her desire to be a parent early in SVU’s tenure and even filed for adoption but was turned down, which she revealed to Elliot Stabler in Season 9, Episode 14, “Inconceivable.” By the time Season 15 rolled around, Olivia had not yet found the right partner or revisited adopting, but things were about to change. Noah was found in Season 15, Episode 14, “Wednesday’s Child,” when Olivia and Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) were searching for a missing boy and discovered that the couple he was with had been creating child porn with some of their other “adopted” children. Noah, then known as “Baby Boy Doe,” spent time in several foster homes after they rescued him, and Olivia showed up at each court hearing, concerned about what might happen to this baby boy if he wasn’t placed in a safe home.
In Season 15, Episode 24, “Spring Awakening,” Olivia brought in a sex worker, Ellie Porter (Emma Greenwell), and the medical examiner discovered that she was Baby Boy Doe’s birth mother. Defense attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann) came in to defend Ellie and worked with Olivia to ensure Ellie and the baby, whom Ellie had named Noah, got to see each other. Things seemed to be heading in the right direction until Ellie, who was staying at St. Bernadine’s Halfway House for Women in Brooklyn, panicked the night before her grand jury testimony against her pimp and left the Halfway House to get high, only to end up being gang-raped, tortured, and set on fire before the end of the night. In the final minutes of “Spring Awakening,” Noah was declared an orphan and a ward of the state of New York.
Trevor Langan showed up to the hearing as Noah’s representative on Ellie’s behalf, and while both he and Olivia were shocked when Judge Ruth Linden (Jayne Houdyshell) asked if Olivia would be interested in fostering him, Langan continued to support Olivia and Noah through Noah’s adoption and other legal issues that came up later. From the moment Olivia agreed to foster Noah, their fate was sealed.
Olivia and Noah Have Had a Tumultuous Journey
Just as Olivia was able to officially adopt Noah, the team arrested a pimp named Johnny Drake (Charles Halford) in Season 16, Episode 15, “Undercover Mother.” Olivia and her team learned that Drake was the man who brought Ellie into sex trafficking, and he was Noah’s birth father. It complicated their case, and it complicated Olivia’s adoption of Noah, though only until Drake tried to escape during his trial in Season 16, Episode 23, “Surrendering Noah,” and got himself killed in the process.
The character of Noah was played by two sets of twins in Seasons 15-18, but in Season 19, Episode 1, “Gone Fishin’,” Ryan Buggle made his debut. Things got tougher for Olivia and Noah in Season 19 — first when Noah was nearly hit by a vehicle and Olivia grabbed him, leaving a large bruise on his arm that caught the attention of his teacher in “Gone Fishin’,” and then, in Season 19, Episode 2, “Mood,” when the District Attorney’s office investigated Olivia due to the teacher’s concern. Though Olivia was cleared, it opened the door for Ellie Porter’s mother, who Ellie had told everyone was dead, to show up, demanding custody of Noah.
“Blood isn’t the only thing that makes families, Sheila. Legally… Noah is my son.” — Olivia Benson, Season 19, Episode 9, “Gone Baby Gone”
Sheila Porter (Brooke Shields) took Olivia to court in Season 19, Episode 5, “Complicated,” and insisted that she just wanted to be part of his life “as his only living blood relative.” After the judge determined there were no grounds to vacate the adoption, Olivia decided to offer Sheila the opportunity to get to know Noah on Olivia’s terms, and initially, it proved to be good for both Noah and Olivia. Just as Olivia felt like she was beginning to develop a family, something she had always wanted, Sheila did the thing Olivia had always been afraid she would do and kidnapped Noah in Season 19, Episode 9, “Gone Baby Gone.” Sheila first pretended that Noah had gone missing at the mall and then disappeared while Olivia was following up on a lead at the precinct. When Olivia finally found Noah and Sheila, she had to physically keep Sheila away from her son in order to get him outside and then deal with Sheila herself. The ordeal gave Noah nightmares and made it hard for Olivia to trust anyone for a long time, but eventually, they got through it, coming out the other side stronger.
SVU Was Once Good at Balancing the Personal and Professional
Since Noah came into Olivia’s life as her foster son, SVU has made a point of building his existence into the show. While audiences certainly didn’t see him every episode, there were plenty of episodes that began or ended — or both — with Olivia and Noah spending time together. Sometimes, it matched up with what was happening in the episode, and other times, Noah’s presence was used to show how Olivia was, or wasn’t, handling things. Noah’s presence often pushed Olivia to think about things differently, like how she might react to something if her son were involved or how being a mother might have changed her. Noah also occasionally showed up as a way for SVU to expand on a certain storyline, like in Season 22, Episode 1, “Guardians and Gladiators,” when Olivia’s treatment of a black citizen is under scrutiny after his arrest is recorded and goes viral on the internet. When Noah sees it at school, he initiates a conversation with her as to whether she is racist, pushing her to start thinking about her bias and how it has played a role in her police work.
With changing showrunners and writers, it’s never a surprise to SVU fans that the level of personal life that is shared about each character changes from season to season, but Olivia’s seems to have disappeared entirely. Fans anticipated a romantic relationship between Benson and Stabler upon his return in Season 22, Episode 9, “Return of the Prodigal Son,” but the characters are just as separate now as they were when Stabler was MIA. There are rumors that Olivia will appear in at least one episode of Law & Order: Organized Crime’s fourth season, but until the show gets a premiere date on Peacock, they’re just rumors. It also has not gone unnoticed that while Olivia’s personal life has all but disappeared, the relationship between Dominick “Sonny” Carisi (Peter Scanavino) and Amanda Rollins has ramped up — even with Kelli Giddish only being a guest star in the back half of Season 24 and all of Season 25. While Rollins and Carisi are a pair that many fans hoped would get together, the exploration of their relationship and seeing Carisi with their kids is notable when Olivia Benson hasn’t had a romantic relationship in years, and her kid is nowhere to be found.
How Could SVU Fit Noah into Season 26?
So far in Season 26, the closest fans have gotten to a mention of Noah Porter-Benson is the appearance of his picture in the background, behind Olivia, during one clip in Season 26, Episode 4, “Constricted.” The writers could have — and should have — had Olivia processing what happened with the boys in “Constricted” through the lens of being a mother, just as Olivia encouraged Carisi and Curry to do. Perhaps they assumed fans would know that Olivia was processing things that way, but the active absence of Noah was far too stark. A conversation between Noah and Olivia about how to treat girls and women — and young men, considering that Noah came out as bisexual in Season 23, Episode 11, “Burning with Rage Forever” — would not have been out of place in the episode.
Noah Porter-Benson: I said that I was bi and that there was no shame in being true to yourself.
Olivia Benson: That’s right, Noah. So you stood up for [your friend] and stood up for yourself. And that is incredibly brave.
Noah Porter-Benson: Well, it’s my truth. I just hadn’t told anybody before.
Olivia Benson: Well, thank you for telling me.
The last time fans saw Noah was in Season 25, Episode 9, “Children of Wolves,” which was an important episode for Noah and Olivia. Noah learned more about his birth father, Johnny D, and even found out some information about Olivia’s past via the internet. The audience never gets to fully understand Noah’s reaction to his own story, and in the nine episodes since “Children of Wolves,” Olivia has brought him up very little, if at all. Beyond the blatant opportunity in “Constricted,” Noah could have been present as part of the opening or closing of any of the first five episodes of SVU’s 26th season, giving SVU the opportunity to show that Olivia remains more than a police officer, instead of pigeonholing her in the “savior cop” position she has landed in throughout Season 26 thus far.
It’s not too late for SVU to bring Noah back into the fold, and perhaps there are already plans to do that. What is most important for SVU is that it takes time to go back to the personal components of the lives of their characters — not just Olivia — to help balance out the police cases and the courtroom appearances. It’s one of the things that SVU has always been good at, and the show is struggling without it. Viewers who have been fans of the show for 25 years want to see Olivia Benson as a mother, as a romantic partner, and as a woman outside the precinct, which, for a 25-year commitment, doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
