‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 18 releases first poster

“Law & Order: SVU” wants you to know one thing moving into the upcoming 18th season: They’re ready to take on whatever lies on the other side of the horizon.

Friday morning, NBC released the new post for the upcoming season, and it’s certainly dramatic. The photos of all of their cast members (Mariska Hargitay, Kelli Giddish, Ice-T, Raul Esparza, and Peter Scanavino) all look like they are in the midst of an investigation. We also love that Esparza’s Barba seems to be doing his best impression of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney with the finger-point. (If you don’t get the reference, Google it — you’ll believe us!)

The new season starts on Wednesday, September 21 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, but for now NBC remains cagey on specifics storylines. Season 17 ended with the tragic death of Mike Dodds, and moving out of that everyone assessed their place. Carisi seems to be staying pat for now, and Benson considered getting away for a time with Tucker. We imagine that everything will be back to normal work-wise (or at least as normal as things can be in the SVU) when the show picks back up.

Behind the scenes, we’ve already beaten the drum pretty hard that there’s a creative change with Rick Eid replacing Warren Leight as showrunner. We’d be a little more worried if Eid wasn’t tremendously experienced in his own right. We imagine that he’ll be more than capable of taking on the challenge and coming up with episodes that “SVU” fans want to see: One that celebrate their heroism and shine a light on the realities of our world.

(Photo: NBC.)