WARNING: The following contains potential spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 23 and Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, airing, on NBC.

Former ADA Rafael Barba may have left the regular cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in Season 19, but that hasn't stopped this fan favorite from making occasional guest appearances back on the show. Barba's charm and sassy wit made him a compelling character and has long been missed since he quit the District Attorney's office. In his time on SVU, though, he formed a very close friendship with Captain Olivia "Liv" Benson, becoming one of her closest confidantes and even positioning himself almost as a potential romantic love interest for the usually unlucky-in-love Liv. He even departed the series with a tender kiss to Liv's forehead.

Barba has returned a few times for one-off guest spots in Seasons 21 and 22. Since then, Sonny Carisi left the Special Victims Unit detective squad, graduated from law school and stepped in as the replacement ADA. Nothing official has been said about Barba's return for Season 23, but recently leaked footage of an active SVU filming location shows Barba back on duty in his courtroom best and talking to Liv outside a courthouse.

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barba forehead kiss benson

The most likely cause for Barba's return is the imminent and important SVU and Organized Crime crossover set to happen later this season to center around the trial of last season's Organized Crime big bad Richard Wheatley. Season 1 of Organized Crime ended with Richard Wheatley, criminal mastermind and drug empire kingpin, finally being arrested by Detective Elliot Stabler, while Season 2 began with the buildup to his trial. During Wheatley's time in custody, he discovered Stabler's long-simmering romantic feelings for his former partner, Olivia, and used those to his advantage, threatening Liv's life and safety to get back at Stabler.

And despite Stabler's decades of suppressed love for Olivia, he himself has made some questionable choices. Not long after Stabler's wife was murdered, he nurtured an attraction to Angela Wheatley, ex-wife of Richard Wheatley and eventual police informant. And as part of his undercover work in the Albanian KO gang this season, he's gone so far as to hook up with the wife, Flutura, of a high-ranking member.

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barba benson rollins courthouse hallway

All of this leads to three most likely scenarios for Barba's return. The first possibility is that there will be a Barba v. Carisi showdown, with Barba tapped for Wheatley's defense against Carisi prosecuting for the state. A potential comrades-turned-rivals scenario could play out interestingly. Then again, Barba could be entirely uninvolved in Wheatley's defense and, rather, lending legal expertise to Carisi, SVU, the Organized Crime unit and the entire prosecution team.

Whatever Barba's legal stance in his return, though, he will likely prove an important turning point in the Elliot-Oliva (EO) endgame romance, for better or for worse. Aside from Barba being an equal to Benson and worthy of her as a love interest, he has also been on hand for some of the most traumatic events of Liv's love life. He was in court when Detective Brian Cassidy, the one-time boyfriend of Liv, took the stand to testify about his undercover work. This included his interactions with prostitutes while he and Olivia were still together. With Stabler's own dalliances with both Flutura undercover and Angela as himself, Barba will likely be on hand once more when those truths come to the surface. Whatever the full extent of Barba's return leads to, it's sure to be a game-changing episode for both Liv and Elliot.

Law & Order: SVU stars Mariska Hargitay, Ice T, Kelli Giddish and Peter Scanavino. New episodes air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.

KEEP READING: Law & Order: SVU Season 23, Episode 7, 'They'd Already Disappeared' Recap & Spoilers