For the first time since back in May 2023, fans of NBC’s three Law & Order shows finally have some new episodes to look forward to in the coming weeks. After the long delays due to the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike, the original Law & Order, SVU, and Organized Crime will be back in January in the 2024 TV schedule, and some new looks at the new seasons have released. Personally, though, I’m more intrigued by the new taglines than I am by the images.
All three shows (currently available streaming with Peacock Premium subscription) are expected to return for a 13-episode season, in light of the strike delays. This presumably means that any major crossover events like the one that started the 2022-2023 TV season are out of the question, and it remains to be seen if any mini crossovers – particularly between SVU and Organized Crime – will happen. With more questions than answers even after the killer promo for the series, let’s dig into the new taglines!
Law & Order returns to the 8 p.m. ET time slot on NBC’s Thursday nights, and the newly-released tagline for Season 23 is “Truth Leads The Way.” The new season will take the show to the 500-episode milestone after Sam Waterston celebrated his own 400th episode back in the spring with the Season 22 finale. Change is coming in the form of a new character, and I can’t help but wonder if the tagline is a sign of what he’ll bring to the show.
News broke back in November that Jeffrey Donovan will not return to Law & Order as a series regular for Season 23, similarly to how Anthony Anderson departed between seasons the previous year. Like with Anderson’s Kevin Bernard, the previous season didn’t end with any sign that Donovan’s Frank Cosgrove was going anywhere. Unlike with Anderson, however, Donovan’s absence will be due to creative reasons rather than the actor deciding to move on.
Veep and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel alum Reid Scott has been cast to fill Donovan’s vacancy, according to Deadline, although details about his character aren’t available just yet. In light of the “Truth Leads The Way” tagline, could he be a detective who sticks to the book as much as possible to make sure that the bad guys end up behind bars? Or the kind of detective who wants to pursue the truth, regardless of what is best for Price, Maroun, and McCoy as the prosecutors?
Or does the tagline have absolutely nothing to do with the newcomer, and I’m just reaching? We may have to wait until Law & Order returns to get a clear idea of what to expect from Reid Scott’s new character, but it seems worth noting that the new look at the three L&O shows (seen below) features the full ensemble of Law & Order, which is not the case for the other two. And that brings us to…
Law & Order: SVU will be back at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday nights on NBC, and a bit more is known about the long-running show’s return than what has been released about Law & Order. SVU hits a major milestone in 2024 with the premiere of Season 25, and leading lady Mariska Hargitay wasted no time in posting set photos to celebrate once the strikes were over and production could begin. After all, as the tagline states, “The Fight Never Ends” on SVU.
