Law & Order: SVU season 19: Philip Winchester reprising Chicago Justice role
According to Deadline, Philip Winchester will recur over on Law & Order: SVU season 19 in the role of Peter Stone, which is the same role that he played on the NBC show for the entirety of its first season. Does this mean that Stone is heading off to New York City? It certainly sounds like it, since the show is planning to make him an ADA in the city just like his father Benjamin Stone was on the original Law & Order. A wonderful full circle moment for many fans out there.
Hopefully, the show finds an interesting way to bring this character over, since we’ll miss him alongside the likes of Mark Jefferies and Anna Valdez, some of the other main players on Chicago Justice during its run. That cancellation is still disappointing to us when you consider that Chicago Justice was not necessarily some huge ratings letdown in its first season. It fared okay, but there was clearly some desire to move the network forward in a way that favored an array of different shows as opposed to four all set in the Windy City.
Still, getting to see Winchester back in the franchise should help to further expand the legal side of things on this show given that Barba (Raul Esparza) is one of the only characters we tend to see on a consistent basis in that department.
There’s also another reason that Winchester on SVU makes total sense: The new man in charge. Michael Chernuchin was the showrunner over on Justice before coming over here, so it makes sense that he would want to bring over someone he is familiar with — he’s already written a season’s worth of stories for Stone, so he knows who this man is, what matters to him, and also what he’s willing to do for the sake of getting justice.
New episodes of Law & Order: SVU premiere on NBC this fall, but save for this news, there hasn’t been a whole lot said about the new episodes just yet. Here’s to hoping that Winchester becomes an integral part of the show that he sticks around for a good while — given that this is a show with a large episode order, it actually has a pretty small main cast. Just think about it: You’ve got Mariska Hargitay, Kelli Giddish, Peter Scanavino, Ice-T, and then the aforementioned Esparza. That’s a pretty small crew for a crime procedural, especially when you think about the team over at Chicago PD or elsewhere within the Dick Wolf universe.
Excited to see Philip Winchester coming over to SVU?
Be sure to sound off with some of your thoughts about Winchester’s Peter Stone joining Law & Order: SVU in the comments below!
(Photo: NBC.)
Michael Goldman
August 8, 2017 @ 11:11 pm
I think that this is a big mistake. Unless Esparza wants to do fewer episodes(and he isn’t in all of them to begin with) I think this is a mess. They should have brought in another Detective if they were willing to add payroll. Sounds to me like Wolf had some deal with him for JUSTICE and when it was cancelled, he is keeping his end by putting him in SVU.
Brian
August 8, 2017 @ 7:41 pm
I agree. i wan’t crazy about him in the various Chicago series and I’m not crazy about his macho baseball player character. it seems very canned and formulaic to me. Barba is so much more complex and we have never really delved in to his character as deeply as they have with the other SVU characters. If this takes away from that, I will be very disappointed.
Matt Carter
August 9, 2017 @ 2:27 am
I don’t see Stone coming on as the show taking away from Barba. If anything, it’s another foil for Barba to play off of and that’s exciting. I love Raul, and certainly want him to have plenty of time in the spotlight.
Brian
August 9, 2017 @ 4:09 pm
Since Season 14, any other ADA’s ie Robert Sean Leonard, y have appeared in Barba’s absence, in other words, he hasn’t been working with other ADA’s in any scenes. That happened in the original franchise when one ADA is second chair. Barba and Stone seem to be equals. Now if Carisi became Barba’s second chair that would be great. But I fear that they will need to push Barba out of scenes to make room for Stone and that I don’t like.
ohpickles
August 8, 2017 @ 7:15 pm
Eh. Stone was pretty boring on both PD and Justice. If he plans on dropping the emotionless and pompous shtick he might be an interesting character. So long as he doesn’t take screen time away from Barba I’m neutral on it.