GUYS, I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news these days when it comes to our baby boy, Christopher Meloni.
First, it was his Law & Order: SVU spin-off series, Law & Order: Organized Crime getting pushed back until 2021, and now, it’s the news that Chris won’t even be in the 22nd season premiere of Law & Order !
RELATED STORIES
Fans were all kinds of jazzed when the news broke earlier this year that Elliot Stabler would be making his return on the season 22 premiere of *Law & Order*!
It was the reunion fans had been waiting for for literally a decade!
Back in May, showrunner Warren Leight revealed to fans on the *Law & Order: SVU* podcast that Chris would be back on their screens soon!
“It’s pretty clear that Elliot will be in the SVU season opener,” Warren revealed .
“I think that much I know. Whether we get to see his family as well remains to be seen.”
He continued: “We had heard distant thunder about Chris Meloni coming back in the fall and we were going to lay a little groundwork for that.”
“We were going to see [wife] Kathy Stabler come back very upset. Her son had been rolled by a team of ne’er-do-wells and may have been drugged, and we were going to revisit [Benson’s half-brother] Simon’s seeming overdose and we were going to get to know the stresses on the Stablers — what had happened to the Stabler family after Elliot both left SVU and apparently left them.”
Since season 21 of the series ended abruptly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of the groundwork just wasn’t laid properly for Elliot’s return.
“We were just going to lay some groundwork down in anticipation of Elliot’s return of course in his own series,” Warren explained.
“We had the sense that the first episode of next year for SVU was going to bring Elliot back, so we were going to foreshadow that and explain a little more what happened to Simon.”
Of course, all of this is down the tubes now as NBC has announced their fall line-up and *everything* has been delayed.
Like literally, everything has been delayed!
It’s like we’re in a global pandemic or something!
Last week, fans got the news that the new season of *SVU* wouldn’t be airing until November!
That info came in addition to the announcement that Elliot Stabler would not be returning to our TV screens for at least another four months!
Yep, that’s right! As if the news for *Law & Order* fans couldn’t get any worse, Chris’ highly anticipated spinoff has been pushed until 2021!
I mean, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised as Chris literally told us earlier this summer Law & Order: Organized Crime hadn’t even started filming yet!
Speaking with SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” back in July, the actor revealed that he had “yet to see a script” for the upcoming series, and that it was still up in the air as to when production would resume.
“You get new edicts out of New York City and New York state, and for good reason,” Chris explained.
“And then you get new rules and regulations coming out of Universal, and then from the unions. You have to service a lot of masters right now, just to make sure everybody is safe, right? What’s the new norm for shooting?”
Now, Warren Leight is confirming on Twitter that Chris’ cameo on *SVU* has also been pushed back due to production rescheduling.
In response to a curious fan, Warren tweeted , “These days all plans are subject to change. And then they change again. And again.”
He continued: “For now, we won’t reintroduce Stabler until the night of his Organized Crime premiere.”
He then tagged the Law & Order writers and gave them a shoutout for being “NIMBLE this year.”
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
