Billy Campbell will not return for season 3 of ‘The Killing’

Credit: AMC

The Killing, the crime drama that had originally been canceled after its second season this past May before being resurrected with the help of Netflix, is returning to AMC in 2013. We can now report that the series will be returning without Billy Campbell, who played Seattle city councilman Darren Richmond, who was elected mayor after being shot by a madman, and confined to a wheelchair. Richmond was a frequent suspect in the titular killing of Rosie Larsen, though he was ultimately proved to be uninvolved in her murder.

Showrunner Veena Sud and executive producers Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin are currently working out the storyline for season three, which will presumably follow an entirely new case, given that Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are the only two confirmed returnees, as Detectives Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder, respectively. Neither Brent Sexton nor Michelle Forbes, as the Larsen parents, are set to return, though it’s hard to imagine that the specter of the Rosie Larsen case won’t hang over the proceedings, moving forward.

There have been discussions regarding the role Netflix will play in the show’s resurrection. It is expected that the streaming video company will help pay for a sizable portion of the production costs, offsetting the size of AMC’s investment so that the losses will not be as substantial as they otherwise might have been, should the ratings for the series, an adaptation of the well-received Danish crime series Forbrydelsen (literally, “the crime”), fail to improve. It is also expected that Netflix will stream the series following its initial run on AMC, though nothing has been set in stone, as talks are still underway. One thing that is for certain, however, is that the former Rocketeer (yeah, he’s still The Rocketeer to me) won’t be a part of the new season once it airs this spring.

Full story: Variety