Tim DeKay will have good intentions yet do very, very bad things when he arrives on Fox’s Lucifer.

Seen in the exclusive photo above, the White Collar vet will play Dr. Jacob Carlisle, a brilliant neuroscience professor whose encounter with Lucifer will have deadly ramifications for someone the Devil cares about.

“We’re doing something we haven’t done before, which is we’re having a three-episode procedural arc [launching Jan. 16],” co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich tells TVLine. “So, [in addition to] the mythology and really digging into Lucifer, Chloe and ‘Will They/Won’t They,’ we have one Big Bad guy.” Winter TV Preview: Returning Favorites

Not that DeKay’s not-so-good doctor is purely evil.

“We always try to explore duality and the gray area — you don’t have just ‘bad guys’ and ‘good guys.’ And that’s kind of him, basically,” says Modrovich. “He starts doing terrible things, but his intentions aren’t bad. He was faced with making a horrible moral call, in the middle of distress, and now he’s kind of backpedaling from that. But in doing that, he does bad things.”

Lucifer returns from its holiday break on Monday, Jan. 16, though for just three episodes (and then resuming its season on May 1). DeKay first airs Jan. 23.

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