Mariska Hargitay is queen of playing the long game. Case in point: She’s recently started filming her 23rd season of being the heart and soul of Law & Order: SVU, and after t-e-n long years, she managed to get “#beardedbestie” Christopher Meloni back on board. It should probably come as no surprise, then, that she’s absolutely winning the social media game, right alongside the bestie in question.
By the time this thing gets posted, Hargitay and Meloni probably will have done some other unhinged nonsense to absolutely murder us. (Anyone want to drop a comment with the fanmail address for SVU so I know where to send therapy bills? Asking for a friend.) But let’s take a brief survey of what’s happened so far so you can decide for yourself who’s absolutely killing it on the ‘gram.
(And God help us if they ever decide to take this mess to TikTok.)
Choose your fighter: Mariska hargitay vs. christopher meloni
Marsha:
Marsha comes equipped with an Emmy that she could totally stab us with if she wanted, crazy glue, gorgeous brown eyes that absolutely destroyed us when we were making the “Choose your fighter” image above, crutches that she could beat us within an inch of our lives with (we’d thank her), a black and white filter, a surprise visit from Law & Order: Organized Crime’s Danielle Moné Truitt, and the ability to make people lose their shit over a photo with nothing other than “#” as the caption. She also shows up to interviews with Benson and Stabler prayer candles, shouting about Noah Benson-Stabler.
Marsha was originally known as Mariska Hargitay, the very serious dramatic actor who has clearly been kidnapped and replaced by someone on EO/Bensler and Chriska/Marshmelon stan Twitter. She will now forever be known as the woman whose likes on Instagram and, to a lesser extent the Twitter dot com, are about as unhinged and ship-crazed as anyone’s. She has ascended to levels so deep in the garbage fire that is shipping EO, we still can’t seem to find her, even after throwing our most obsessive material out there. (Ma’am, please reveal yourself.)
Did you tag something as #EOIsEndgame or #WITL (What’s in the letter, aka that obvious love letter Elliot Stabler wrote Olivia Benson before returning to New York, even when he had no idea his wife was going to go kaboom)? Marsha probably saw it and liked it, especially if it referred to Bensler getting married at some point and/or banging it out back in the day.
Did you create memes of Mariska Hargitay on a Knee Rover, appearing in all sorts of situations, both likely and unlikely? Marsha might just have added them to her Instagram story.
Is your name Chris Meloni? Well, then. You’d better run because Marsha’s got the crazy glue to help you fix the internet that your ass broke, but she might just use it to glue your ass on a Law & Order set until she’s finished with you.
So far in this “private channel” series of videos, Marsha has escalated all the chaos. She was the first to try a black and white filter; whenever Chris (aka “Melons”) has dropped a video, she’s risen to the challenge, even pretending she couldn’t hear a word her BFF said after he told her in his previous installment that she needed to get her hearing checked. Let’s not even get into her absolutely murderous use of hashtags, either…especially since she keeps updating them for maximum effect.
Most recently (again, as of when this is being drafted—who the fuck knows what else she’s got up her sleeve in between now and the time y’all read this) referred to Ellen Burstyn, who plays Elliot Stabler’s mom, as her “mother-in-law.” In the same video, we’re pretty sure she shaded the shit out of folks who still think Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime are (as she put it) “so separate.”
Mariska, ma’am, we see you, we love you, and we appreciate you.
We’re also kind of terrified of what you’ll do next.
Speaking of next, Mariska Hargitay hit us with the #MarshaandChris, #CakeWalk, #HangingWithStretch” of it all…before we could even publish. I KNEW IT. MA’AM, I WANT TO LIVE.
Melons:
Melons comes prepared with an absolute and complete lack of shame, continuing his attack on fangirls on the Twitter war front by constantly reminding us how good of an ass he has, new facial hair that we haven’t yet delivered a verdict on, the first “special guest star” to enter the video war, and some kind of defense against Mariska Hargitay’s charms that we wish we’d had all these years.
(Look: If she asked me to do something, it wouldn’t take 10 years for her to get what she wanted. That’s all I’m saying here.)
We’re referring to the artist formerly known as Christopher Meloni as “Melons” for what should be obvious reasons, but if not, go read this shameless ode to his ass. Also, “Melons” just flows really well after “Marsha,” so there’s that.
Melons is not to be ruled out in this seemingly never-ending game of “let’s kill the fangirls before they manage to see any new footage.” When he’s not busy starting videos with “Hey, Marsha” to respond to the Bensler ship’s one true Captain, he’s pretty shamelessly posting thirst trap videos (Thank you for your service, Sir).
While Melons pretends to just be an old dude who doesn’t know what it means to break the internet, and who is incapable of filming a video of himself at a flattering angle, he is not to be underestimated. Marsha may have started this war, but he just might finish it. He is a quick learner, particularly as it relates to the hashtag game.
Shoutout to “#L&O: OC #thathashtagdontwork” as a prime example. Marsha took forever to realize you couldn’t use extra punctuation within your tags, but Zaddy Melons? He caught on.
One thing’s for certain: Regardless of which fighter you choose, Marsha and Melons are going to destroy the fandom. They already have, and just when we think we’re safe…they appear with a new attack.
At this rate, we’ll never see Bensler finally become canon. Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni will have murdered us in the most “cinematic” way, long before Benson and Stabler have had a chance to talk, much less let their bodies do the talking.
And let’s not even begin to think about what kind of trouble we would’ve been in had these two absolute nuts had the type of social media presence actors do today when, say, that scene in “Wildlife” was filmed.
…But oh, what a way to go.
You can catch Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni on Law & Order Thursdays this fall—assuming you survive whatever else Marsha and Melons have in store.
