Dexter adding Julia Stiles, bringing back Julie Benz (Julia Ormond still waiting by the phone)

By Sean O'Neal | May 27, 2010 | 4:22pm

Aux Features TV

According to a report from Entertainment Weekly, Julia Stiles is being courted to play a “major, top secret” part in the upcoming fifth season of Dexter, which would be her first major recurring television role. America’s favorite Shakespeare-for-the-streetz interpreter/interracial coupler will apparently not play the season’s main villain—seeing as new showrunner Chip Johannessen has declared there will be no “single Big Bad” tasked with following John Lithgow—nor will she play a love interest for Dexter, since the show picks up right where it left off [SPOILER ALERT, OBVIOUSLY] after the death of Rita, when Dexter will still be a grieving widower. EW’s Michael Ausiello speculates some on who Stiles’ character might be, including Rita’s “long-lost sister” or cousin, but it seems pretty obvious that Stiles will play an inner-city girl who helps Dexter channel his pain into hip-hop dance moves.

Also helping Dexter move on: Rita herself, as Julie Benz has been confirmed to return for at least the first episode. However, she won’t be coming back from the dead, nor will she be playing one of Dexter’s ghostly visitors like his father, Harry. (“If you have too many things like that it becomes gimmicky,” said one producer, quite rightly.) Guess we’ll just have to wait until the fall to find out the answer, when the answer will be, “Oh, a dream sequence or flashback.”