‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 15, episode 21 preview: How Mariska Hargiaty, cast move on

Going into Wednesday night’s “Law & Order: SVU” episode, almost everyone involved knew that it was a big episode. The episode marked (spoiler alert) the end for Pablo Schreiber’s character of William Lewis, and the timing felt right for the story to close. Any more than this, and it would start to get even more gratuitous than some (ourselves include) felt it already was.

Now, you do have to wonder where the show goes from here, but we start with the good news that Donal Logue is back! How does this guy manage to have so many jobs? He’ll be around for a few episodes.

In getting back to how Lewis’ death will linger on Mariska Hargitay’s Benson, that is something the story is going to address moving forward. While few details are known on the next episode, showrunner Warren Leight did say the following to TVLine in an interview posted after this episode ended:

“His affect on her definitely lingers. We don’t use the phrase ‘happy ending’ on SVU, but I have hopes for her. We have a tentative title for the finale, which is “Spring Awakening.” Olivia has gone through an incredible crucible this year, and Mariska has done an amazing job with it, so both the actress and the character deserve a moment’s grace. I hope she gets it.”

We feel like there will be better things for Benson in the future, mostly because in the end, this is not really a story about her. Instead, it revolves more on some of the lives that she saves. We’re happy to get back to that, and curious how she manages to patch things up professionally after being forced to make her “confession” on-camera tonight.

Photo: NBC