Law & Order: SVU Season 16: Sergeant Olivia Benson Becomes Mother To Noah, Detective Nick Amaro Demoted To Beat Cop, And More Crossovers To Chicago Fire and Chicago PD

By Kara Michelle Sep 22, 2014 08:58 AM EDT

Law & Order: SVU Season 16: Sergeant Olivia Benson Becomes Mother To Noah, Detective Nick Amaro Demoted To Beat Cop, And More Crossovers To Chicago Fire and Chicago PD

Law & Order: SVU Season 16 episode 1 airs on Wednesday, September 24, at the 9 PM time slot on NBC. Mariska Hargitay as Sergeant Olivia Benson, Danny Pino as Detective Nick Amaro, Kelli Giddish as Detective Amanda Rollins, Ice-T as Detective Fin Tutuola, and Raul Esparza as Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba will be back as the regular Law & Order SVU season 16 cast. Also for next season, recurring guest stars will be Peter Scanavino as Detective Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. and Peter Gallagher as Deputy Chief William Dodds, the tough head of all the Special Victims Units in New York City.

Peter Scanavino, as Detective Carisi, the newly assigned Manhattan SVU acting commanding officer, will have a three-episode story arc beginning with the Law & Order: SVU season 16 premiere. Just newly assigned to the Manhattan SVU after working in other boroughs' SVUs, Benson will reluctantly be helping Carisi understand the ropes in his new station of assignment. Entitled "Girls Disappeared," the first episode of the season will see the SVU taking on a dangerous prostitution ring in their hunt to find the killer of Ellie Porter, the biological mother of Sergeant Benson's new foster son Noah.

Among other Law & Order: SVU season 16 spoilers, Detective Amaro will be seen, apparently demoted to being a beat cop in Queens for having assaulted suspect Simon Wilkes while off-duty during the Law & Order SVU season 15 finale, arresting an underage prostitute with found connections to Noah's birth mother. Amaro thus goes undercover to dig deeper, and says E Online, "his actions put everybody-even Noah-in danger." Also, says Entertainment Weekly, "fans will get to see a new side of...[Benson as she] struggles to find a balance between being a foster mother and being a detective. And things only get more difficult when criminals start targeting the child as a way to get to her." Finally, fans can expect to see Law & Order: SVU Season 16 episodes making some crossovers with Chicago Fire Season 3 and Chicago PD Season 2 episodes at some point in the near future according to NBC network programming head Robert Greenblatt in a talk with CarterMatt.