‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 17 spoilers: More on big episode for Mariska Hargitay’s Benson

If you recall, we posted earlier this month about a particularly devastating episode of “Law & Order: SVU” coming up in season 17 for Mariska Hargitay’s character of Olivia Benson. Now, we’re able to report just when this episode (entitled “Townhouse Invasion”) will air: Wednesday, January 13.

For the time being, NBC is being fairly coy about the events that cause Benson such peril other than what they reveal in the synopsis below:

“Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is taken hostage when she tries to stop a violent home invasion.”

Executive producer Warren Leight said that this may be the most danger that Benson has been in since William Lewis, and it comes at a time when she may let her guard down slightly. Can you really blame her? It’s hard for someone to just be “on” every second of the day. We of course imagine that she will make it out of this and be able to continue her job, but if this is anything like the William Lewis situation, it could have an impact on her mental state for some time. There are many more stories still to come following this one in season 17, and that is plenty of time to deal with the aftermath if the writers choose to go further down this road.

We’ll have some more on this story presumably as we get closer to it airing; “SVU” will return to NBC with new episodes starting on January 6, which this one being about a teacher-student relationship that proves to be far more twisted than it first seems to be on the surface.

(Photo: NBC.)