Amanda Rollins fans rejoice! Kelli Giddish is coming back to Law & Order: SVU. While she won't be a series regular, TVLine reports that she'll "make a bunch of appearances throughout the season" as she attempts to figure out her new path. Executive producers David Graziano and Julie Martin told the site that she'll have a new job in the Intelligence Unit of the NYPD, which sends officers all over the world.
That means Rollins will be traveling a lot, leaving husband Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino) to take care of their three kids. That will even allow for some storylines with those kids, as Graziano teased an episode involving Carisi and his stepdaughter "get involved in something together that they'll kind of have to work their way out of."
When SVU last saw Rollins, she was helping out with a case in a precinct that had very much changed since she left in 2022. She had turned down tenure as a professor and resigned, and it seemed like she was considering a permanent return to SVU. Benson (Mariska Hargitay), however, told her she didn't want to be Rollins' safety net and encouraged her to spread her wings a bit more before considering asking for her job back — especially considering that she had been unemployed for exactly one day before she joined the team on a case.
Hargitay has been very vocal about her desire for Giddish to return full-time and has placed the blame for her departure on people above her head, like Dick Wolf. "Kelli is my favorite actor to work with," Hargitay told Variety in May. "Kelli is my heart. It's a sore subject. I have a lot of say on the show, but I didn't have enough there."
Law & Order: SVU returns to NBC on October 3 alongside Law & Order. Law & Order: Organized Crime will return on Peacock at a later date.
