SVU Showrunner Says Season 27 Was About Olivia Benson ‘Being Closer to the End Than the Beginning’ (Exclusive)

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit showrunner Michele Fazekas had a clear vision for season 27.

Fazekas, who became the show’s first female showrunner when she joined SVU this past season, tells PEOPLE she wanted to acknowledge the show’s inevitable end after it’s spent more than a quarter of a century on television.

“How I came up with the theme for the season was like, OK, Mariska’s been on the show for 27 years. You’ve got to be thinking, ‘This is going to end at some point,’ and so let’s not ignore that,” she says. “Let’s go towards that. … There’s a line in the first episode of the season that Benson said to Fin: ‘Listen, I know we’re closer to the end than the beginning.'”

Fazekas says she felt confident in leaning into that overarching idea rather than ignoring the reality.

“It became the theme whereby the end of the season, Benson has answered the question of ‘Why are you still doing this?’ It’s like, ‘I’m doing this because I can’t do anything else,'” Fazekas explains. “And so she somewhat recommits herself.”

Fazekas had previously worked on SVU more than two decades ago as a writer and co-executive producer during seasons 3 through 7. She says she remained friends with Mariska Hargitay in the interim, and being asked to come back to SVU, this time as a leader, just felt like “the right time.”

“You couldn’t have a better number one on your call sheet, as they say. She’s so smart, cares so much about the work and she’s so delightful to work with. She comes in and she’s in a great mood and she was like this 20 years ago,” Fazekas says about working with Hargitay.

“She’s doing shtick for the crew, never wastes time, she’s always on it. And she always is working with actors to make them better. I’ve not worked with anybody like that who really just sort of brings everybody with her,” Fazekas adds. “She’s terrific. And she’s a person who years later [after I left SVU] was sending flowers for my birthday. She’s genuinely that person. It is not an act.”

In wrapping season 27, Fazekas says she wanted to leave fans with a sense of resolution. The final scene of the episode features the whole squad chatting around Det. Jake Griffin’s hospital bedside as he recovers.

“I really wanted it to come back to that. They got the guy, all of the stuff with [Chief] Tynan has been sort of handled, and at the end of the day the most important part is this core group,” Fazekas says. “I had another scene in the outline after that [one], and I don’t remember what it even was, but as I was writing the script, I was like, ‘Oh no, this is the last scene.’ And I don’t need any dialogue in it. I just want to see them together.”