Is Kelli Giddish coming back to SVU? For good? Amanda Rollins returns to Law & Order?

Rollins is back… sort of! After multiple guest appearances in season 25, fans are wondering if Kelli Giddish will return Law and order: SVU for good and whether she will reprise her role as Detective Amanda Rollins full-time after leaving the series in December 2022. Keep reading for all the details on the detective’s suspected comeback and whether fans could see her on her badge again.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (also known as Law and order: SVU or just SVU), is the procedural police drama that follows trained detectives from the New York City Police Department as they investigate sexually related crimes. Created by Dick Wolf, SVU is the first spin-off from Law & authority and the second in the Law & authority franchise next Law and Order: Organized Crime. The series debuted in September 1999 and stars Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni. It is one of the longest-running scripted live-action series in American TV history, having just concluded its 24th season in May 2023 and is currently filming its 25th season.

Giddish, who got her start on the soap opera All my children, played the role of Amanda Rollins, a detective with the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit. Her character first appeared in season 13, episode 1, “Scorched Earth,” and was introduced as a transfer from Atlanta. Her work partner was Detective Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) and Rollins has two daughters, Jesse and Billie, both from previous relationships. Giddish ultimately decided to leave the series midway through season 24 in December 2022 after 11 years of playing Rollins.

“Playing Rollins has been one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life,” she wrote on Instagram, announcing her departure. “I have been fortunate to be part of the Law & authority family for the past twelve years. There is simply no other character on TV quite like Rollins. She has grown and changed, and so have I. I started this show in my late twenties and I’m grateful that I got to spend so many of my adult years with Rollins in my life.

Is Kelli Giddish coming back? SVU?

Is Kelli Giddish coming back? SVU? Mariska Hargitay, who plays Captain Olivia Benson, revealed this in an interview with Variety in May 2024 that she campaigned to have Giddish and Rollins return to SVU full-time. She also confirmed that Giddish was fired by creator and executive producer Dick Wolf during season 24. “Kelli is my favorite actor to work with,” Hargitay said. “Kelli is my heart. It is a painful subject. I have a lot to say about the show, but I didn’t have enough.

She continued, “I don’t like not being listened to, especially when I’m right. That relationship was one of the most powerful relationships on television because you saw these two badass women, so flawed and so ready for each other.

SVU also appeared to set up Rollins’ return in season 25, episode 11, “Prima Nocta,” which saw Giddish return for a guest appearance. In the episode, Benson asks Rollins to meet for lunch. During the meal, Benson receives a call about a bride, Jenna, who locked herself in a room at her own wedding and won’t talk to anyone other than SVU. Benson takes the call and Rollins goes with her. Jenna tells Benson and Rollins that she was raped, and Rollins, who is still an active police officer but no longer part of the SVU, agrees to help her. Ultimately, Rollins is able to arrest a man named Leon after getting his DNA under her fingernails and on the rim of a glass during a fight to match him to three rape cases, including Jenna’s.

At the end of the episode, Benson confirmed that Rollins would not return to the series SVU. “So you’re saying you don’t want me back?” Rollins said, to which Benson couldn’t make her come back even if she wanted to. “I don’t have a desk for you,” she said. The episode ends with Benson giving Rollins advice to figure out what her life is and what she actually wants from her future, before deciding if she wants to return to the world. SVU knocked for her. “I don’t want SVU to be your safety net,” she said. “How about you take some time to figure out what makes you happy?”

The last time fans saw Rollins as a series regular was during the season 24 midseason finale, when she spontaneously married Assistant District Attorney Dominick “Sonny” Carisi in a courthouse ceremony in front of all her colleagues. She then left the New York Police Department to teach criminal behavior at Fordham University. Giddish’s first return came during SVU‘s Season 24 finale, which was part of a three-way crossover event with Law & authority, SVU And Organized crime. When she returned, she surprised her former colleagues with the news that she was pregnant. Rollins’ pregnancy coincided with Giddish’s real-life pregnancy, as the actress and her husband Beau Richards welcomed a son, Oldie, in June 2023. She also shares two sons, Ludo and Charlie, with ex-husband Lawrence Faulborn.

Although it is still unclear if Rollins could return SVU Fulltime, she told Detective Elliot Stabler during the season 24 crossover event that she was bored with her job at Fordham. “I love the students, but I do miss the feeling of solving a good mystery,” she said. Giddish had also told it before Variety during a December 2022 interview that the “door was not closed” on her return to the franchise as a series regular.

“The world that Dick Wolf has created now with all these shows – I mean, the crossovers that are happening, the people that are coming back. Chris Meloni was gone for twelve years and then his character came back. S. Epatha (Merkerson) is engaged Chicago Med. These characters are so loved and so well defined because you see them day in and day out,” she explained. “We are in people’s living rooms. So the audience loves these characters, they know us. Dick Wolf has such a fertile universe that people can pop up in different places. That’s really cool what he created.”

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