Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20
season of television series
The twentieth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered on Thursday, September 27, 2018, at 9PM ET with a two-part premiere episode. The following Thursday, the series started airing new episodes at 10PM ET. The season ended on May 16, 2019.
This landmark season of SVU tied it with both the original Law & Order series and Gunsmoke as longest-running scripted non-animated American primetime TV series. On March 29, 2019, as it was announced that SVU was renewed for a twenty-first, record-breaking season, it was also announced this season would be the last season to feature Philip Winchester.
Production
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was renewed for a twentieth season on May 9, 2018. Production started on July 16, 2018. On July 12, 2018, Executive Producer Julie Martin posted a photo of a script on Twitter, teasing that the first hour of the two-hour season premiere was tentatively titled "Man Up". Martin teased on August 14, 2018, that the fourth episode of the season, titled "Revenge", would be "a devious twist and turn edge-of-your-seater". The episode also featured Callie Thorne as defense attorney Nikki Staines. A deleted scene featuring Benson and Noah from the previous season was re-shot and placed into the episode "Dear Ben", the scene being where Noah has a question about his father followed up by ADA Stone (Philip Winchester) taking Noah out to play baseball.
The public source identifies “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20” as season of television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Order, Special and Victims.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20”, the useful work is to connect “season of television series” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55759451. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2019.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20 primary sources, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20 archive and Order research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 20” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.