Law & Order: SVU Season 28 is on its way and is hopefully new and improved.
Christopher Meloni’s Stabler has already been reported to be returning, which could be good news, but a few other problems need a closer look.
Law & Order: SVU Season 27 went off-track in some important ways, and three of them made the series harder to watch than it should have been.
Noah Benson Needs to Stop Being Missing In Action
When Noah was a little boy, Law & Order: SVU had some great subplots around him, especially when Benson struggled to fit her identity as a mother into her need to give 100% of her time and energy to every survivor she worked with.
Unfortunately, recently, Noah has all but disappeared from our screens, and that’s unacceptable.
I’m not saying Noah has to be the center of every story — of course not; that would be ridiculous.
But Noah is a teenager now, and Benson has seen too many teenage boys act entitled to girls’ attention, some of them becoming rapists, so there is a story here that is as powerful as it is obvious: Benson worrying about how to make sure her son doesn’t experiment with harmful behavior toward girls.
The last couple of times Noah has been on-screen, it’s only been for quick cameos, one of which was a weird, out-of-character moment where he didn’t seem to know not to get into a stranger’s car.
That was apparently an excuse for Stabler to beat a creep up in the bathroom and make it clear how much he loves Benson. But come on — the son of SVU’s lead detective doesn’t know how predators operate?
And Law & Order: SVU Season 27 was even worse! The only time Noah appeared at ALL was to say hi to Velasco when Velasco made a late-night visit to their home.
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Get More of Our Coverage!What a waste, especially with so many plot possibilities around Benson trying to raise her teenage son to be different from many of the boys he goes to school with, while also continuing to be the captain of the Special Victims Unit.
Besides, we all know Noah is important to Benson, so why does it feel like he disappeared into the black hole of his half-sibling’s home and no longer exists?
Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Needs To Refocus On Survivors
I fell in love with SVU because it was so dedicated to telling survivors’ stories and offering them hope, but lately, the series has lost sight of that.
At least half of my reviews of Law & Order: SVU Season 27 complained that the survivor seemed to disappear halfway through the episode, when a dramatic plot twist led to a different case.
SVU is a procedural, but that’s not all it is, especially to real-life survivors.
Plot twists keep things exciting, but this show has become Law & Order: Plot Twist Unit, and half the time the survivor’s case disappears until the last five minutes, when they get a quick wrap-up.
That’s not what SVU is supposed to be about, and hopefully, Law & Order: SVU Season 28 will remember that.
In Fact, SVU Shouldn’t Rely on Plot Points So Much
One of my pet peeves is when an important story is nothing but a plot point, a bridge between Point A and Point B that isn’t fully explored.
It’s not fair to the characters or their fans when someone gets a potentially interesting story that is treated as background material, and Law & Order: SVU Season 27 did that a lot.
One of the most egregious was Benson’s contempt arrest.
A story in which Benson has to choose between her freedom and breaking her obligation to protect a victim’s identity would have been fascinating, especially if the writers remembered that her choices also affected Noah.
But we didn’t get any of that.
We got a promo making Benson’s contempt arrest seem like a central part of an episode — an arrest that lasted less than five minutes on screen — and a final scene in which Chief Tyran used that arrest to justify suspending Benson, another brief moment that didn’t last long.
Yawn.
That was a huge disappointment because the promised story never materialized. Instead, it became a bridge to another promising story, which led to… something so unimpressive that I don’t remember what it was.
I think it’s time to stop all of that and go back to basics — what about you?
Let us know in the comments what changes you most want on Law & Order: SVU Season 28.
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Hungry for more Law & Order: SVU conversations? Check out all of our Law & Order: SVU reviews of past seasons!
Law & Order: SVU is returning for a historic 28th season on NBC on October 8, 2026 at 9/8c and on Peacock on October 9, 2026.
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