Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay tease Law & Order: SVU reunion with on-set photos

Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic

The much-anticipated return of Elliot Stabler to the Special Victims Unit is getting closer.

Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay and her former costar Christopher Meloni teased their reunion on the show to fans with dueling social media posts on Friday. Meloni's snap shows Hargitay sitting a few feet behind him. "We are a little bit closer," Meloni captioned his photo. Hargitay later shared a similar photo captioned, "Now even closer," in which Meloni can be seen in the background smiling.

The actor was originally set to make his return as Stabler on the season 22 premiere of Law & Order: SVU, according to showrunner Warren Leight, but it was later delayed. Meloni originally starred alongside Hargitay's Olivia Benson on SVU from the show's first season until the end of season 12.

Meloni's character will also be returning for a new spin-off series, a 13-episode drama that is said to revolve around Stabler leading an NYPD organized crime unit. For the spin-off, which has been dubbed Law & Order: Organized Crime, Meloni told EW recently that "we're going to reintroduce my character, Elliott Stabler, and give the audience the backstory of where he's been, how he's been, and he's going to rejoin the NYPD, but with the organized crime unit."

Neither the spin-off nor Meloni's SVU return have announced official air dates as of yet, but Leight has said that they wouldn't be reintroducing the character to SVU "until the night of his Organized Crime premiere."

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