Sandbox / Law And Order Olivia Benson

Olivia Margaret Benson

Appearances: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | Law & Order | Law & Order: Trial by Jury | Law & Order: Organized Crime

Other Appearances: Chicago P.D. | Chicago Fire

Played By: Mariska Hargitay

A detective in the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes. She is primarily partnered with Elliot Stabler, until he retires. She is tough, empathetic, and completely dedicated to her job, to the point that she is seen as having no personal life. Her dedication sometimes wreaks havoc on her emotional state as she empathizes with victims of sexual assault, having been the child of rape. She has allowed her compassion for victims of abuse to sometimes cloud her professional judgment and impede her ability to remain impartial. Flaws aside, her strong convictions create circumstances for justice to be had in cases that otherwise might seem hopeless. As of the episode aired on January 15, 2014, she is in command of the SVU squad. She's also since climbed up the ranks to Captain as of Fall 2019 (the Season 21 premiere).

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A-E

• Abusive Parents: Her mother was one as a result of her alcoholism, physically and emotionally.
• Action Girl: She's very competent in a fight. So much so that whenever she's forced to be a Damsel in Distress, it's a huge deal.
• Action Mom: After adopting baby Noah.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • In the pilot, Olivia allowed her emotions to impede her ability to effectively investigate a case, resulting in her getting chewed out by Cragen who reminded her that police "don't get to choose the victims" and that she had effectively used up her one strike with him. Regardless, Olivia has repeatedly committed ethically questionable acts such as giving her brother money despite knowing that he was wanted for questioning in a rape investigation, or illegally hacking a corporation's computer records to prove they were performing illegal chemical testing.
  • Every time someone Olivia sent to jail turns out to have been innocent, she acts as if it has never happened before.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Her colleagues and close friends all call her "Liv".
  • Carisi uniquely likes to shorten her titles to "Sarge" while she's a Sergeant and then "Lieu" when she's a Lieutenant.
• Alcoholic Parent: Her mother was one. Season 17 seems to have Olivia on the verge of becoming one herself.
• Anti-Hero: The best way to summarize Benson is that she is out to catch the culprits of crimes the Special Victims Unit investigate, and do right by her friends and loved ones. Being an officer doesn't mean she plays by the rules all the time, however, as she constantly skirts the line of legality and morality, struggling with her work and status. To Be Lawful or Good isn't usually a major problem, but if a case gets too close to home you can expect her to cross the line faster than you can blink.
• Badass in Distress: When she gets captured in "Surrender Benson" as Lewis's Sex Slave.
• Berserk Button: She despises people who are willing to defend rapists. However she doesn't get angry at those who do not know they are defending one but it's the matter someone has the gull to protect a sadistic criminal when they know they've done wrong. Unfortunately this also extends to defense attorneys who at worst are just doing their job.
• Big Good: In season 15, after Cragen's retirement places her in lead of the squad.
• Bifauxnen: She developed this look in seasons 4-6 with a boyish short spiky haircut.
• Bound and Gagged: Season 15 premiere, 'Surrender Benson'.
• Boyish Short Hair: Sported a famously short, spiky hairdo during some of the earlier seasons.
• Broken Bird: It's pretty clear when her line of work is taking a toll on her mental state. Olivia has had a very fair share of being dragged through the mud over her long career and she regularly sees a therapist in later seasons.
• Career Versus Man: In her own words, when men find out what she does for a living, they either "pull away or move in too close". When men are willing to stay with her something will happen to make them leave, either professionally or accidentally.
• Catchphrase: Whenever discussing a case, if someone who's not her subordinate shows the slightest bit of skepticism, expect her to start a rebuttal with With All Due Respect.
• The Chains of Commanding: Rollins' relapsing into gambling habits puts Olivia in this position almost immediately after she becomes Da Chief. With the very sudden pressure of being made leader of the squad, Olivia comes down very hard on Rollins and the situation is extremely uncomfortable.
• Characterization Marches On: When the show started, she was the resident loose cannon on the squad, and on more than one occasion had to have Elliot step in and tell her to cool her jets. Over time however, Olivia's personality has settled into being one of the least liable to explode compared to her coworkers.
• Child by Rape:
  • Her mom was raped, resulting in Benson's birth. In later seasons, when Olivia begins connecting with her half-brother, it's implied that Olivia's mother may have lied about being raped in order to keep Olivia from contacting her father. It's ultimately confirmed that Benson's mother really was raped, it was just harder for Olivia to acknowledge once her father was a man with a name and a family instead of the faceless monster she always imagined.
  • Benson's adopted son Noah was conceived when his biological mother was raped by the sex trafficker holding her hostage at the time.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: It's part of why she's a workaholic. She's compelled to try saving anyone and everyone who has been a victim in some way, whether they want it or not, and even if it starts to harm her in the process (mentally or physically).
• Da Chief: After Cragen retires in season 15.
• Damned By a Fool's Praise: In "Devastating Story" a self-appointed victim's advocate tells Benson that she wasn't going to advise a victim to report her attack, but she changed her mind because of Benson's reputation. Later it turns out that the report was a lie. So apparently, Benson has a reputation for being the perfect cop to bring a false rape allegation to.
• Damsel out of Distress: Olivia has ended up caught in hostage situations numerous times, but she knows how to handle the situations like a pro in order to keep herself (and other hostages) alive until help arrives. And she pretty much always dishes out hurt to the perpetrators too once the right opening occurs.
• Defective Detective: Only when it's convenient for the plot, though.
• Determinator: Olivia is extremely stubborn and doesn't back down easily from any of her convictions or opinions. When she gets on a case she will push as hard as she can to see it to the end and get the truth.
• The Dilbert Principle: Despite her many epic screw-ups (see Karma Houdini and Knight Templar below) she's been promoted three times in quick succession.
• Dirty Harriet: Went undercover three times, once as a prostitute ("Wildlife") and twice as a madam ("Hothouse", "Undercover Mother").
• Double Standard: Falls into this role on occasion in regards to The Unfair Sex.
  • In one episode when investigating the alleged rape of a college student she's adamant that the suspect is guilty due to the victim having been drunk when they had sex, despite the fact that she initiated it and the suspect was just as intoxicated. She outright states "It's the man's responsibility to realize how drunk she is" apparently forgetting this would make the girl equally guilty.
  • In another episode she finds out a woman suspected of killing her baby became pregnant while in an incestuous (but consensual) relationship with her own father. Olivia's opinion immediately does a 180 and she declares the girl a victim, wanting to charge him with rape despite their being no evidence the relationship wasn't consensual, and then demanding the father be charged with incest before being reminded they're BOTH guilty of incest and the girl would have to be charged too, causing her to promptly drop it.
  • In a later season after hearing the story of how a young girl became pregnant, the DA is hesitant to file charges due to the girl maintaining the father is her boyfriend. Olivia immediately asserts that they have to charge him with rape since the girl is 13 before its pointed out statutory can't apply since the father is the same age.
• Dude Magnet: Throughout the series, Olivia has had numerous men flirt with her, becomes her temporary boyfriend, or have complimented her physical looks to someone else.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Whenever Benson screws up and an innocent person is hurt, she starts to feel guilty, which immediately results in everyone rushing to reassure her about what a great cop she is. In "Justice Denied", she finds out she coerced a confession from an innocent man and sent him to prison for a crime he didn't commit. The innocent man's lawyer reassured her that she was a good cop.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The pilot episode shows her and her mother having a healthy relationship, contrasting their established turbulent relationship in later seasons.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Not just because of the Les Yay with Alex; in several episodes, women blatantly hit on her. When girls who are watching just to perv on Stabler start making comments about her chest, you know this trope applies.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Olivia has sported short, long, and mid-length hair throughout the show's run.

F-O

• Fair Cop: She even provides the page image.
• Fatal Flaw: Olivia and her belief all women are victims when it comes to dealing with men, given that she was a product of rape. Thankfully she's gotten more nuanced about this over time, and her conviction in victim's stories is now as much an asset as it is a potential flaw.
  • Olivia also has a fairly nasty habit of pursuing suspects and leads without back-up. This has gotten her suspected of murder and taken hostage, all within the span of several episodes.
• Feeling Their Age: A very recent development as the series enters its 20th anniversary milestone. Olivia experiences getting winded while in pursuit of a POI and is visibly shaken by the prospect that her physical fitness may not be as good as it once was.

  Fin: No one expects you to be Wonder Woman

  Olivia: I do!

• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: To her brother, Simon. While she's a hardworking, competent detective who has relatively peaceful life, Simon has gotten in trouble with the law numerous time with Olivia, at one point, telling him he needs to grow up.
• Good Parents: To her son, Noah.
• The Hero: Since Elliot's resignation, Olivia has become unquestionably framed as the main protagonist of the series.
• Heroic Seductress: She's pulled this act a number of times. One such moment is in "Zebras" in which she kisses Stuckey to distract him allowing the bound Elliot to kick him.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Olivia pretty much lives by this. Her line of work is depressing, stressful, grim, and has not left her mental state unscathed. But when her therapist asks her why she doesn't quit, she declares it's because she still has hope for humanity.
• Hypocrite: Once got angry at Rollins for acting without thinking and always asking for forgiveness instead of permission, this from a woman who once kicked a suspect in the kidneys until he confessed while he was handcuffed to a table. Another time she insisted that a man who lied about his name to have sex with women was guilty of rape because they did not consent to having sex with the person they actually had sex with, yet she was nothing but supportive when her partner, Nick Amaro, learned that he conceived a child with a woman who only knew him as his undercover identity.
• Important Haircut: Following her kidnapping and near rape at the hands of William Lewis, she is seen crying and screaming as she hacks her hair short again with scissors at the end of the season 15 premiere. Incidentally, the length and hairstyle she settles on is quite similar to the one she had in the very first season of SVU.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The way we see her dealing with her dysfunctional team at the end of "Jersey Breakdown." Olivia is shown emptying the last of a bottle of wine. Then she gets a call from her partner's ex-wife... and immediately after hanging up, hauls out a new bottle to crack it.
• Informed Attribute: She's frequently cited as being an extraordinary detective, and while some episodes do showcase this, more often she's displayed as a Straw Feminist or just an outright incompetent cop. She often refuses to consider the possibility that a suspect has been falsely accused, and overall spends more time focused on playing victim's advocate than on actual police work. She's also broken plenty of departmental rules and outright broken the law on several occasions(see Karma Houdini below).
• Innocently Insensitive: In a very early episode, she referred to a trans woman as a "tranny," but otherwise showed no bigotry or judgement whatsoever. It'd now be severely OOC for Olivia to call someone that. However, this is likely a case of Values Dissonance; it's now far more widely understood that "tranny" is a harmful and hurtful slur, so, naturally, Olivia would never use it.
• It's All About Me: In "Justice Denied" when she finds out that a man she sent to prison was innocent and the confession she got him to make was false, her first thoughts are not that she destroyed an innocent man's life, but that she can no longer take pride in knowing that she was better than detectives she had seen do such things. Throughout the rest of the episode she spends a split-second thinking about the subsequent victims of the real rapist, and the bulk of the episode worried about how the case would affect her relationship with her boyfriend.
• Karma Houdini: In her police career she's been investigated by IAB multiple times, gave money to her half brother while she knew he was a fugitive, jeopardized cases by carrying on secret relationships with a reporter and a DA, brutalized suspects and her judgement gets called into question every other episode due to being unable to be objective. In real life she'd be lucky to still have a badge, let alone keep her position as detective. Here? She gets promoted to sergeant, then lieutenant (being placed in command of SVU), then captain, and is frequently praised as a good cop.
• Knight Templar: All the innocent men she sent to prison for rapes they didn't commit, and by extension all the rapists who continued raping with impunity because someone else was in prison for their crimes, all the beaten suspects, all the ruined reputations, she's probably accumulated more victims than anyone she's ever arrested.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: It's comparable to Aveline's. It was really on display in the first few seasons when her hair was shorter.
• The Lancer: To Elliot Stabler, and graduates to The Hero when he leaves.
• Like an Old Married Couple: the sort of dynamic she develops with Barba over time.
  Barba: What are you going to be doing when you're 85?
  Olivia: Squabbling with you.
  Barba: Wouldn't that be nice?
• Male Gaze: The camera loves to focus on her rather impressive hip-sway.
• Mama Bear: Acts this way toward many victims. And now everyone at the 16th, now that she's the squad leader, and a more traditional one towards her son, Noah. This especially applies when Noah contracts Measles as the result of unvaccinated children at the doctor's office. As a result, she goes after the parents.
• Meaningful Name: Olivia is heavily associated with harmony, befitting a law enforcer. Not only that, but she's usually the one who does her work more calmly and peacefully next to her hotheaded partners.
  • More coincidence than anything but her nickname "Liv" sounds like the word "live", which works well considering that she's an abuse survivor whose life's work is advocating for other abuse survivors so that they can continue to live on past it.
• Mistaken for Gay: It's Running Gag throughout the series, presumably because she fits the stereotype: a tough girl in a leather jacket with Boyish Short Hair. At one point, she uses this to her advantage when interrogating a lesbian-hating Serial Rapist.
  Olivia: Do you get a gay vibe from me?
  Elliot: Would it matter if I did?
  Olivia: You're not answering the question.
• A Mother to Her Men: After being promoted to squad leader she's become the one the whole team looks to, and she's grown into a role of giving advice and support to them if they need it, sometimes to the point of being protective. Her squad-mates, in return, all develop loyalty to her.
• Ms. Fanservice: Gets put in a lot of tight and low-cut tops, as well as in some pretty sexually charged situations in interrogation.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Mentioned by other characters in a few episodes, which never fails to piss her off.
• Nature vs. Nurture: Since Olivia is a Child by Rape, she gets incredibly defensive over the notion that her biological father being a rapist might have bearing on her own personal nature. While she maintains it's ridiculous, she also at times seeks reassurance that it isn't the case. While overtime she has largely outgrown this, the topic still gets revisited every several seasons, though more recently the attention has been put on her adopted son Noah, who like her was fathered by a rapist.
• New Meat: At the very beginning of the series. Not so anymore after getting promoted to Da Chief, and being the only remaining member of the original main cast.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Often makes things worse for the victims when she gets personally involved. Fandom at one point had a dark running gag about how anyone Olivia gave her card to was doomed.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being the Blue Oni to Stabler's red, Olivia has on occasion shown herself to be just as overzealous in dealing with suspects. At least two episodes have dealt with individuals she put away that were actually innocent, one of whom endures such physical and emotional trauma in prison that upon his release, he actually becomes a serial killer, targeting victims and witnesses Olivia had dealt with before tricking her into fatally shooting him.
• Oh, Crap!: In the season 1 finale, after the psychiatrist asks her about the shooting she was involved with a few episodes earlier, Olivia looks like a deer in headlights briefly.
• One of the Boys: Except when called upon to be more feminine by the plot. One early episode even had Olivia walk into the men's bathroom along with several other men to have a discussion over a case and no one bat an eye.

P-Y

• Parental Substitute: Briefly, to Calvin, the young son of a drug addict. And then again in season 15, when she is awarded foster custody of Noah, a dead victim's infant son who had been kidnapped by pornographers earlier in the season; however this one becomes permanent after she adopts Noah at the end of season 16.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Stabler, until his departure. They are partners and very good friends. The closeness of their relationship sometimes causes friction with their colleagues, but never threatens Stabler's relationship with his wife and four (later five) children. Their relationship does occasionally cause some marital friction. Kathy sometimes finds it difficult to deal with the fact that Elliot confides in Liv instead of her. There are also the unfortunate times when Liv has to be the go-between (when Elliot is undercover and unreachable, for example) and Kathy clearly objects to being kept out of the loop of her own husband's life. Still, it doesn't come up nearly as often as you'd expect and Elliott and Liv really are just friends. Kathy does seem to have accepted the relationship after she gets back together with Elliott, at one point referring to Liv jokingly as Elliott's "work wife."
• Plucky Girl: Somehow manages to remain exceedingly positive despite surviving multiple hostage situations and two near rapes.
• Polyglot : Along with a bit of The Cast Showoff , as Mariska Hargitay speaks French, Spanish, Hungarian, and Italian.
• Power Hair: She's had this hairstyle during her run of the show, especially the earlier seasons, but the trope is actually subverted as her hair has grown out to be longer after she's moved into the role of Da Chief.
• Protector Behind Bars: Has got some moment before in three episodes: "Infiltrated;" "Undercover;" and "Perverted." Subverted in "Post-Mortem Blues," where she gets cleared of charges via lying that she killed Lewis.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman: Played with. Olivia is knocked out of her newly-appointed commanding position as a precautionary measure when William Lewis, the serial rapist murderer who tortured her for three days, escapes from prison. She's reinstated as Commanding Officer when her replacement, Declan Murphy, is called to leave for undercover work.
• Rage Breaking Point: William Lewis triggers this, goading her into beating him with a pipe after she endures being kidnapped and tortured by him for days.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: She's Da Chief of Manhattan Special Victims Unit and has more Action Girl chops than either Amanda or Kat (neither of whom are slouches), being that she tends to end up in one on one fights more often than them.
• Rank Up: Gets promoted to Sergeant in season 15, to Lieutenant (with an appointment as the squad's permanent commander) in season 17, and to Captain in Season 21.
• Rape as Backstory: Although as mentioned, it was her mother who was raped, resulting in her conception. Though she goes through Attempted Rape twice, and Fin barely manages to help her the first time.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The reason she was Put on a Bus for a short while in season 8 was because of Mariska Hargitay's pregnancy.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Typically the Blue Oni in a team that's usually made up of multiple Hot-Blooded Red Oni at any given time. This can be reversed in certain circumstances however, if Olivia hits her temper threshold.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In "Behave" she says her gut tells her that a man with an alibi is the rapist they're looking for. She does a background check and finds that the suspect is an upstanding citizen who is forty years old, has never been married, and has no children, to which Olivia says "What do you think, problems with women?" Of course the alibi was fake and the suspect was the rapist. But Olivia's gut is not magic and being single and childless at the age of forty is not evidence of a problem with the opposite sex.
• Secret-Keeper: She and Elliot are the only ones who knew about Alex only Faking the Dead and being in Witness Protection. They kept their silence until the act was forced to be dropped over a year later.
• Self-Made Orphan: Averted, but Olivia mentions that she very nearly did this in self-defense when her incredibly drunk mother had shattered a bottle and came at her with the jagged edge of the bottle, intent on killing her. She uses this story to get Novak to plea out a young woman who ACTUALLY killed her mother under the same circumstances, telling Novak that she "know[s] what it's like to want to" kill her mother as a result of the increasingly violent abuse.
• Sex Is Evil: She's expressed some very judgmental attitudes about other people's sexual activity, even when it's consensual and legal. Sexual activity that she has arrested, expressed a desire to arrest, or harassed people for include (but are not limited to): drunk sex, lying to get sex, BDSM, sugar daddy arrangements, pornography, promiscuity (when it's a man), and Age-Gap Romance.
• Shipper on Deck: For Amaro and Rollins, apparently.
  Benson: I wish those two would just get a room already.
• Ship Tease: The various hookups and romantic relationships she's gone through onscreen notwithstanding, Olivia manages to have her moments with virtually everyone in her close inner circle within 10-20 years of her age, men and women alike.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: For all Olivia's Career Versus Man issues, most of the men she's dated are pretty decent people.
• Straw Feminist: Depending on plot, she gets this way sometimes.
• Statuesque Stunner: Mariska is 5'8" and as a result Olivia comes close to matching, sometimes even surpassing, the height of many men in the series, especially when in heels.
• Team Mom: Even more so post-promotion to Sergeant. She's definitely much gentler than Cragen was, and he was by no means icy himself. That said, when necessary, she is fully capable of tearing a strip off anyone in the squad.
• Tranquil Fury: Olivia tends to keep her voice even-toned when she's interrogating suspects, but she can still make it very clear when she's pissed.
• Trauma Conga Line: Olivia's life wasn't a cakewalk to begin with, but the show seems to have escalated the amount of emotionally stressful events she goes through ever since she became the central protagonist. Kicking off her rise to being The Hero to begin with was her partner of 12 years suddenly resigning without warning, and then in the span of the following 7 years she's been held hostage or otherwise captive at least four times with two incidents involving explicit torture and threatened rape. She's also lost two squad members to gunshot wounds with one leaving due to the injury and another dying from complications in the hospital while she was in range. Finally, after she adopts an infant son, he develops numerous health issues due to poor early environment, turns out to have a murderous biological father, and then gets kidnapped by his biological grandmother. Someone give her a break!
• To Be Lawful or Good: Possibly one of the biggest things Olivia struggles with, especially after becoming Commanding Officer since she's put to a higher standard in following protocol. While she isn't afraid to utilize loopholes in certain circumstances, she often clams up in morally ambiguous situations that might go against her gut principles but are still technically lawful. In several occasions she's stuck to the law - with outcomes that are regrettable or nearly so.
• Tuckerization: Named after the series creator's daughter.
• Up Through the Ranks: Olivia started climbing the ranks after over a decade of being a detective, being promoted to Sergeant in season 15, Lieutenant in season 17, and Captain in season 21. Touched off initially by the retirement of both Sgt. Munch and Capt. Cragen.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Angrily confronts Elliot and accuses him of betraying her trust when Elliot has a police detail placed outside her apartment. The reason? Because a dangerously unstable former suspect had targeted her for revenge.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: She often bickers with Barba with regards to how to go forward with a case, and they sometimes clash on their personal ideals. Nonetheless, they work very well together and ultimately show each other support when the chips are down.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She wants to get justice for rape victims. She is willing to violate whatever rule, law, or constitutional right she thinks she has to in order to get it done.
• What You Are in the Dark: Olivia chains William Lewis to a bedframe and in a fit of rage beats him to a bloody pulp beyond necessity after he taunts her. This act, despite being done after she herself had been brutally tortured by the man for days, haunts her deeply due to her long history of worrying if she inherited anything from her rapist father.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: After she lied on the stand during the William Lewis trial and it nearly ended disastrously, Olivia has, for better or worse, had a deep aversion towards lying within the context of law and policy.
• With Due Respect: This is practically her catchphrase. Try to find a scene where she's arguing official policies and doesn't say this.
• Workaholic: Olivia works tirelessly and has to be forced to take time off. She even admits early on that she rarely goes home to her apartment. While she comes to value her free time more after adopting Noah, she still practically begs her therapist to greenlight her returning to work after she's given mandatory leave following a hostage situation.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Particularly after becoming a senior member of the team, Olivia has repeatedly stepped in to give these kinds of pep talks to her co-workers, as well as various victims and witnesses whenever they are low on morale.
  • Olivia herself has recieved these on occasion (particularly before she was the most senior member of the team) as she has a tendency to beat herself up when cases go wrong.
• You Are in Command Now: Following Cragen's retirement, Benson is forced to officially grab the precinct's leadership.