Brian Cox is trading Succession's boardroom for the morgue. The Emmy-winning actor has been cast in Dexter: Resurrection Season 2 as the New York Ripper, a serial killer who will face off against Michael C. Hall's blood-spatter analyst turned vigilante.
Casting Cox as a serial killer is either inspired or obvious, depending on how generous you're feeling. On one hand, he's one of the great actors of menace—watch him devour scenery as Logan Roy and tell me he couldn't make a scalpel terrifying. On the other hand, "prestige TV actor joins franchise reboot" is basically the Hollywood playbook at this point.
But here's what makes it work: Cox doesn't phone it in. Even when the material is beneath him (see: half of Succession's lesser subplots), he commits fully. A lesser actor would treat a Dexter villain as a paycheck. Cox will treat it like Shakespeare.
Dexter: Resurrection brought back Hall after the original series ended poorly and the limited series New Blood ended even worse. The first season of Resurrection leaned into the absurdity of Dexter somehow still being alive and killing people in New York. Season 2 apparently doubles down, pitting him against a killer who shares his precise, ritualistic approach to murder.
The "New York Ripper" name is a deep cut—there was a notorious (and genuinely nasty) 1982 Italian giallo film of the same title. Whether Dexter is referencing that or just recycling true-crime nomenclature is unclear. Either way, it suggests the show knows its serial killer history.
Showtime hasn't announced a premiere date, but expect this sometime in late 2026. Cox will bring gravitas. Whether the show deserves it is another question entirely.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except me, occasionally. And I know that Brian Cox playing a serial killer is the kind of stunt casting that works precisely because he's too good for it.
