Spoilers ahead for the winter premiere of Law & Order: SVU Season 24, called “Jumped In.”
Law & Order: SVU returned to NBC with a winter premiere that didn’t ease Benson and Co. into the new year. Her decision to push for BX9 gang members to be convicted for rape back in the fall came back to haunt her, as she was brutally attacked and nearly killed. The attack didn’t scare her away from wanting to pursue justice, which meant working with Captain Duarte from the Bronx gang unit again. Maurice Compte, who plays Duarte, spoke with CinemaBlend about the episode, his character’s attraction to Benson, and working with longtime SVU leading lady Mariska Hargitay.
Unfortunately, Benson made some powerful enemies last fall when she got two BX9 members convicted for rape when Duarte wanted to use them to try and catch their boss, Oscar Papa. That said, by attacking her in front of her apartment building while walking with her young son, they guaranteed that Benson was going to set her sights on taking down the gang as well as investigating sexually-based offenses… even if it meant going to the Bronx and collaborating with Duarte. They didn’t exactly get off to a strong start as colleagues!
“Jumped In” was Maurice Compte’s second appearance in his recurring guest star role as Duarte, after debuting back in September. (You can rewatch the episode streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.) When he spoke with CinemaBlend, he weighed in on whether his character sees Benson any differently now that she’s seemingly ready to go all-in on trying to catch Oscar Papa. After all, most of Duarte and Benson’s interactions in his first episode involved conflict, and he firmly believed they should prioritize Papa over the rape convictions. The actor shared:
From the very beginning, as you saw, there’s just an underlying tension. She’s a strong woman, and Duarte is very attracted to strong women… Mariska has a way of coming in, and really just firmly planting herself in a room and in a situation and I think that Duarte is very much drawn to Benson in that way. I love the attraction. I would always come to Mariska and be like… ‘This is amazing.’ It’s fun. She’s a loving character… It’s fun to watch.
Mariska Hargitay has starred in Law & Order: SVU for more than 20 years and upward of 500 episodes, so is it any surprise that she can easily command attention as Olivia Benson? There’s no denying the tension between them going back to their first episode, but Duarte saw a new side of her in the aftermath of her attack, and apparently that side is deeply attractive to him. The two characters may just read different things into that tension!
Of course, there are different kinds of attraction (and Stabler over on Organized Crime might have something to say if Duarte has romance on his mind). Benson has a lot on her plate now that she’s committed to going after BX9 while also helping to bail the Bronx department of Special Victims out after scandal. There was also more to Duarte’s feelings about teaming up with her than just attraction, as the actor continued:
There’s a bit of ‘I told you so, I knew you’d be back,’ but [also] the fact that she is coming back and is like, ‘These guys came after me and my family, let’s take them down.’ There was a bit of an ‘I told you so’ in it, but there was like, ‘She can totally do this. I can see her. I can see that this woman will break through a steel door to get to people that did this to make this thing right.’ And that is just Duarte on a regular day, so that connection between them makes her even more visible to him, where he sees her more as like, ‘Wow. Okay. I like her.’
Duarte may see a new connection between them with her shift after being attacked, but Maurice Compte has also pointed out that they’re very different people. As a cop, her goal is usually to heal and help, and she wants to help the teenage gang members who had no choice… while also taking down Oscar Papa. For his part, Duarte believes in blind justice.
It remains to be seen whether one of them comes around to the other’s point of view, or if Benson comes to feel any kind of attraction to him after some time passes in the wake of her attack. SVU did recently address her feelings for Stabler in a way that didn’t quite suggest that the former partners would take things to the next level anytime soon!
See what’s next for Benson and Co. with new episodes of Law & Order: SVU on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC in the 2023 TV season, between Law & Order at 8 p.m. and Law & Order: Organized Crime – which is starting a dangerous new undercover arc – at 10 p.m. SVU has entered a new era without Amanda Rollins, and her absence didn’t exactly help Benson in the winter premiere.