Warning: spoilers are ahead for the third episode of Murder in a Small Town Season 2, called “Mother Love” and available streaming with a Hulu subscription now.
Murder in a Small Town kicked off Season 2 in the 2025 TV schedule with some changes for Cassandra as an elected official and Alberg as a cop whose jurisdiction suddenly got a whole lot better. He had a complicated case in “Mother Love,” opposite Malcolm-Jamal Warner in his final role prior to his death and The X-Files icon William B. Davis. Leading man Rossif Sutherland opened up about working with Warner, and then shared the connection that Davis has to his late father, Donald Sutherland.
The former X-Files star definitely wasn’t playing a shadowy villain like he did back in the ’90s on Fox, but I was still getting the vibes of the Cigarette-Smoking Man anyway.
Rossif Sutherland Opens Up About Working With William B. Davis
William B. Davis played Captain Darcy Stewart, a father who reconnected with his biological daughter shortly before her death. Alberg had his eye on others as candidates to be the killer, but he still had some emotional interactions with Stewart. When I spoke with Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk about all that murder in Murder in a Small Town, he shared his experience working with Davis:
I had the joy of having dinner with him after we finished shooting, because he was an acquaintance, a friend of my father’s, way back when. He knew him when he was going to the University of Toronto, and when my father was just starting off as an actor, so it was the sharing of a bunch of anecdotes.
Donald Sutherland passed away before he could film the role that was intended for him in Murder in a Small Town‘s series premiere, but it sounds like Rossif enjoyed getting to spend some time with an actor who went way back with his dad. He also only had good things to say about working with him in “Mother Love,” telling me:
As far as working with him as an actor, he’s also an acting teacher. He’s a man of great experience and great generosity, and we had fun. He doesn’t play a murderer on our show. Spoiler, but his daughter is killed, and as it is, we have to figure out who did it.
William B. Davis may have history playing a character who a high kill count, but that certainly wasn’t the case for Murder in a Small Town. Stewart even got to meet his granddaughter by the end of the hour, bringing the case to a bittersweet end for the survivors of the case.
Why I Got Cigarette-Smoking Man Vibes
In fairness, I’ve been a fan of The X-Files going far enough back in my life that I can find TXF vibes pretty much anywhere on the small screen, and not just because of the long list of future stars who appeared as guests. Still, I don’t think it was too much of a stretch with William B. Davis appearing on Murder in a Small Town. Sure, Captain Stewart was definitely not a chain-smoking shadowy villain who stubbornly refused to die until a truly WTF finale, but MIST wasn’t the first time that I’d seen William B. Davis playing an unwell older man on Fox.
But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get a laugh out of William B. Davis’ kindly old man character on MIST spouting some lines that CSM absolutely could have said on The X-Files in a WILDLY different and very sinister context. He even had a son that he was disappointed in! Examples of CSM-esque lines included:
- “I’d always wanted a daughter. And then all of a sudden, there she was on my doorstep.”
- “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
- “I don’t suppose you’ve ever abandoned a child?”
- “Don’t you dare make the same mistake that I did.”
Did Captain Stewart suddenly acquire a daughter because she’d been kidnapped under the guise of an alien abduction? No. Did the “things” that Stewart wasn’t proud of extend to a global conspiracy that sometimes made sense? Definitely not. Did his abandonment of his child extend to what the Cigarette-Smoking Man did to Spender on The X-Files? A big NO to that. But I got a kick out of it all the same, and it was nice to see William B. Davis back on Fox again.
If you want to see William B. Davis as a non-cigarette-smoking man, you can find his episode of Murder in a Small Town Season 2 on Hulu now. New episodes of the drama will continue airing on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Plus, for good measure, the full run of The X-Files is available via Hulu as well.