LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Boss Previews the ‘Most Emotional Episode of the Year’

More than three years after their split, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Ed Tucker (Robert Burke) reunite—under very different circumstances—on the Thursday, January 30 episode of LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.

“She has not been in touch with him [since the split],” executive producer Warren Leight previews. “You lose touch with someone and you think they’re going to be where they were when you last saw them. He isn’t; there’s a lot of changes in his life. And all of them are sort of explosive for her life.”

Leight declined to confirm whether those shifts included a marriage for Tucker, who appears to be wearing a ring in the episode’s photos—”I can’t tell you how many times I have to tell actors to take their damn wedding rings off,” he jokes—but notes the reunion will be bittersweet.

“He’s the one she let get away,” Leight points out. “Since then, she’s focused on her job and [her son] Noah, but there hasn’t been a major love. Of course, [her ex-boyfriend] Cassidy [has] come back; he’s like one of those asteroids that just keeps coming back into your orbit, but then he flings way out of your orbit again. So when [Olivia and Tucker] meet up again, time has passed. We find him in a very different situation than when we last saw him. He’s moved on. And it’s bittersweet.”

The hour, which also includes the squad investigating a fellow cop’s attack, will be a a difficult one for all involved. “That’s, I think, by far the most emotional episode of the year,” Leight says. “It’ll come up at the midpoint of the season [episode-wise] and there’s a lot that comes up in about choices made and sand through the hourglass. It’s a tough storyline and tough procedural element to it, but it’s also it’s an episode ultimately about letting go, which no one does until they have to.”