As Law & Order: Special Victims Unit icon Chris Meloni celebrated joining the ranks of People‘s 2025 Sexiest Man Alive roundup, he’s showing some love for Elliot Stabler’s rugged new look on Organized Crime.

During Meloni’s first stint on SVU from 1999 to 2011, Stabler was rocking a head of hair and a clean-shaven look, stealing hearts with his swoon-worthy determination and delightful banter with his partner, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay). After returning to the franchise 10 years later for the 2021 debut of Law & Order: Organized Crime, Stabler arrived looking quite different.

Make no mistake, Stabler was always an eye-turner — case in point, his decades-long will-they-won’t-they connection with Benson. However, Meloni, as well as legions of fans, would agree that the hardened detective has certainly aged like a “fine wine.” While both Stabler eras are heartthrob-worthy, Meloni thinks Stabler has turned up the heat on Organized Crime.

“Organized Crime Stabler is sexier,” Meloni told People. “There’s a certain fine wine quality to him.”

Chris Meloni explains why Stabler grew a beard on Law & Order: OC

Easily the most striking difference between SVU Stabler and Organized Crime Stabler is his now iconic beard, which was Meloni’s idea for creating a divide between the two eras. After returning to the franchise as a widower following the death of his wife Kathy, Meloni wanted to grow out the beard to show how Stabler has processed the trauma. Meloni rocks the rugged bearded look, but it came as a shock to many fans who were accustomed to a clean-shaven Stabler.

“Elliot’s beard, it’s going to get its own credit [on the show],” Meloni teased during his People interview. “I’ll say this. I thought from the comments it was rather controversial, but it was this idea of a physical manifestation of the trauma that he’d gone through. Maybe him wanting to cover up or hide or be someone else or go away from who he was when he lost his wife, and then coming back. So I just thought about it and came up with it.”

Stabler’s beard was in full force during Season 4 of Law & Order: OC as he battled some inner demons and went undercover as Eddie “Ashes” Wagner in an Albanian drug ring. Stabler went for the big shave after his undercover assignment was finished as Meloni bid farewell to the look. According to Law & Order: OC‘s showrunner Ilene Chaiken, the decision to ditch the beard was a topic among Meloni and the crew.

“Well, let’s say it’s always been our intention, as the beard pretty much symbolized his undercover persona and his hiding from himself,” Chaiken told TV Line. “But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a discussion about it.”

Meloni couldn’t be happier to be back within the Law & Order world as Stabler continues kicking criminal butt on the OCCB, occasionally teaming up with Benson’s squad on cases and giving Bensler fans plenty to cross their fingers about.

“It is a comfortable place,” Meloni told People while chatting about playing Stabler for so many years on Law & Order. “It is a place I know very well, and yet I’m not tired of doing. It’s good storytelling with people that I like to work with. When they asked me to do OC, I’d never had this feeling. It was a little bit like going home.”