Is ‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 17, episode 20 new tonight? Return date, casting news

For those of you out there looking to see Olivia Benson and the rest of the crew on “Law & Order: SVU,” you’re going to have to wait for a while. Specifically, think along the lines of a month.

There is no new episode of the show airing on NBC Wednesday night, and we’ve now got confirmation that the next new episode is not coming until Wednesday, May 4. In other words, that’s a long time from now.

In case you are looking for something to help tide you over until that time, just know that there is going to be a super-familiar face coming from the TV world at the end of the season. Fresh off of his turn on “Fargo” season 2, “Everybody Loves Raymond” alum Brad Garrett is going to be coming aboard the series’ final two episodes of the season as Gary Munson, a corrections officer at Rikers who, despite coming across on the surface like a good man, has a history of violence against some of the female inmates of the infamous prison. Given that prison conditions have been a hot-button topic over the past couple of years (which we feel is due to everything from “Orange is the New Black” to a video that John Oliver did about it a while back), we are rather interested to see precisely how this story plays out.

We will have some further news on all things “SVU” throughout the hiatus, so be on the lookout for all of that and much more.

(Photo: NBC.)