He’s back! Ask Dexter fans who the show’s best villain is and the vast majority will tell you it’s Arthur Mitchell AKA the Trinity Killer, as played by John Lithgow, the main antagonist for the serial killer drama’s acclaimed fourth season. The Showtime series never quite recapped the heights of that season for the rest of its run, but the incoming revival will be hoping to at least come close. And one way it’s doing that is by bringing back Lithgow’s villain for a cameo.
Yes, in shocking news, Deadline has today revealed that Lithgow is returning for Showtime’s Dexter revival, a 10-part limited series that’s in production right now. The trade has discovered that the legendary actor is set to make “a short but decisive appearance” in the revival, opposite his former on-screen nemesis Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall). So don’t expect him to have a large role. Deadline notes that he’s only due to turn up on the set of the LA-based production for a day’s worth of filming sometime over the next week.
The news that Mitchell is returning is pretty unexpected, seeing as the last time we saw him was in the season 4 finale, in which Dexter killed him in revenge for the death of his wife, Rita. According to Deadline, showrunner Clyde Phillips and his team have “concocted a pathway for the Trinity Killer to come back that works within the larger Dexter narrative,” That’s about as vague a description as you can get so it’s still anyone’s guess how the villain will factor into things.
Deadline states that Showtime elected not to comment on their scoop when approached, so obviously this isn’t a casting announcement we were really supposed to know about yet. It’s not 100% official, then, but this news means that Lithgow is the first returning cast member from the show’s original run who’s confirmed to be in the revival, apart from Hall himself.
Dexter season 9 hits Showtime sometime this fall.
