Back in September, we heard that HBO Max had ordered a pilot based on the Dead Boy Detectives, characters Neil Gaiman created for DC Comics in the pages of The Sandman issue #25. The Dead Boy Detectives appear in the third season of the HBO Max series Doom Patrol, where they’re played by Sebastian Croft and Ty Tennant, and if you’ve been wondering if Croft and Tennant will star in the Dead Boy Detectives series as well, we can say for sure that they won’t. Instead, the series is set to star George Rexstrew, making his screen debut, and Jayden Revri of The Lodge.
The third lead of the show will be Kassius Nelson of Last Night in Soho. The one-hour episodes of the series will follow
the Dead Boy Detectives — Charles Rowland (Revri) and Edwin Paine (Rexstrew) — who decided not to enter the afterlife in order to stay on earth and investigate crimes involving the supernatural. They are joined by Crystal Palace (Nelson), a living psychic medium.
Crystal Palace was played by Madalyn Horcher on Doom Patrol.
Variety reports that Rexstrew, Revri, and Nelson will be joined in the cast by Alexander Calvert (Supernatural) as Thomas The Cat King; Briana Cuoco (The Flight Attendant) as Jenny, described as a mildly punk butcher and a confidant of Crystal Palace; Jenn Lyon (Justified) as Esther, described as a witch obsessed with youth and immortality; Yuyu Kitamura (The Expatriates) as Niko, a boarding school student intent on joining the Dead Boy Detectives agency who now lives above Jenny’s butcher shop; and Ruth Connell (For the Love of George) who will play Night Nurse, a demon that controls the flow of souls in the afterlife.
Connell is a carry-over from Doom Patrol, as she previously played Night Nurse on that show. It seems kind of odd that Dead Boy Detectives is disconnected from Doom Patrol with the casting of the leads, but still connects to the show with a different character / cast member.
The pilot for Dead Boy Detectives has been written by Steve Yockey, who also serves as executive producer alongside Jeremy Carver and Berlanti Productions’ Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and David Madden. Yockey and Carver previously worked together on Supernatural. Yockey currently serves as co-showrunner on The Flight Attendant, while Carver is showrunner on Doom Patrol.