It’s been largely eclipsed—both by his own work, and that of Anthony Hopkins—but veteran actor Brian Cox was first introduced to a whole lot of moviegoers as cinema’s most notorious serial killer: Playing a slightly more brutish take on Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s 1986 thriller Manhunter. Now, he’s set to get back to those grisly roots, having just signed on to be the latest big-name actor to spend a season matching wits with serial-killer-who-serial-kills-serial-killers Dexter Morgan.
This is per Variety, which reports that Cox has signed on for the upcoming second season of revival series Dexter: Resurrection, where he’ll take on the role of semi-retired mass murderer Dom Framt, a.k.a. The New York Ripper. The character was mentioned a few times in the show’s first season, as a formerly active serial killer who now kills time instead of people by sending taunting messages to his surviving victims. The character’s real name was identified at the climax of the season, when Dexter Morgan successfully defeated Peter Dinklage’s billionaire murder fanboy and let his file on the Ripper slip into the hands of the NYPD. Given that basically every season of Dexter since the third one has involved Michael C. Hall eventually going up against whoever the most famous person on the show’s current guest star roster is, we’re assuming a showdown between the Bay Harbor Butcher and the New York Ripper is now imminent.
Cox has been busy in the years since he wrapped up his star-reigniting run on HBO’s Succession; he’s done a number of prominent voice roles, appeared in last year’s horror comedy The Parenting, and, of course, starred in a YouTube video where he walked around a greenscreen volcano while attempting to explain the plot of Tekken to people without sounding completely contemptuous of it.
Dexter: Resurrection was renewed for a second season on Paramount+ back in October 2025, just a month after the show’s first season finished airing.
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