Law and Order: Special Victims Unit or Law and Order: SVU is an American crime drama television series that has been created by Dick Wolf. The show which is based in New York City made its debut on NBC back on September 20, 1999. The seventeenth season came to an end in the previous year and it has been renewed for and 18th season.
It has come to light that Rick Eid who was associated with the original Law and Order show for a period of three years is back as the showrunner of Law and Order: SVU. Rick will be replacing Warren Leight who has been running the show for quite some time.
Rick Eid will be working in collaboration with Julie Martin to run the show. As for Julie Martin, she is reportedly quite excited at the prospect of being able to run the show with Rick.
She stated- “It’s always great to have people come in who haven’t been doing it for years and they have a fresh perspective and they have a different take on things and a different energy and just infuse what we have with some new blood.”
Warren Leight has been running the show for a period of five years. However, he has signed a contract with Sony Pictures Television and thus will not be able to squeeze out time for Law and Order anymore.
He revealed that it was not easy for him to make the decision of leaving the show. He feels that he left the show with a cliffhanger and now a new team will have the difficult task of tying up the loose ends.
Jules Martin also revealed that she will be deeply involved in the production process of the 18th season of the show. She is of the opinion that the show will benefit from the inputs that she, being a female will be able to provide regarding the sexual assault cases.
It was seen that during the final episode of the previous season, Agent Dodds met his death at the hands of Gary Munson who is a corrupt corrections officer.
Gary Munson, played by Brad Garret was seen shooting Agent Dodds down during the finale. It has been revealed that the Andy Karl’s character of Agent Dodds will not be making an appearance in the upcoming season.
The death of Agent Mike Dodds was a big blow to the entire SVU squad. It will be interesting to see how the members of the squad manage to cope up, after losing one of their own. The death of Mike Dodds was a quite emotional moment in the season finale of season 17 of Law and Order: SVU.
Andy Karl who played the character of Mike Dodds himself stated- “This it is for me.” He added that character had become an important part of the show who turned out to be of major help for the SVU. He went on to state that the death of the character was quite tragic in nature and it will definitely have some effect on everyone else on the show.
Confirmation has been received that Mariska Hargitay, who plays the lead role of Olivia Benson in the show will be coming back to reprise her role in the upcoming season.
Martin recently stated that she is happy that Mariska will be coming back to the show in the upcoming season. She has already started planning the things that could be done with her character in season 18.
Fans of the show are of the opinion that the character of Olivia Benson should become romantically involved with Robert John Burke’s Captain Ed Tucker. Well, it seems the fans are in for some good news as it has been confirmed by Mariska herself that the upcoming season will explore the romantic involvement of Ed and Olivia in a deeper manner.