As Law & Order: Special Victims Unit still has us reeling from the Season 27 premiere episode, Mariska Hargitay just confirmed  something fans have been waiting for her to dish on for a long time. That’s right, folks, the Bensler romance plot just got thicker.

During a Saturday appearance on the October 11 episode of TODAY with Laura Jarrett and Peter Alexander, Hargitay gleefully confirmed that Elliot Stabler is “in love” with Olivia Benson after sharing some behind-the-scene details on a crucial scene from the Season 27 SVU premiere.

You may recall hearing Christopher Meloni’s Stabler drop a casual “love you” to Benson as he closed his former partner’s car door at Captain Donald Cragen’s funeral. And as it turns out, Meloni completely ad-libbed that line. “He just threw that in,” Hargitay revealed during her visit to TODAY. “Oh yes he did.”

“Chris did it, and I think it’s because he just felt that was the truth of the scene,” Hargitay continued, adding that the circumstances surrounding their characters in the show — specifically noting the death of of their former captain — played a part in Meloni’s decision to ad-lib.

“Listen, we lost our captain, who was our north star, that we both came up under,” she explained. “It’s a deeply emotional scene and it’s also the beginning of a new era and the end of an old one. It was a very emotional scene, and as we know, those things happen when we lose somebody we love — we renew our connection, right? We plug in that way emotionally. I felt like he just needed to say it.”

And that’s when Hargitay dropped the bomb after taking a quick glance around set. “Besides,” she said happily. “Stabler’s in love with Benson. Hello!”

“Obviously!” Jarrett added.

At that point, Hargitay could do nothing more than shrug her shoulders and smile.

“That’s the headline that comes out of this conversation, let’s be very clear,” Alexander added.

Could Stabler and Benson be heading down the romantic path that fans have been yearning for for 27 years? Well, one thing’s for sure — the newest season of Law & Order: SVU just became even more of a must-watch.

Ice T weighs in on a potential Stabler-Benson romance

Hargitay isn’t the only SVU star excited to gush about the possibilities of Bensler. In fact, in an August 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly, longtime SVU star Ice T revealed that he’s been waiting for the characters to get together for a while now.

“I don’t know, that’s just the show,” he said of the constant teasing of a Bensler romance. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I’ve been telling them to get a room for a long time.”

So there you have it; Ice T is ready for a Bensler hookup to happen just as much as fans are!