Aliens exist in the ‘Law & Order’ universe and here’s proof

If you are not excited yet about Homicide: Life on the Street finally coming to streaming via Peacock, you clearly haven’t watched the show. That’s not your fault, it’s been missing from streaming platforms for an incredibly long time. No more, though.

If you are not familiar with the gritty crime drama set in Baltimore, you may be unaware that it is the genesis of the classic Law and Order SVU character John Munch, played by the late and great Richard Belzer. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me spend at least another sentence telling you that this show is so great, and how glad I am to see if it holds up more than thirty years after it aired on NBC. OK, well, there it is, back to aliens.

Yes, see, Munch the character started on Homicide, and occasionally made allusions to his past life as a homicide detective (get it? That’s the name of the show!) in Baltimore when the character was introduced on SVU. This is important because it means this is the same character, and not some weird multi-verse thing going on. These are NBC crime dramas, not the MCU, baby!

… Or is it?

See, it was a circuitous route that led Munch from one show to the other, and it included a pit stop on another very well-known show from the ’90s on another network. Yes, friends, I am talking about The X-Files. Belzer portrayed Munch in season 5, episode 3, a Lone Gunmen-centric episode. If you recall, The X-Files repeatedly demonstrated that aliens were real in its universe. So much so that by the end, even Ms. Skeptic herself, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) had to admit that aliens existed after about the 200th time being shown irrevertible proof of that fact.

This crossover episode means that aliens are canon in the entire Law & Order universe, including SVU. This also means that, however improbable, an episode could deal with an alien abduction or a trash monster who feeds on babies’ psychic energy any day now. Do I think it could happen? No. But I want to believe.

Now, anyone who spends too much time online probably is screaming at their screen right now about the “Tommy Westphall Universe” because all of these shows I’ve mentioned fall into a much broader extended universe that is actually taking place in a snow globe while Tommy Westphall, an autistic child looks on, imaging stories happening within the snowglobe. This is based on the final episode of the hospital drama St. Elsewhere which aired in the ’80s, but you already knew that based on the description of the whole snowglobe thing. (Search your heart; you know it to be true.) That’s because many shows branch out from St. Elsewhere, including Homicide, where a character from the former was investigated on the latter.

This whole thing has layers, and if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, you can here. That’s a whole site devoted to every show and movie that can be linked to Tommy Westphall. Although some of the “proof” is much thinner than the direct connection from St. Elsewhere to Homicide.

As for me, I just want to keep it light. By that, I mean keep writing letters to NBC and Peacock demanding that they accept their legacy via John Munch and start including alien abductions in Law & Order storylines. It’s what the people this person wants.