James Cromwell joins Jurassic World 2 as one of the men who first cloned dinosaurs

Thanks to a cartoon DNA strand, the original Jurassic Park makes it clear that Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond is the guy who the entire project that made cloning dinosaurs possible, but it sounds like Jurassic World 2 might be throwing a new wrinkle into that backstory. As reported by Looper, James Cromwell stopped by Larry King Now this week and not only confirmed that he’s in Jurassic World 2, but also that he’s playing a character who could be hugely important to the core mythology of the series. He says that he’s playing a guy named Benjamin Lockwood, who was John Hammond’s “partner” back in the day and even helped him develop the dinosaur cloning technology that made Jurassic Park possible.

Assuming that’s all accurate, this is a pretty big retcon for the Jurassic Park series. Beyond John Hammond’s company, the original movie never really gave any indication that he had help—let alone a partner—when he discovered the secret to creating dinosaurs, which means Jurassic World 2 is going to have to explain why nobody ever felt the need to acknowledge this Benjamin Lockwood’s existence until now. Was he forced out of the dinosaur project early on and scrubbed from all records? Will Jurassic World 2 reveal that John Hammond wasn’t really the affable Walt Disney figure that the original movie made him out to be? Attenborough died in 2014, so he’s not going to make an appearance unless director J.A. Bayona pulls a Rogue One (or a Jurassic Park, for that matter), but at the very least the next movie is going to change what we know about Hammond.

Speaking of people who played a big role in the original Jurassic Park, we recently reported that Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm will appear in Jurassic World 2 as well.