The following contains discussions of violence and sexual assault.
After more than 25 years on the air, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has seen a lot of cast changes, but Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson has been there since the pilot episode. Hargitay has effectively become the face of the series thanks to her commitment to her role – and her real-life commitment to survivors of assault.
Benson rose through the ranks from a new member of the SVU in the pilot to become the Captain in the more recent seasons. The character’s best episodes showcase Hargitay’s acting abilities, but they also showcase Benson’s empathetic nature and her character’s journey.
“Payback”
Season 1, Episode 1
It’s not often that the first episode of a series is considered one of the best. “Payback,” however, is consistently considered one of the best episodes to represent SVU as a whole. The episode features a dead cab driver who is actually a war criminal, murdered by some of his victims.
The first episode of the series immediately lets the audience know who Benson is – someone who is always going to put the victims first. She empathizes with the women revealed as the killers because of her work and her own history, and it’s easy to see why she is willing to cross lines in later seasons.
While this episode showcases Benson’s empathy and introduces her history with her mother, it’s also a great showcase for her partner. “Payback” is one of Christopher Meloni’s best SVU episodes as Elliot Stabler because he offers a balance to Benson’s character and establishes their dynamic well.
“I’m Going To Make You A Star”
Season 21, Episode 1
“I’m Going To Make You A Star” is one of many SVU episodes inspired by real cases. This particular hour of SVU is inspired by the Harvey Weinstein case, featuring an actor accused of sexually assaulting multiple women.
The case is not why this is one of the best Olivia Benson episodes, though. Instead, it’s because the season 21 episode demonstrates how far Olivia has come in the series. In “Payback,” Benson is a new addition to SVU. Though she’s a good detective, she has to learn to handle SVU cases.
Benson becomes one of the best detectives in her unit at interacting with survivors of sexual assault. Here, her work and her empathy are showcased when she is promoted to the Captain of SVU. After spending more than 20 years with SVU, Benson is now the one looking out for the new detectives and deciding how cases get worked.
“Zebras”
Season 10, Episode 21
“Zebras” is a memorable episode because it’s one of the first episodes to feature someone SVU works closely with turning out to be a killer. The episode sees one of the crime scene technicians begin killing people to cover up his own mistakes.
In a lot of the episodes that place Benson and Stabler in life-or-death situations, it’s Stabler who gets to be the hero, saving Benson and the victims from the bad guys. Here, however, their roles are reversed.
It’s Benson who discovers Stabler taken hostage by the lab tech and manipulates the tech into believing she’s there for him, not her partner. It’s a great look at just how well she can manipulate a suspect when she needs to, and a great snapshot at how good she can be working undercover.
There are not a lot of episodes that require Benson to play negotiator, either, but she’s very good at it when forced into that position. “Zebras” is a great way to show so many facets of the kind of police officer Benson is.
“Scorched Earth”
Season 13, Episode 1
Overall, season 13 offers a fairly standard SVU premiere episode. The episode, however, is the first one in which Olivia Benson has to face that Elliot Stabler is no longer her partner – and it wasn’t her choice.
She requested to be transferred in the past when there were concerns that the two were too close. Even when she briefly worked in cyber crimes or went undercover to help the FBI, however, she returned to SVU and partnered right back up with Stabler. That was her choice. In “Scorched Earth,” she is blindsided.
Benson is told that Stabler has officially retired from the SVU without telling her. She tries to hold herself together, but it’s devastating when she falls apart, sobbing at the loss while in a dark corner of the precinct.
It’s this moment that makes Benson’s constant pushing Stabler away when Law & Order: Organized Crime begins understandable. Stabler essentially abandoning her without telling her himself shatters their friendship for a long time, even though his eventual apology and explanation to her make sense.
“Surrender Benson”
Season 15, Episode 1
There are quite a few impressive SVU episodes for Benson that kick off new seasons of the show, and “Surrender Benson” is another one. This is part of the William Lewis arc in SVU, an arc that changed everything for Benson.
It picks up after Lewis (Pablo Schreiber) kidnaps Benson. He tortures her, both physically and psychologically, until she turns the tables on him. The episode alternates between the other SVU detectives searching for her and Benson’s ordeal.
Because Benson spent the first 12 years of the show as Stabler’s partner, she was often the level-headed detective there to calm down the hot head. After her experience being kidnapped by William Lewis, this is the first time in her story that we believe she could cross the line and kill a suspect, and that’s down to Hargitay’s performance.
The episode is harrowing for Benson and the audience, and it marks a shift in the show as Benson has to contend with being a survivor herself.
“Beast’s Obsession”
Season 15, Episode 20
Season 15 kicks off with William Lewis, and Benson ends the season working through the trauma she experienced. The culmination of the William Lewis arc is here. Benson willingly puts herself in his hands to save a young woman whom he has kidnapped, even after everything she has been through.
It’s another episode that puts Benson through the wringer. She is willing to take whatever Lewis dishes out to keep the young woman he kidnapped from experiencing much of the same trauma, and that includes allowing Lewis to put a gun to her head and repeatedly pull the trigger with an empty chamber.
The audience is tortured along with her here, and this episode sets the stage for Benson’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and later connections to victims. Benson has always been able to sympathize with victims, but this is when she truly knows how they feel.
“Undercover”
Season 9, Episode 15
“Undercover” still ranks among the most disturbing episodes of SVU more than 15 years after it originally aired. While Benson had gone undercover for the FBI in earlier episodes of the series and had partnered up with Stabler briefly for undercover operations, this is one that isolates her the most.
Benson goes undercover in a women’s prison as an inmate. She volunteers to do the job after it’s clear that a guard has not only been raping the inmates, but also raped one of their daughters outside the prison.
Her only point of contact with her squad is Fin, who is undercover as a prison guard. Her investigation exposes the problems with the system, but it’s also a terrifying episode for her as she comes very close to becoming a victim of one of the guards herself.
“Paternity”
Season 9, Episode 9
Seasons 7, 8, and 9 see Stabler facing problems with his family as his wife files for divorce. It also sees him facing problems with Benson when they are deemed too codependent as partners. Those three seasons have some incredibly emotional episodes as a result, and this is one for Benson.
This episode does not feature Benson doing much work on the case of the week. By this point, Stabler is back with his family, and his wife is expecting their fifth child. While he is working a case, Benson volunteers to take his wife to her latest doctor’s appointment, but the two end up in a horrific car accident.
It’s Benson who is there for the other woman, helping the paramedics when they cannot get into the car to her. She also helps deliver the newest Stabler into the world.
This is an incredibly emotional and dramatic episode out of context, but in context with seasons 7, 8, and 9 being the ones in which it very much seemed Benson and Stabler would become romantic, the episode is even more powerful for her.
“Fault”
Season 7, Episode 19
This episode is often highlighted as the tipping point for the dynamic between Benson and Stabler. Though they are close before this episode, it’s here that the idea is floated that the two of them might be too close.
The SVU team works a case involving a man who has kidnapped two children. Both Benson and Stabler choose to save one another over stopping the suspect at different points in the episode, and both actors do amazing work.
While most SVU episodes see the two work on instinct, stopping someone without much of a thought, here they both overthink everything. They are not willing to put each other in danger, and it costs them the life of one of the kids.
It helps to get inside Benson’s head a little bit, too, regarding her feelings for Stabler, since she requests for them to get new partners after the case. She starts to agree that maybe they are too close, even if she does not voice that out loud.
“911”
Season 7, Episode 3
Because “911” is about 20 years old, there is some debate among SVU fans as to whether it is really Olivia Benson’s best episode. It is.
Benson gets the spotlight here instead of the wider SVU team. She is stopped from leaving the precinct for the day for a date when a 911 call comes in from a little girl being held against her will. Olivia spends hours on the phone with the girl as technicians try to locate her and piece together her story.
Benson is exhausted after already having worked all day. She is committed to helping the little girl, though, even when the rest of the team thinks it might be a hoax. Hargitay spends most of her episode talking into a phone, acting alone, and providing a thoroughly convincing performance of someone who has to do the right thing.
“911” is the quintessential Olivia Benson. It is also the episode that earned Mariska Hargitay an Emmy for her role, an award she had been nominated for multiple times, but never won before. It made her the first Law & Order franchise lead to win an Emmy.
“911” remains Olivia Benson’s best hour of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
- Release Date
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September 20, 1999
- Showrunner
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Michael S. Chernuchin, David Graziano
- Directors
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Jean de Segonzac, David Platt, Peter Leto, Alex Chapple, Juan José Campanella, Norberto Barba, Constantine Makris, Martha Mitchell, Arthur W. Forney, Michael Slovis, Steve Shill, Alex Zakrzewski, Michael Pressman, Helen Shaver, Mariska Hargitay, Michael Smith, Ted Kotcheff, Fred Berner, Jonathan Kaplan, Holly Dale, Jonathan Herron, Jud Taylor, Adam Bernstein, Jim McKay
- Writers
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Judith McCreary, David Graziano, Michael S. Chernuchin, Daniel Truly, Jonathan Greene, Amanda Green, Lisa Marie Petersen, Allison Intrieri, Lawrence Kaplow, Jose Molina, Matt Klypka, Michael R. Perry, Samantha Corbin-Miller, Barbie Kligman, Robert F. Campbell, Candice Sanchez McFarlane, Gwendolyn M. Parker, René Balcer, Robert Nathan, Wendy West, Speed Weed, Ryan Causey, Chris Brancato, Christos N. Gage
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Mariska Hargitay
Olivia Benson
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Ice-T
Odafin ‘Fin’ Tutuola
