Will Law & Order: SVU and Organized Crime Crossovers Continue After OC Moves to Peacock?
Are Benson and Stabler breaking up once more?*
This week’s news that Season 5 of Law & Order: Organized Crime will stream on Peacock — instead of on NBC, where Seasons 1-4 aired — begs questions regarding interaction between OC and its sister series Law & Order: SVU.
Namely: Will the Dick Wolf series’ big crossover events happen anymore?
SVU characters have shown up on OC, and vice versa, several times in the past few seasons. The most recent example came at the end of SVU Season 24 and OC Season 3, when Stabler and Benson’s units worked together to take down the creator of a crime-for-hire portal.
The former SVU partners’ appearances in each other’s lives also have had a distinctly more-than-friends feel in the past several crossovers. In the aforementioned season-ending event, Chris Meloni’s Stabler and Mariska Hargitay’s Benson shared some close moments, including one where he gifted her with a golden compass necklace that Hargitay later told TVLine is a daily reminder from “somebody that [Benson] knows loves her.” Earlier in Season 24, the pair nearly kissed in Benson’s kitchen — and would have gone through with the smooch if Hargitay and Meloni had gotten their way.
Jeff Bader, president, program planning strategy, NBCUniversal Entertainment, tells us that he’s not aware of any decisions regarding upcoming SVU and OC storylines. “I want to say yes” to crossovers, he says with a laugh. “But no, we have not heard anything about the creative for next season yet.” In addition, word is still out about whether OC will stream in the fall, when SVU is back for Season 26.
Both series are slated to air their season finales on Thursday: SVU‘s at 9/8c and Organized Crime‘s at 10.