The 25 Best Episodes of ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’
With 500 episodes to choose from, narrowing down Law & Order: Special Victims Unit‘s best is a tough task, but one the writers of TV Guide Magazine were eager to take on.
Below, scroll through their selection of SVU‘s 25 best episodes airing across 24 seasons. Did your favorite make the cut? Let us know in the comments section, below.
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s Law & Order: SVU 25th Anniversary issue. For more inside scoop on the long-running NBC franchise, pick up a copy of the issue available on newsstands and for order online at LawAndOrderMagazine.com.
"Payback" (Season 1, Episode 1)
When a cabbie is found murdered, the Special Victims Unit isn’t sure why they were called in, saying sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but an officer on the scene quips, “Whoever did this sliced off his cigar and took it with him!” Cha-chung! This case introduces the legendary partnership of detectives Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and sets the tone for the series. Later, Benson has a heart-to-heart with her mother where we learn that Benson herself is a child of rape. —Alexis Rotnicki
"Closure" (Season 1, Episode 10)
A beeper goes off and the hand reaching for it belongs to Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters)…who’s in bed with a naked Benson! “Don’t get used to it,” she warns her grinning coworker. So begins a tumultuous on-off romantic relationship that finally ended in Season 15. Benson and Stabler’s case in the episode features guest star Tracy Pollan, who earned an Emmy nod for playing a rape victim who can perfectly describe the attack but is unable to identify her attacker. When she finally does, it sets the stage for a gripping Part 2 in Season 2. Similarly, Olivia’s negative reaction to Brian wanting to continue their relationship lays the groundwork for her difficult love life over the course of the series. —Zoe Woolrich
"Loss" (Season 5, Episode 4)
This explosive 2003 hour said goodbye-ish to Stephanie March’s ADA Alexandra Cabot, who is followed and finally gunned down by a drug lord’s assassin for prosecuting one of his dealers who raped and killed an undercover officer. In the shocking final moments, Benson and Stabler are summoned to a remote location, where a very much alive Cabot reveals that she needed to remain “dead” for her safety and was entering the Witness Protection Program. Cabot reemerged the next season for the trial of her shooter and then again to headline 2006’s spinoff series Conviction. —Damian Holbrook
"Scavenger" (Season 6, Episode 4)
“Our perp has a penchant for puzzles,” notes Captain Cragen (Dann Florek) of this episode’s memorable serial killer. No joke. As played by Doug Hutchison (above) — already a hall-of-fame villain for 1999’s The Green Mile — smug Humphrey Becker taunts police with clues to the locations of his victims. Benson and Stabler race from print shop to pay phone to florist, battling the clock to find survivors. In the end, we learn Becker had serious mommy issues (embodied by Anne Meara). —April P. Bernard
"Conscience" (Season 6, Episode 6)
In an episode full of shockers, a boy who vanished from a birthday party turns up dead. His confessed killer is just 13 — and the victim’s father (guest star Kyle MacLachlan), a psychiatrist named Brett Morton, grabs a gun in the courthouse and kills the boy. The unique insights of psychiatrist George Huang (BD Wong), FBI liaison to the SVU, are showcased when Morton attempts to pull off a staggering deception: He presents the shooting as a result of his extreme emotional disturbance, not premeditated. Skeptical Dr. Huang finds the dad’s testimony “almost too perfect.” —APB
"911" (Season 7, Episode 3)
In one of their most harrowing cases yet, the SVU team responds to a young girl’s 911 phone call. Nine-year-old Maria claims to be held hostage, but when the detectives begin to suspect it’s a hoax, only Benson — who keeps the child talking on the phone — remains convinced that Maria is a victim of child pornography. Chandra Wilson (Grey’s Anatomy) guest stars as FBI analyst Rachel Sorannis, who helps the team as they race to find Maria before her phone dies. Hargitay skillfully moves from compassion to sadness to hope to panic to, finally, relief, so it’s no wonder she won an Emmy Award for her captivating performance. —AR
"Venom" (Season 7, Episode 18)
Det. Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) barrels into the precinct after his son Ken (Ernest Waddell) has been collared for digging up a vacant lot in the middle of the night. Ken — who has used his one call to ask Benson, not his dad, for help — makes only a cryptic claim of overhearing a confession in a bar about a body buried at the site. With Ken refusing to talk further, Tutuola’s abilities as a father come into question. A DNA test leads to Ken’s cousin Darius Parker (hip-hop star Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), setting up the Season 8 finale and a painful family reunion. —ZW
"Paternity" (Season 9, Episode 9)
How to make an episode memorable: Start with a boy running down the street with blood on his face. As Stabler bonds with little Tommy, fatherhood, and questions about paternity (does biology take priority?) really affect the detective. Tensions are also high at home for Elliot, who wonders if his heavily pregnant wife Kathy (Isabel Gillies) is having his child following their brief prior separation. When she goes into labor after she and Benson are T-boned on the way to the doctor, what matters most is both mom and baby surviving. The accident leads to an emotional first Benson-Stabler hug. —Meredith Jacobs
"Undercover" (Season 9, Episode 15)
In this spine-chillingly tense hour, Benson goes undercover at a women’s prison to investigate corrections officer Lowell Harris (Johnny Messner, above), a suspected rapist. In a violent basement confrontation, Harris overpowers Benson, who narrowly escapes. Later, his victim identifies Harris as her rapist because of a distinctive mole on his genitals—which Benson also seems aware of. When asked if she was raped herself, Benson starkly replies, “It’s the closest I’ve ever come.” Hargitay earned her fifth Emmy nomination for her no-holds-barred acting in this one. —AR
"Wildlife" (Season 10, Episode 7)
The strange circumstances of a young model’s death — mauled by a tiger and found with an exotic bird in her purse — propel Stabler into the dangerous world of exotic animal smuggling and highlight his willingness to go all in to solve a case. Stabler teams up with rapper Gots Money (played by Big Boi from Outkast) to pose as a customs agent and get close to the smugglers (guest stars Reg E. Cathey and Andrew Divoff), which puts his safety on the line and further destabilizes his already strained marriage. This wild episode even has a moment for “Bensler” shippers, when Benson hastily goes undercover as a prostitute and cozies up to her partner to preserve his cover. —AR
"Zebras" (Season 10, Episode 22)
In this roller-coaster season finale, the team tackles what appears to be an open-and-shut case after a woman is found dead in Central Park. But a filing error forces Judge Donnelly (Judith Light) to let the killer go free. When another woman is murdered, Munch (Richard Belzer) and Tutuola reluctantly turn to Munch’s conspiracy-theorist ex-wife (Carol Kane) for insight. Filled with unexpected twists — one of their own betrays the SVU team!—the episode takes its title from the medical phrase “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras” — as in, the simplest explanation usually applies. —AR
"Behave" (Season 12, Episode 3)
A powerful, frustrating episode, this 2010 outing brought to light the horrifying backlog of unprocessed rape kits across the country. Jennifer Love Hewitt delivers a heartbreaking turn as Vicki, a traumatized woman who tells Benson and Stabler that she’s been sexually assaulted repeatedly over the years by the same stalker. Their investigation leads Benson to California, where Law & Order: LA’s Detective Winters (Skeet Ulrich) helps her connect DNA samples to the suspect’s out-of-state crimes, netting them a conviction and a cathartic moment for the perp’s now-vindicated victim. —DH
"Bombshell" (Season 12, Episode 19)
Stabler and Benson are Mr. and Mrs.! Undercover, that is, at a swingers’ club, to investigate a stabbing. Just imagine her in a va-va-va-voom strapless dress and heels, holding hands with her man, and you’ll see why “Bensler” fans went nuts. The partners’ visits to the dimly lit Swing Set lounge — where Rose McGowan appears as a seductive regular — provided some truly fun moments, like the hostess purring the toast “To quenching your every thirst” while the two raise their glasses…of club soda. Or Liv talking about how“Elliot and I have been into each other for so long….” Tell us something we don’t know! —APB
"Rhodium Nights" (Season 13, Episode 23)
When a 16-year-old girl is found dead in a pool at a raunchy bachelor party for the police commissioner’s son, Benson is determined to go after the high-profile guests. But with pressure coming down from the top brass, Captain Cragen says to work the case quietly. The investigation leads to a hired escort service run by Delia Wilson (Brooke Smith), whose business caters to the city’s rich and powerful. The shocking episode brings Olivia’s ex, former detective Brian Cassidy — now working security for a rival escort service — back into Benson’s life. The surprises don’t end there. As the team closes in on Delia following an ex-governor’s murder, Cragen wakes up in bed next to Delia’s top girl, whose throat has been cut. Talk about a cliffhanger! —Lisa Chambers
"Deadly Ambition" (Season 14, Episode 15)
Rollins’ (Kelli Giddish) family again takes center stage, part of an ongoing story arc, as her manipulative sister Kim (Lindsay Pulsipher, above right, with Giddish) shows up pregnant with a shiner from her boyfriend. Rollins later shoots him (he pulled a gun), and Kim’s lies to Internal Affairs about what happened land her sister in a world of hurt — and in jail. Is Kim even pregnant? She leaves Amanda’s apartment empty and her life a complete mess. —MJ
"Born Psychopath" (Season 14, Episode 19)
Shameless’ Ethan Cutkosky (above, with Danny Pino and Hargitay) guest stars in one of the show’s most chilling episodes as a 10-year-old whose parents (Hope Davis, Alex Manette) think they have his manipulation and abuse of his sister under control. But then he slices his mom’s hand with a knife, kills a neighbor’s dog and ties his sister to the bed and sets a fire — and he shoots Amaro (Pino). “He doesn’t have any emotions,” explains Dr. Huang. The “creep factor,” as Cutkosky put it when the character returned in Season 22, is real. —MJ
"Surrender Benson" (Season 15, Episode 1)
“She’s a survivor,” Munch says of Benson, and while we’ve known that from the start, this hour is still hard to watch. It’s the culmination of a brutal, intense two-parter in which Benson is kidnapped and held captive by sadistic serial rapist and killer William Lewis (a cold and unhinged Pablo Schreiber) for four days. Once she frees herself and gets the upper hand, Benson’s anger is unleashed and her actions come under scrutiny during Lewis’ trial later in the season. Though she knows better than to blame herself, “he still got to me,” she admits to therapist Dr. Lindstrom (Bill Irwin). —MJ
"Wonderland Story" (Season 15, Episode 5)
“Ask not for whom mandatory retirement tolls, it tolls for thee.” So says witty, soulful Munch in a speech at his SVU farewell party, which brings out the whole cast and then some. (Homicide: Life on the Street’s Clark Johnson, for one, represents Munch’s Baltimore days.) The laughter-filled scene plays longer than you might expect, but Richard Belzer’s beloved character deserved every second of tribute. After a cameo in that season’s finale, Munch returned one last time, in Season 17, to say a lovely goodbye after babysitting Olivia’s son, Noah. —APB
"Amaro’s One-Eighty" (Season 15, Episode 11)
When following protocol leads to Amaro (Pino) shooting an unarmed Black teenager, the detective grapples with the aftermath. Facing internal investigations, public outrage, and threats against his family, he struggles with the weight of his actions. After a grand juror questions whether he believes he did everything right, Amaro replies, “There’s no right way to shoot a 14-year-old boy.” Meanwhile, this is the last regular appearance for Captain Cragen, who announces his retirement at the end of the episode — but don’t worry, he returns to guest star in Season 16 and again in Season 23. —AR
"Gambler’s Fallacy" (Season 15, Episode 17)
Det. Rollins’ addiction takes a perilous turn when she finds herself entangled in the dangerous world of organized crime. Owing $15,000 to an illegal gambling club, Rollins negotiates an agreement with the club managers (guest stars Donal Logue and Sherri Saum) to protect her job, but Tutuola and Amaro begin to suspect that something is wrong. All bets are off for Rollins, who appears to be spiraling deeper into corruption. Though she is ultimately cleared of criminal charges — and Logue’s club manager turns out to be undercover cop Lt. Declan Murphy from Manhattan’s vice squad — she faces lasting repercussions, with Benson telling her, “Lieutenant Murphy may trust you. I don’t.” —AR
"Daydream Believer" (Season 16, Episode 20)
Creator Dick Wolf’s worlds collided in 2015 with an ambitious three-part crossover with Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. that follows Benson as she helps the Windy City cops track down Dr. Greg Yates (Dallas Roberts), a serial killer and rapist who had terrorized New York years earlier. After the maniac flees Chicago, P.D.’s Sgt. Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) and Det. Erin Lindsay (Sophia Bush) follow him back to NYC, where the two squads work together to nab the guy…but tragically, not before he claims one of Chicago’s own. —DH
"Heartfelt Passages" (Season 17, Episode 23)
This was one tense, heart-piercing season finale, all hinging on the downfall of sleazy corrections officer Gary Munson (Brad Garrett), who’d been indicted on rape charges in the previous episode. ADA Barba, who’s trying the case, is getting death threats, not in note form but delivered in person! And Munson is out on bail when his wife, Lisa (Karina Logue), attempts to get the kids out of their home. Even though it’s his last day at SVU, recently promoted Sgt. Mike Dodds (Andy Karl) volunteers to go with Benson to help. But in a tense standoff, Mike’s noble refusal to leave Lisa alone with her volatile husband earns him a bullet to the gut. Just when we think he’s going to make it, he doesn’t. The episode also delves more deeply into Benson’s now-loving personal relationship with Internal Affairs Capt. Ed Tucker (Robert John Burke). —APB
"The Undiscovered Country" (Season 19, Episode 13)
“A man shouldn’t do what he can. He should do what he must, without regard for consequence or repercussion. That’s what makes us moral,” DA Jack McCoy (Law & Order’s Sam Waterston) quotes Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) in his eulogy of the executive ADA in the opening scene. That’s what ADA Rafael Barba believes he’s doing in a right-to-die case when he turns off the machine breathing for a baby with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome and no brain activity after the mother can’t do it. By his action, Barba risks his career and his freedom, and Peter Stone (Chicago Justice’s Philip Winchester) moves to SVU to prosecute the case. “I’m you now,” Barba, who resigns, tells Benson in his farewell (this was Raúl Esparza’s last episode as a regular). “You opened my heart.” —MJ
"Return of the Prodigal Son" (Season 22, Episode 9)
After 10 years away from the drama, hothead Det. Elliot Stabler returns to New York from Rome — for the task force that would launch his spinoff, Organized Crime. His wife Kathy is seriously injured when a car bomb goes off, and she eventually dies from her wounds, devastating Stabler and their five children. Emotions run high, but nothing beats the charged moment in the episode’s opening minutes when Benson locks eyes with her former partner amid the aftermath of the blast. —Ethan Alter
"King of the Moon" (Season 24, Episode 15)
Hargitay directed this emotional hour (one of eight times she’s stepped behind the camera so far for SVU), which showcases guest star Bradley Whitford (near right) as quirky neurologist and author Dr. Pence Humphreys, who claims to have raped and smothered his wife of40 years, Winifred (Nancy Travis). Unfortunately, his dementia makes him an unreliable narrator at best, and Benson and Carisi aren’t buying his confession — especially since there’s zero DNA evidence pinning him to the crime. —EA
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