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Christopher Meloni‘s Law & Order spinoff Organized Crime got canceled after five seasons — but does that mean he is coming back to SVU?
Showrunner Michele Fazekas was recently asked about Meloni’s future as Elliot Stabler, to which she told People, “Obviously, everyone’s always asking me about Stabler, and I love Meloni. I would use him as much as he wants to. I tried to!”
Fazekas pointed out that Meloni, 65, had several projects lined up.
“[Meloni’s] very, very busy,” she noted. “I tried to bring him into this. I’ll just sometimes ask the question like, ‘Hey, is he working?’ It’s like, ‘Oh, yes, of course he’s working.’”
Law & Order, which premiered in 1990, launched Dick Wolf‘s legal TV universe. From there, NBC found success by expanding with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which premiered in 1999 with Meloni starring alongside Mariska Hargitay. (There were other, more short-lived spinoffs, including Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Law & Order: LA and Law & Order True Crime.)
Viewers tuned in week after week to watch the detectives of the Special Victims Unit investigate and prosecute sex-based crimes. Others, meanwhile, were hoping to see Olivia Benson (Hargitay) and Stabler (Meloni) fall in love along the way.
After season 12 of Law & Order: SVU, Meloni shocked fans by announcing his exit from the hit series. Meloni revealed that a pay dispute had contributed to his decision not to return for more episodes. As a result, Elliot’s exit was explained as a retirement decision.
“I left with zero animosity, but I did leave clearly and open-eyed in going forward and finding new adventures. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do, keep moving forward,’” Meloni told the New York Post in July 2021. “I had done the Law & Order way of storytelling, which they do really well, and I was interested in telling stories from a different angle — whether comedic or inhabiting a new world or doing it on different platforms.”
Hargitay, 62, meanwhile, weighed in on losing her scene partner after more than a decade.
“I was just so sad, because we started this thing and built it together,” she told People at the time. “And we went through so many milestones and spent so much time together and understood so many things that nobody else could understand.”
Meloni, however, saw things differently. “She was left in the familiarity of what we were. And I’m sure there were echoes, constant reminders, everywhere. But for me, it was about how things fell out — and the word I’ll use is that it was inelegant,” he said.
Meloni added: “At the end of the day, how it was handled was, ‘OK, see you later.’ So I went, ‘That’s fine. We’re all big boys and girls here. See you later.’ And I was off on new adventures and doing what I wanted to do. Telling the stories I wanted to tell.”
News broke nearly a decade later that Meloni was reprising the role of Elliot in Law & Order: Organized Crime. The spinoff, which premiered in 2021, went through quite a few showrunner shakeups before being canceled in April after season 5.
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