Mariska Hargitay And Ice-T Celebrated Starting Law And Order: SVU Season 26, And One Detail Immediately Made Me Laugh

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While fans still have a wait before the fall premieres of the 2024 TV schedule, the cast of Law & Order: SVU is already at work to bring the next batch of especially heinous crimes to NBC primetime. With NBC promoting Law & Order Thursdays during the Olympics, I know I'm glad to see the stars celebrating the beginning of a new season. Season 26 will take Mariska Hargitay one year closer to three decades as Olivia Benson and let Ice-T hit the 25-season milestone as Fin Tutuola. They teamed up for a post in honor of starting all over again this fall, and I had to laugh at one detail.

Admittedly, I don't think the detail was supposed to be funny, but my mind immediately went to a place for SVU that just isn't possible with most other shows. Take a look at what Hargitay posted on Instagram:

It's not a particularly silly photo, but my knee-jerk reaction to seeing the pair of longtime coworkers both holding up their hands was to laugh at the fact that they don't have enough fingers between them to hold up 26 in honor of the new season. They'd need another coworker to quite literally lend hands if they want to represent the total number of seasons with their fingers, and nobody else in the current cast has been on SVU for 20+ years.

Ice-T also posted a video of the SVU crew on set, showing how many fans show up to watch filming, with cameos from Mariska Hargitay as well as Aimé Donna Kelly (who isn't the Season 25 actor confirmed as a series regular for Season 26). Check it out:

Call me sentimental, but it's kind of heartwarming to not only see how many people came out to watch filming, but also how enthusiastic Ice-T still is about SVU. He is on the record as saying that he doesn't want to leave the show unless Fin is killed off, after all! As for Mariska Hargitay, she posted another photo to hype the start of Season 26, looking pretty glam as Benson:

Given that the show will of course still be about sexually-based offenses that are considered especially heinous, I think it's fair that we spend the last months of hiatus just enjoying the actors looking happy. Hitting 25 years in Special Victims wasn't exactly a season of fun for Benson earlier this year, as she was haunted by initially failing to save a girl named Maddie in a rare example of a serialized SVU storyline. For his part, Fin was missing for part of the season, which hopefully won't be the case again in Season 26.

The entire Law & Order universe will be a bit different starting this fall. While the original series and SVU are both slated to return to their Thursday night time slots on NBC in October, Organized Crime has been replaced in the 10 p.m. ET hour by Mark-Paul Gosselaar's Found. At the end of the spring season, news broke that Christopher Meloni's series would be moving from NBC primetime to streaming on Peacock as an original. It still remains to be seen when Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 will premiere to make a crossover with SVU at all plausible.

For the final weeks before Law & Order and SVU return on October 3, you can revisit both shows as well as Organized Crime streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription. SVU is also streaming for Hulu subscribers.