'The Gifted' Casts Garret Dillahunt As X-Men Villain

Fox's The Gifted has added a mutant-hunting Marvel villain to its cast.

Fox has cast Garret Dillahunt in the recurring role of Roderick Campbell, a mutant researcher working for Sentinel Services. Deadline describes the characters as, "Professorial, intense and intimidating, Dr. Campbell has a morally dubious mission yet to be revealed."

Fans of classic X-Men comics may have some idea of what that "dubious mission" is. Roderick "Rory" Campbell is a Marvel Comics character who was once an ally to the X-Men spinoff team Excalibur but later is turned into the Famine, a horseman of Apocalypse.

However, Rory's best-known villain persona is Ahab. Hailing from the dystopian timeline seen in "Days of Future Past," Ahab commands the Hounds, mutants with tracking abilities who are brainwashed and forced to hunt down other mutants. The most famous of these Hounds is Rachel Summers, the daughter of Cyclops and Phoenix, who escapes her timeline and comes to the present day, joining first the X-Men and later Excalibur.

The inclusion of Rory Campbell in The Gifted helps further the theory that the show, while not directly connected to the events of the X-Men movies, loosely takes place in the period leading up to the future seen in X-Men: Days of Future Past. That film also included the mutants Blink, who will appear played by Jamie Chung in The Gifted, as well as Warpath, the brother of Thunderbird played by Blair Redford in The Gifted and who is the leader of the mutant underground.

Dillahunt one of the former stars of Raising Hope and is currently appearing on The Guest Book on TBS. He'll also appear in the upcoming Amazon series Hand of God and in the final season of The Mindy Project on Hulu. Dillahunt recently starred in Steve McQueen's film Widows opposite Viola Davis.

Fox's The Gifted follows the Struckers, who is forced to go underground after discovering that their two teenaged children, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White), are mutants. They join up with the mutant underground that has sprung up following the disappearance of the X-Men.

The Gifted premieres Monday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.