Dexter: New Blood, the much-anticipated follow-up to the original Showtime series, reintroduced fans to Dexter who, 10 years later, is a little different than they may remember. Recently, series star Michael C. Hall reflected on how his character has changed over the years, stating his belief that Dexter is not fully a sociopath.
"He's someone who's been contending with the collateral damage of his behavior," Hall said in an interview with Variety. "If Dexter were a total sociopath, he would've disappeared from Miami and just continued killing. But the fact is, he hasn't. He has some sense of responsibility that he's taking. He's telling himself a story about himself that is quite different from the one he was telling when we met him way back when. He does refer to himself as a monster, but an evolving monster."
Hall also commented that Dexter is "contending with a desire to cultivate some access to purity and then a shadow desire to just completely surrender to his dark impulses in a way that he never has."
The last time viewers saw Dexter Morgan, he was taking his sister off life support, faking his death, and leaving behind his young son and girlfriend. The much-maligned finale was a gut punch to viewers who had spent eight years following the serial killer's journey and budding humanity. Both Hall and showrunner Clyde Phillips have expressed their regret about Dexter's finale. In an interview, Hall described the ending as "pretty unsatisfying," admitting that he himself wondered, "'What the hell happened to that guy?'"
For his part, Phillips confessed that he had a different ending in mind for Dexter. "My personal ending for the show was that he was going to be executed for his crimes," Phillips said. "He's lying on the table, and outside the window are all the people he's killed. That was just in my own head. I never pitched that to anybody." Even Showtime's President of Entertainment Gary Levine acknowledged the series' weak conclusion, stating, "It gnawed a little at us, and gnawed a little at Michael, that a series as good as Dexter didn't end in a way that was perhaps worthy of the series."
Phillips has stated that Dexter: New Blood is a chance to start from scratch and make things right with fans. He recently teased that New Blood's finale is the best thing he has written. Phillips left Dexter after Season 4, which many fans agree is when the show began to decline. Turns out, Phillips agreed as well. "The show was untethered, and the character was untethered," Phillips stated in an interview. "The show lost its way."
However, Phillips is at the helm once again. The revival is set in the fictional upstate New York town of Iron Lake, where Dexter has been living as a salesman named Jim Lindsay, dating the police chief and doing a whole lot of bowling. His peaceful life is thrown off course when his son Harrison tracks him down, forcing him to confront his past and his mistakes all while contending with a new serial killer; picture plenty of murder with a side of family therapy.
Dexter: New Blood airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.
Source: Variety