Law & Order: SVU has set the air date for Kelli Giddish’s final episode — and with it comes news that may make saying goodbye to Detective Amanda Rollins a bit easier.
Giddish’s final SVU episode will air on Thursday, December 8. No further details are available about that episode just yet. But with it also comes news that Giddish will guest star on Law & Order: Organized Crime later this season, which means SVU can’t be killing off Rollins and that her relationship with Carisi (Peter Scanavino) could continue off-screen.
However, things aren’t looking good for Rollins right now on SVU. She was shot protecting a witness in the premiere crossover (with Law & Order and Organized Crime). Then, when she returned to work, she admitted to Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) that she realized how careless she’d been with her life. Benson got it: She realized she now has something (her daughters, Carisi) to lose.
The following episode showed Rollins in therapy (though she’d been missing appointments), then pulling out her gun when her daughters screamed from the bedroom (about a monster in the closet). She knew she scared them. In fact, later, she waited around for Carisi to finish his work because “I don’t want to be alone” and “boring’s … about all I can handle right now.” Though she was worried about messing up their relationship, he assured her she hadn’t yet.
But could one of Rollins’ lines from the third episode — “Why does it not feel like enough?” she asked Carisi after being unable to stop a victim from returning to her abusive boyfriend — be setting up how SVU will write her out? Maybe she decides she needs to take time away from the NYPD. And then the only question will be how she ends up back in its orbit for her Organized Crime guest spot, unless she’s simply switching units? We’ll have to wait and see.
Giddish announced her exit in Season 24 in August with a statement posted to her Instagram. “I wanted to address the chatter I’ve seen online and let everyone know that this will, indeed, be my last season on Law & Order: SVU. Playing Rollins has been one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life. I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of the Law & Order family for the last 12 years. There is simply no other character on TV like Rollins. She’s grown and changed, and I have as well. I started on this show when I was in my late 20s and I’m grateful I got to spend so many of my adult years with Rollins in my life,” she wrote.
Law & Order: SVU, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC
