The OG Jurassic Park Character Returning For Jurassic World: Dominion
The Jurassic World movies are already filled to the brim with faces new and old — but so far they've mostly been new.
Yes, a handful of characters from the original Jurassic Park have appeared in the new movies. 2015's Jurassic World featured the return of geneticist Henry Wu (BD Wong) as the man still behind the scenes of the park. In 2018, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom featured the return of one of the franchise's most famous faces, chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm. (Jeff Goldblum). Obviously, with a third (and theoretically final) film in the Jurassic World pantheon on the way, the cameos — to paraphrase our favorite chaotician — must go faster.
We already know that Jurassic World: Dominion (currently slated for a June 11, 2021 release) will prominently feature the return of paleontologists Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), in addition to Wong and Goldblum. However, it turns out that there's at least one other surprise character coming to Jurassic World: Dominion that just might bring some long-forgotten storylines from Jurassic Park's source material into the film franchise for the first time.
Does the name Lewis Dodgson (Cameron Thor) ring a bell? What if we quoted Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) and shouted, "Dodgson! We've got Dodgson here!" Would that jog your memory? If you're still scratching your head, the thing to know is that, in the original Jurassic Park, Lewis Dodgson is that shady guy who gives Nedry a fake shaving cream canister in order to sneak dinosaur DNA out of the park. And, it turns out, Lewis Dodgson is about to re-emerge.
Jurassic World's got Dodgson here!
Collider recently confirmed that Lewis Dodgson is returning in Jurassic World: Dominion, this time played by veteran actor Campbell Scott. Considering that Dodgson's sole movie appearance is a few minutes in the first film, that may not seem like a big deal, but Dodgson was actually a much bigger character in Michael Crichton's original novels, Jurassic Park and The Lost World.
In the books, there is a rival company to Hammond's InGen, called BioSyn. Think of BioSyn as being the Slugworth to Jurassic Park's Willy Wonka. In the first Jurassic Park novel, Dr. Lewis Dodgson works with BioSyn (in the movie, the character has pretty much the same motivation, but we never hear the name of his company). In the sequel novel, The Lost World, Dodgson turns up again, this time taking on a much more active role — he's trying to get dinosaur eggs and he'll kill to do it if he has to.
What makes Dodgson's appearance exciting is that, though we've never heard mention of BioSyn in the previous films, we could potentially see them turn up now in Jurassic World: Dominion. The end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom saw dinosaurs loose and free, with Dr. Henry Wu on the lam carrying more dino DNA. Either one of those situations could be taken advantage of by, say, a rival company like BioSyn.
We may not know exactly what Lewis Dodgson is doing, but it's still exciting to see an antagonist from both the original film and novels finally return.