Law & Order: SVU season 19: Looking towards Olivia Benson’s future

There are fewer television characters of the past twenty years more iconic than Olivia Benson. She’s the focus of Law & Order: SVU, and the anchor of the squad. She works with them in order to take down the most heinous criminals in New York City, and throughout the upcoming 19th season, it feels abundantly clear that you are going to be seeing plenty of bad guys getting carted off in handcuffs.

Beyond that, though, what else should there be? In this new edition of our character spotlight series, we want to do our best to examine that further.

A long-term case – We don’t want SVU to necessarily become a serialized show, given that its strength comes via delivering excellent cases every week. What would be interesting, however, is if the writers planted the seeds for a larger case over the course of five or six episodes, and then paid it all off either in a midseason premiere, a midseason finale, or some other important episode down the line. Given the show a chance to play around with its form ever so slightly.

Dealing more with the higher-ups – Olivia is clearly great at her job, so why not have her recognized more for it? Or, why not have her clashing all the more with the big bosses at the NYPD? We would like to see a little more storytelling that comes with police politics, and what happens when the Commissioner either acts against the SVU’s best interests or makes things more difficult on her. Think of this as the show bringing a little bit of Blue Bloods into its universe, while still keeping its identity.

More Noah moments – Like we’ve mentioned, the cases are the most important parts of the show — we do still think that watching Noah grow up is an important part of Olivia’s story. It sets the show within a specific time, and when all of the main characters are adults, you don’t often get an opportunity to do that. We want to see what some of Benson’s struggles are as a mother and how those can relate to other parents who are out there.

What about another love interest? – At one point, there was talk about an FBI agent coming on board the show and becoming a possible romantic partner. However, Dick Wolf and NBC seem to be prioritizing Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders more so than they are an FBI series at the moment, so a new love interest would have to be internal. We’re more for Benson/Barba, though we’re not sure what issues that could cause the two of them professionally. We know that there are some Benson/Hank Voight ‘shippers out there, but it’s hard to see her getting on board with that idea with the way that he treats some of the criminals on Chicago PD.

In the end, the important thing is that 19 seasons in, the field of possibilities for Benson is as big and as varied as it’s always been.

What do you want to see from Olivia Benson moving forward into Law & Order: SVU season 19? Sound off in the comments!

(Photo: NBC.)