Anyone who watches Law and Order: Special Victims Unit knows that, despite the show being a procedural investigating heinous crimes, detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) are the IT couple – even if they aren’t actually together. Their chemistry is palpable from the very pilot episode when they were just fresh-faced detectives in the Special Victims Unit, and it only grew as the seasons went on. In any other show, it would have made perfect sense to capitalize on their chemistry and work towards making them a couple. But considering SVU is first and foremost about the law and order element, it never dove into Benson and Stabler in the romance department. Another thorn in their side was the fact that, for all of the seasons he and Benson were partners, Stabler was married.
Stabler departed SVU after Season 12 and didn’t return until Season 22, at which time the showrunners decided to also kill off his wife, Kathy Stabler (Isabel Gillies), in brutal fashion. It was a tragic moment for Stabler’s character as he had just lost his wife and the mother of his children, and although it was a major shock for fans, Kathy’s death opened the door for a potential Benson and Stabler romance. However, 26 seasons in and the pair haven’t shared so much as a kiss. Sure, there was that moment they shared in the kitchen, that near kiss that Benson pulled away from, but there’s been no talk of it since, and we’ve yet to have a moment similar. So what was the point in killing Kathy off? Was it just for shock value? Because it clearly wasn’t to benefit Benson and Stabler.
Kathy’s Death Was Unnecessarily Cruel
As members of the Special Victims Unit, Benson and Stabler have seen their fair share of horrendous things, but it hit too close to home when it was Kathy who was caught in the crossfire of their job. After a decade away, Stabler and Kathy return to New York after hearing that Benson is receiving an award. But while Stabler is on a phone call, Kathy is caught in a car bombing. However, this isn’t what kills her. She is left in a comatose state from her wounds and is brought to the hospital, where she regains consciousness just long enough to express her delight in seeing Benson again after so long. She also remarked how she couldn’t believe she and Stabler hadn’t spoken in a decade and how she didn’t know he was back on the job.
She later suffered cardiac arrest and a ruptured spleen, which ultimately killed her. It was such a brutal way to kill off her character as she not only went through the car bombing, but she makes it to the hospital, comes out of a coma, survives cardiac arrest, only to die from a ruptured spleen. The show put her through so much just to kill her off by the end of the episode. Not to mention, the moments she is awake, she’s discussing how nice it is to see Benson and Stabler together again, making it feel more and more obvious that her death was initially intended to benefit their relationship.
Only that clearly isn’t happening. And sure, it wasn’t something that was going to happen immediately. Stabler needed time to mourn, and we saw him go through intense PTSD from the whole situation, which eventually led to an intervention with his children and Benson. But now, seasons later, there’s still been no development. He’s done his mourning, the show has moved past that arc. At this point, it’s tiring seeing the show draw out the Benson and Stabler relationship because it feels like it’s never going to happen. Kathy was the biggest obstacle, but even with her out of the picture, everything between Benson and Stabler is at a standstill.
‘SVU’ Fans Were Hateful Towards Kathy
One thing about SVU fans, they’re passionate, which is great until it goes too far. And that’s exactly what happened after Kathy’s death. Benson and Stabler shippers in particular really hated her character, even though she didn’t actually do anything to warrant said hate. But because she was the one thing standing in the way of the ship, she was treated unfairly by fans. Kathy certainly had her moments where she wasn’t great, but she wasn’t a villain like some paint her out to be.
The show didn’t help either. It made her seem whiny and nagging, when in reality the things she was asking Stabler for was nothing unreasonable. He was always putting her second to Benson and his job, and she just wanted to be number one in his life again, and that shouldn’t be too much to ask for as his wife. Yet it led to so much unnecessary hate that when Kathy died, her death was celebrated among the SVU fandom. And sure, this in itself is harmless as Kathy is a fictional character, but things went too far when fans started sending hate towards the actress herself.
Related
‘SVU’ Needs To Ditch the Benson/Stabler Will-They-Won’t-They for Good
It’s been 25 years. It’s time.
The hate became so bad that Gillies penned an open letter addressing the comments and the fandom as a whole. In the letter, she expresses her excitement about coming back to the show and working with Hargitay and Meloni again, even if it was only for one episode, and her character was going to die at the end of it. She went on to say that she opened up her social media the day after the episode aired, only to find her feed flooded with hate tweets directed toward her character and herself, and it brought her to tears. She even mentions in the letter that she understands everyone wants Benson and Stabler together, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to say such cruel things to real people over fictional situations.
Still, Kathy’s death is a confusing one. There was no real need to kill her off, as we only saw her every once in a while in SVU, so her being missing from Law and Order: Organized Crime wouldn’t be completely out of the blue, especially now that she and Stabler’s children are grown. If the point of her death was to benefit Benson and Stabler though, the show has seriously missed the mark.
- Release Date
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September 20, 1999
- Network
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NBC
- Showrunner
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Robert Palm, David J. Burke, Neal Baer, Warren Leight, Rick Eid, Michael S. Chernuchin, David Graziano
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