The Killing Adds Peter Sarsgaard for Season 3

Peter Sarsgaard has signed on for a pivotal role in the third season of The Killing, the AMC drama that rose from the cancellation graveyard recently after being long thought dead. In the show, which will be having a 12-episode close-ended mystery this season, he’ll be playing a domineering death row inmate who has been in and out of the system since childhood. With very little time remaining before his execution, he’ll begin spilling secrets about his violent past. Could this sudden burst of talkativeness help the upcoming investigation?

The Killing left off with Detective Sarah Linden walking off the force following the resolution of the Rosie Larsen case, a mystery that consumed her life for nearly a month. Now would be the time for her to reconnect with her son and find the peace and fulfillment that had eluded her for so long; it would be the time for Sarah Linden the person to grow and flourish while Sarah Linden the detective was put on a shelf.

However, a year following the final case in Linden’s complicated career, she’s forced back into the field when a runaway case Holder’s working connects to a case from Linden’s past. Will Linden be able to control herself once she comes back to the city to help fill in the gaps regarding her former case? Or will, thanks to the time away, her obsession become worse than ever before?

Joining Sarsgaard in appearing on the third season of the crime drama are Amy Seimetz (Wristcutters: A Love Story) as a financially strapped single mother of a teenage girl who goes missing; Max Fowler (The Hour) as a manipulative, streetwise teenage boy with a long rap sheet; Elias Koteas (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) as Linden’s intense ex-partner, who is harboring a big secret; and Bex Taylor-Klaus (Mental Intervention) as a tough guy who looks after the street girls…and happens to be a she.

The Killing begins production on its third season, tentatively slated to premiere in May, on February 25th in Vancouver.

Will you give a Rosie Larsen-free The Killing a chance? Who else would you like to see join the cast? Can Linden and Holder ease back into working with one another after the year in between cases?