[This story contains major spoilers from the premiere of Dexter: Original Sin.]
The final time Dexter viewers noticed Dexter Morgan, the starring serial killer performed by Michael C. Hall was useless.
In the ultimate episode of Showtime‘s 2022 Dexter revival sequence, Dexter: New Blood, Dexter requested his grown-up son Harrison (performed by Jack Alcott) to kill him in hopes of stopping the cycle and giving Harrison a greater life. So, Harrison shoots him within the chest. “You did good,” had been Dexter’s final phrases, as he bleeds within the snow in Upstate New York. “Let me die so my son can stay,” mentioned Hall in voiceover to shut out the sequence.
When speaking after about why he killed off his antihero within the finale, known as “Sins of the Father,” Dexter‘s former showrunner and New Blood creator Clyde Phillips, who departed the unique sequence midway by means of its eight-season run, defined why they owed it to the Dexter viewers to kill him.
“After the unhealthy style of their mouth that lots of people had on the finish of season eight — what we’re calling the ‘first finale’ [of Dexter, which ended in 2013 and saw him faking his death and disappearing to the middle of nowhere with a new identity]— we knew that to have Dexter escape and have him proceed doing this, the present was accomplished. The storytelling of it was accomplished,” Phillips defined to The Hollywood Reporter on the time. “The legitimacy, honesty, dignity and integrity of the character of Dexter that we so rigorously constructed up over a virtually a decade virtually required that we finish the present this fashion. We wished the viewers to hopefully be unhappy by this loss and really feel happy and to know that this needed to occur; that this was inevitable.”
So Dexter is useless, proper? Well, not anymore.
The first minutes of Dexter: Original Sin reveal that Dexter Morgan lives. The Showtime prequel sequence, which started streaming it’s weekly 10-episode season on Friday, follows Dexter (performed right here in an look by Hall) as he’s transported from the snow to a hospital, the place medical doctors carry him again to life after catastrophic blood loss from a gunshot wound.
“I’ve skilled demise so many instances, however by no means my very own,” says Hall as Dexter in voiceover, as his coronary heart begins to beat once more. “It actually is like they are saying: Your life flashes earlier than your eyes.”
The prequel sequence was first introduced in early 2023 amid Showtime’s plans to develop its profitable franchises. As the sequence started to take form, Hall, who’s an govt producer on Original Sin, was confirmed to be returning to voice the inside monologue of Dexter, who’s performed by star Patrick Gibson in Original Sin.
But the truth that future Dexter is definitely alive and properly was stored secret till now.
Speaking to THR now years later, Phillips gives a easy motive as to why he and Hall determined to vary Dexter’s destiny and reopen the franchise’s legacy. It additionally entails the sequel sequence, Dexter: Resurrection, coming in summer season 2025, with Hall starring as soon as once more as Dexter.
“When I wrote that [New Blood] finale — which was the most-watched single episode within the historical past of Showtime, by the way in which — the web went insane over it. Because they liked Dexter a lot they usually love Michael Hall a lot,” Phillips remembers in regards to the large response to Dexter’s demise. “I wished to take out advertisements on the time that mentioned: ‘I solely had Michael Hall for one 12 months.’ Back after we did New Blood, I solely had him for one 12 months.”
He continues, “I didn’t need him going off to jail or disappearing into the fog or any of that enterprise [in the finale], so I made a decision to be daring about it. The web hated it.”
Then, he bought a name from Hall.
“Michael got here again to me and mentioned, ‘You know what, Dexter’s in my bones; Dexter’s in your bones, Clyde. Let’s hold going. Can you determine a solution to make it occur?’ And I did,” he says.
Phillips even shares a scientific clarification as to how Dexter survived the gunshot. “As we are going to be taught in the beginning of Resurrection, if Dexter had been shot on a summer season’s day, he would have died. But he was shot in zero-degree temperature within the snow. He didn’t bleed out they usually had been capable of save him. That’s how we had been capable of resurrect him.”
Michael C. Hall as present-day Dexter Morgan within the finale of Dexter: New Blood.
Seacia Pavao/SHOWTIME.
So if Original Sin is the flashback now enjoying out in present-day Dexter’s thoughts, Resurrection can be what occurs when Dexter sits up in that hospital mattress.
“You may virtually think about Resurrection the following season of New Blood,” says Phillips.
After the opening present-day flash-forward, Original Sin heads again to 1991 Miami the place viewers meet the youthful 20-year-old Dexter Morgan performed by Gibson. Molly Brown takes on the function of his sister Deb, who was inhabited by Jennifer Carpenter within the first two sequence; and Christian Slater performs his youthful father Harry, who was beforehand performed by James Remar. All of the opposite acquainted Dexter characters are there, too: Detective Angel Batista (James Martinez), forensic analyst Vince Masuka (Alex Shimizu) and Detective Maria LaGuerta (Christina Milian). There are additionally a number of new characters within the Miami Metro places of work performed by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Dempsey and Reno Wilson.
“What a problem to seek out somebody to play younger Michael C., Hall, to play younger Dexter,” says Phillips, who credit casting director John Papsidera (Yellowstone, 1883, 1923) for doing a worldwide sweep to seek out Gibson, the 29-year-old Ireland-born actor viewers will acknowledge from The OA, The Darkest Minds and Shadow & Bone. “We had been tapes till we went blind, and [Paddy] simply popped out. I instantly introduced him into the studio, sat with him for about an hour. He regarded nice. He’s in nice form; he’s Michael C. Hall’s measurement. And he’s an enormous fan of the present. We watched him work and we knew we had what we had been on the lookout for. I’ve by no means been capable of say this earlier than in my profession: we bought all our first decisions.”
The first episode of Dexter-the-killer’s origin story is an countless callback to the unique sequence that’s certain to thrill essentially the most devoted of Dexter followers. From the primary swat on the mosquito within the up to date title sequence that pays frame-by-frame homage to the unique opener to the introduction of Dexter’s beginning mother, his and Harry’s “code” and even his first kill (which prompts Gibson’s first fourth-wall break to have a look at the digital camera), Dexter nostalgia is all over the place.
“We had this canon of lore from 9 seasons of the present from which to attract and, if folks like Easter eggs, this present goes to be an Easter egg hunt,” says Phillips. “We would write the reveals, begin capturing them and somebody would are available in and say, ‘I’ve this nice story about an Easter egg,’ and we might run right down to set and put an image on any individual’s desk or no matter it’s that the followers are simply going to like.”
Viewers will quickly notice that the present is ready in two timelines. Original Sin takes place primarily within the Nineteen Nineties with Dexter the burgeoning serial killer, who takes on a forensics internship at his father’s murder division, Miami Metro, underneath the watch of division head Tanya Martin (Gellar) and Captain Aaron Spencer (Dempsey). But the sequence additionally follows a youthful Harry (nonetheless performed by Slater) in second timeline twenty years earlier.
“We don’t have a look at them as flashbacks,” Phillips explains. “We have a look at it because the present happening in two time intervals: 1991, when Dexter was 20, and 1973 when Harry was doing that undercover case the place he met Dexter at 2 years previous.”
The 1973 timeline can be the place Harry meets and establishes his relationship with Dexter’s organic mom, Laura Moser (performed by Brittany Allen), who will go on to be brutally murdered in entrance of Dexter and his brother as younger boys, resulting in Harry adopting Dexter, which is a core reminiscence in Dexter canon. “That 1973 story bolsters the data of what goes on within the 1991 a part of the present,” Phillips provides.
The largest revelation within the 1973 timeline comes when viewers be taught that Harry had a organic son who tragically downed within the household’s swimming pool underneath Harry’s watch, earlier than 2-year-old Dexter got here into his life. That’s one thing that viewers, and even grownup Dexter, by no means knew about.
“That would have an effect on each resolution you make for the remainder of your life, and you’ll do every little thing you presumably may to guard and save your little one sooner or later,” Slater tells THR of how studying about this tragedy helps to clarify why Harry risked every little thing for his son and developed the “code” (for Dexter to kill individuals who should be eradicated from society and by no means get caught). “That was undoubtedly one of many strongest motivating components for decisions that Harry makes.”
Slater says he hasn’t but spoken to Remar, however has all the time been an enormous fan. “What he did with this character has made what we do doable,” he says, including that Origin Sin is now “a chance to be taught a lot extra about Harry. To study his traumas and the guilt and the disgrace that he feels for a number of the decisions that he makes when he was a youthful man. All of these decisions and choices result in how he feels about his son and the path he pushes him in, however he’s a personality who expresses unconditional love.”
Patrick Gibson as Dexter Morgan, Molly Brown as Debra Morgan and Christian Slater as Harry Morgan in Original Sin.
Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with Showtime.
If all goes properly, Phillips says he plans for each Original Sin and Resurrection to run for a number of seasons every. “The buzz is excellent and I’m hopeful,” says Phillips of Original Sin. Resurrection, in the meantime, begins manufacturing in January. It’s a uncommon feat for a prequel and a sequel to launch so carefully, not to mention for each sequence to take pleasure in alternating runs, in the event that they get renewed. “It would go in a push-me, pull-you of me having to principally be on two coasts on the similar time,” he says, expressing his optimism, “however I’m privileged to do that for a dwelling and I’m completely happy to do it.”
Gibson says he could be “stoked” to proceed enjoying his younger Dexter for extra seasons to return, which is why this primary season of Original Sin might be considered as a coming-of-age serial killer story. The first episode sees Dexter fan-boying over well-known serial killers like Ted Bundy, the Night Stalker, BTK and the Zodiac Killer, whereas scuffling with the 2 sides to himself that he so adeptly straddles within the later Dexter (till all of it unravels). Despite efficiently going by means of together with his first, very bloody kill — and conserving a trophy that’s certain to return again and hang-out him — Dexter additionally harnesses his bloodthirsty urges to avoid wasting his intoxicated sister from a doable sexual assault.
“Although a lot occurs and there’s an actual arc to this season, it was essential to me that there was nonetheless fairly a journey for Dexter to go on to change into the Dexter that we all know,” Gibson tells THR. “You will see him undoubtedly be taught from the teachings. I don’t suppose he’s any individual who makes the identical errors twice; he’s very thorough. But there are nonetheless a plethora of classes to return his manner.”
He continues, “He hasn’t fairly developed his persona. Because when you’re a psychopath, it truly is an act that you just work on and refine. And that masks, you’ll see because the present goes on, begins to change into a bit extra just like the Dexter we all know, however nonetheless has a methods to go.”
As Original Sin goes on, watching the prequel looks like watching an previous episode of Dexter, however with new faces. “There’s not a kill in each episode, however there’s any individual who’s about to be killed in each episode. There’s a killer in virtually each one,” says Phillips of what viewers can anticipate from the remainder of the season. “There is what we name the Big Bad who’s terrorizing Miami, and Dexter finally ends up taking that particular person out. Kind of like how John Lithgow was the Big Bad because the Trinity Killer. There’s all the time a Big Bad.”
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Dexter: Original Sin releases new episodes weekly, streaming Fridays on Paramount+ With Showtime adopted by a linear premiere Sunday night time at 10 p.m. on Showtime.
