‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 17 spoilers: Tough times ahead for Mariska Hargitay’s Benson

“Law & Order: SVU” is making you wait a rather long time for new episodes, but when the series does come back to NBC in the new year, you better prepare yourself for an intense, harrowing story that will put Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson front and center.

Rather than try to set up the stakes here, why not hand the reigns over to executive producer Warren Leight? Here’s what he head to say to TV Guide:

“We’re going to start off the year new, for people who worry about Olivia, with the scariest episode of the season … We haven’t quite gone this far with her since the William Lewis stuff.”

Just reading the name William Lewis is enough to send a chill down any fan’s spine, so you know this is serious. Leight also explains further just how she may have gotten herself into this situation:

“Olivia has been a little bit distracted or slightly off her game … She’s doing very good as lieutenant, but she hasn’t had a full squad this season. So there’s been more and more pressure on her, and she’s been making some mistakes. We’re going to start out with a moment in which she drops her guard just for a moment and gets herself into a horrible, threatening situation. … She’ll be dealing with the after-effects of that for a little while.”

Ultimately, this story seems like a perfect reminder that as amazing as Benson may be at her job, she is still very much human and therefore vulnerable from time to time. Let’s just hope that she is okay on the other side.

(Photo: NBC.)