Is Law & Order: SVU new tonight? Season 20 episode 21 hopes

Is Law & Order: SVU new tonight on NBC? Given that we’re near the end of the season, we are at a time in which we love to get new episodes pretty much on a weekly basis. This is an ideal, but one that does not always equate to reality sometimes. Because we are so close to the start of sweeps, we are also at a point in which networks are wanting to save some of their meatiest story for a little bit closer to that date.

In the case of the Mariska Hargitay series, that certainly seems to be the case here. There is no new episode arriving on NBC tonight; instead, you’re left waiting until next week to check out season 20 episode 21, entitled “Exchange.” It’s a story that, per the preview below, is going to be so much more than what it seems to be on the surface — basically, the standard for what you would expect from an episode of this show.

At the heart of this episode will be two young students from a tiny town in Italy, ones who manage to find themselves roped into a larger sex ring. How this happened is a part of the show’s central mystery, alongside a murder that is coming after the fact. Are they involved in it, or did it come about as a result of some of what they’ve gone through? This is what the SVU is going to be taken on, and we imagine that these young women’s status as foreign-exchange students could end up potentially making this matter all the more complicated.

How so? Just think about things in this sense — we are dealing in this situation with people who are not technically citizens or even permanent residents, and they find themselves at the center of a much larger crime. They cannot and should not be treated any differently no matter their involvement, but they’re going to have to combat any prejudices, and also whatever sort of language-barrier issues could end up coming to the forefront. In this day and age, everyone has interpreters, but some elements of the case could end up being more challenging.

Here is one final thing to consider — we’re firmly in the home stretch of the season and this is where some of the most intense episodes of any show end up coming on the air. Given how most SVU episodes are intense, how crazy are things going to get? Consider that something to think about as we near the finale, and also the already-reported departure of Philip Winchester as Peter Stone.

(Photo: NBC.)