Canada, and Penikett, a local actor, auditioned and was cast in the part of Karl "Helo" Agathon, an officer in the Colonial Fleet. The miniseries proved highly successful, and a Battlestar Galactica series was commissioned. The role was not based on a character in the original series, and was meant to be confined only to the miniseries; in the miniseries Helo is shown giving up a spot on a spaceship fleeing the doomed planet of Caprica, with the implication that he was left to die. However, both the producers and test audiences were sufficiently impressed with the character, and Penikett's performance, that the decision was made to make Helo a recurring character on the show. A plot that took place over much of the show's first season was that the Cylons on Caprica kept Helo alive in order to have him fall in love with, and impregnate, a Cylon (Helo was chosen because his crew partner, Sharon Valerii, was in fact a Cylon, and another copy of the same model was sent to pretend to be her). By the second season, his character had returned to the Galactica; as the father of the only successful human-Cylon hybrid; this character and his family became central to the show's mythology. In 2009, Penikett was cast as Paul Ballard in Joss Whedon's science fiction drama television series Dollhouse, which aired on Fox network Friday nights at 9:00. Dollhouse was canceled at the end of its second season, and the series finale aired on Friday, January 29, 2010. In 2012, he guest-starred as a politician named Jim Martin in the first season of Showcase's Continuum. He returned as a recurring character in the second season of the show. In 2013, Penikett was cast on the CW TV series Supernatural as a fallen angel who claimed to be Ezekiel, appearing in the show's ninth season premiere. The character's real name was revealed as Gadreel in episode nine and Penikett reprised the role in episode ten. He has since reprised the roles in episodes eighteen, twenty-one and twenty-two. He also landed another recurring role on the mid-season drama Star-Crossed, which premiered in February 2014. In 2014, Penikett guest-starred in the 200th episode of Criminal Minds as Michael Hastings, an ex-CIA agent and leader of the terrorist group, The Regime Squad. Since 2014, he has also starred in the award-winning web series Riftworld Chronicles. Personal life Penikett