Olivia Benson came into this world under difficult circumstances, and the same can be said for her son, Noah, but rather than letting these circumstances beyond her control bring her down, she turned her pain into purpose.
In Season One of “Law & Order: SVU,” fans learned Benson, who has been portrayed by Mariska Hargitay since the show began in 1999, was conceived after a man raped her mother. Benson’s origin story fueled her career ambitions — so much so that she became a police officer who worked her way up through the Special Victims Unit from detective to captain. Along the way, she expressed her desire to become a mother herself. She didn’t get the chance until Seasons 15 and 16, when she found baby Noah in a motel room drawer during a sex trafficking case and eventually was able to adopt him.
In the April 11 episode “Children of Wolves,” which Hargitay also directed, Noah, who’s now played by Ryan Buggle, questions his parentage — seemingly for the first time — as he gets ready for bed one night.
Benson is sorting through old books in her son’s room and offers to read him “Little Red Riding Hood.” Noah declines and says goodnight to his mom, but calls out to her before she leaves his room.
He asks her what happened to Maddie, a girl who went missing in the first episode of this season and was eventually found in a later episode by Benson. This case, in particular, fully consumed Benson because she initially saw a girl as a passenger in a sketchy van while she was in the car with Noah and felt something was off but didn’t act on it. She later learned the girl was Maddie.
When Benson asks Noah how he knew about Maddie, he says, “I Googled you.” She asks her son what he found out about her, and Noah asks if Maddie will be OK — and if the man who kidnapped her will go to prison.
Benson assures her son “that’s the plan” and tells him he needs to go to sleep.
“Mom, why are there so many bad guys in the world?” Noah asks.
Benson responds by assuming Noah found other stories about her online. He confirms his mom’s suspicion but says he only saw what was on the first page of Google, which included an article about William Lewis. Flashbacks roll and show when Lewis (Pablo Schreiber) abducted Benson from her apartment (Season 14), tortured her and eventually held her hostage in a beach house (Season 15) in one of — if not the worst — moments of her life.
Noah adds he also came across an article about Johnny D. Johnny D., aka John Drake, who was part of the “SVU” storyline around the time Benson found Noah, was a sex trafficker and Noah’s biological father who also raped Noah’s mom, Ellie Porter.
“He’s a bad guy, right?” Noah asks.
A stunned Olivia says yes but adds, “He was. Noah, he’s — he’s dead now.”
“I saw in the paperwork he’s listed as my father,” Noah responds.
Benson, clearly still caught off guard by the conversation, says that biologically, yes, Johnny D. is his father and pivots to questioning Noah about how he found the papers, asking him if he searched through her private boxes in the closet.
When Noah asks if she’s mad, Benson says, “It’s an invasion of privacy, and I really wish you would’ve asked me.”
Noah apologizes, and Benson acknowledges her son has “big, important questions” that she wants to talk to him about but says, “There’s a time and a place to have them, and my job as your mom is to decide when we should have those conversations, right? And this is not how we do it.”
Noah sits up from his bed and asks: “Is it really that scary?”
Benson moves from the doorway to sit on her son’s bed and tells him that it’s “complicated.” Noah then asks her to read him the earlier story they discussed, and Benson starts reading “Little Red Riding Hood.”
The show then flashes to two girls, one of whom is wearing a red cap like Little Red Riding Hood, walking in the woods at night. They run into a group of young guys on a playground. One of the guys grabs the girl wearing the red cap, whose name is Rosie, and drags her away from her friend. The show cuts back from the friend — frozen in place on the sidewalk — to Benson reading to Noah: “From that moment forward, Little Red Riding Hood never left the path or went into the woods again.”
Noah tells his mom he won’t go through her boxes again, and the two finally say goodnight. Benson goes into her hallway closet as the show again cuts back to the girl in the woods hearing her friend scream and running after her. Benson repositions a box higher in the closet — presumably so it will remain out of her son’s reach.
Benson tells her co-worker and friend, ADA Dominick Carisi (Peter Scanavino), about Noah asking her about Lewis and Johnny D. and the fate of Maddie’s kidnapper.
“He’s a kid. He still believes that bad guys get what they deserve,” Benson says. Carisi tells her he’s still working on the plea deal but their main witness in Maddie’s case was beaten to death in prison.
Benson’s team gets called to the scene where Rosie was found unconscious and naked “with a belt around her neck” in the park, and Benson and Carisi go to the hospital where she was taken.
Carisi asks Benson if she’s OK, to which she responds, “Not really.”
“This job is hard enough without our kids Googling it,” Carisi says.
“We signed up for it — they didn’t,” she responds.
Carisi assures Benson that Noah is a “strong kid.”
“Is he strong enough to find out that his father is a rapist?” she answers.
“You were,” Carisi says.
Benson spends the rest of the episode working the case, which involves tracking down Rosie’s friend who was with her in the park, Sydney. The guys in the park abducted Sydney after they attacked Rosie.
After eventually finding and saving Sydney from the guys who took her, Benson has a rogue, heated moment with the main suspect and brings him back to the park where he initially attacked Rosie. She informs him Rosie is brain-dead, and the girl’s parents just decided to pull the plug on her life support.
Benson and one of her detectives, Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), drag the suspect through “a forensic reenactment” of what he put Rosie through.
“You ended her story last night,” Benson says, also asking the suspect for the full story of what happened to Sydney. Soon after, Benson changes her mind about wanting the suspect’s version of events and instead says what happened is Sydney’s “story to tell.”
Benson sits in the hospital with Sydney and listens to the girl’s story about what she and Rosie went through on the playground — and afterward, when the guys took her.
Then, back at home, it’s time for Benson to tell Noah her story about how she adopted him.
She goes back into the closet and pulls out Noah’s adoption papers before going into his room and asking him how much he knows.
“Not much,” Noah answers, “just the names: yours, mine and my biological father.”
Benson asks Noah if he’s ready to hear the beginning of his story.
“What kind of story is it?” he asks.
She responds that it depends on the story’s ending.
“Ours ends in a happy place — you and me, right here,” Noah says.
Benson sits next to Noah in his bed and says, “You know what they say about endings, don’t you? Every one is a new beginning.”
She starts flipping through the papers and tells Noah about his mother as the episode fades to black.
“Law & Order: SVU” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC after “Law & Order” at 8 p.m. and before “Law & Order: Organized Crime” at 10 p.m. The shows all stream the following day on Peacock, which is part of our parent company NBCUniversal.