As Scanavino pointed out, his character joined the show

— first as a fellow cop going to law school at night, now as

an ADA — during Stabler’s absence from the Law & Order

universe. So while the fans, and much of the squad, knows

him as a dedicated detective now dealing with acute trauma, to Carisi, Stabler is just a volatile guy.

“[Carisi] didn’t know him from before. [Carisi] didn’t know what kind of cop [Stabler] was. There’s an element of Carisi that’s just like, ‘Hey, I’m just trying to do my job here, and you’re making my job difficult.’ And he doesn’t know how much — the intensity the Stabler character can bring.”

We’re getting more Carisi/Rollins soon on SVU

The dynamic viewers are most invested in, though, is Carisi’s life with his wife, Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish). Their slow-burn romance over many seasons of SVU has made everyone invested, including Scanavino, who thought from the start that the two characters would get together.

“I always thought that there was something there that I kind of picked up on in the episodes, but then it was also if you do it, you make the leap and you make them a couple — then where do you kind of go from there? But I’m glad they waited for so long before they actually did it,” he told the outlet, continuing, “It had such a good payoff, but I don’t know — I always saw they got along well. And I always thought that there was maybe something else to that relationship.”

While the show focuses on its characters’ lives at work, the actor did reveal that Rollins-Carisi home life stuff has at least been filmed. “Listen, I don’t know what makes it into the episode and what doesn’t, but I will just say there was a very good amount of Carisi/Rollins home life.” New episodes can’t come fast enough!