Dexter: New Blood Review: Dexter, and the Series Finale, Find Redemption

To hear some fans of the OG Dexter series tell it, the fact that the titular serial killer (Michael C. Hall) gets away with massive amounts of bloodshed over the course of eight seasons by fleeing the eyes of the law to a secluded town in Oregon isn't the ending he deserved. It suggested that not even in the world of fiction can the perpetrator get justice. But the new revival series, Dexter: New Blood, tests audience even more with the question: Can Dexter actually be redeemed? 

The answer is at once obvious and complicated with Clyde Phillips also returning to his duties as showrunner. As the series' subtitle alludes, Dexter is still unable to contain his murderous urges (killing someone right in Episode 1), though he's doing his damnedest to present himself as "Jim," your totally normal fish and game shop sales associate now living in Iron Lake, New York. Over a thousand miles away from his last home in Miami, Jim née Dexter has somewhat refreshed his life under a new name, with a different job, and even a new girlfriend (Julia Jones, whose character we'll get to in a bit) in a place where no one would challenge him on this façade.  

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Hall being the charming actor that he is in this undeniably villainous role, you almost hope he can start anew. That desire only deepens when his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), returns to his life, now a young man seeking answers after he was told as a child that his father died when Dexter faked his own death. Fans will remember that Dexter gave up Harrison to protect him from himself, essentially, which he tries in vain to explain to his alarmed son who shows up on his snowy stoop in this new series.  

Dexter is trying, sincerely, to make up for lost time, but he can't truly come clean about why he really disappeared because, well, the law. He's simultaneously very committed to his new life as Jim, the helpful citizen and dutiful boyfriend of a cop — yes, a cop! — yet descends into a bloody rage when your average schmuck (Steve M. Robertson) kills a white deer, considered a symbol of spirit to the many Indigenous residents of Iron Lake.  

As if there isn't enough Dexter is contending with, including trying to once again cover up his horrifying deeds while his loving girlfriend is on a subsequent murder investigation right near his home, he also has to navigate his constant guilt in the form of his dead sister, Debra (Jennifer Carpenter). You might recall that, in the original series, she was shot by a serial killer — not her brother — then Dexter went to the hospital and ended up cutting the cord, ending her life.  

So, needless to say, her irate spirit has unfinished business with a very alive Dexter. Narratively, this works well because in this iteration of Dexter, we're getting a far more conscious villain who is feeling the same pangs of guilt and self-admonition that dead Debra spews at him. Plus, it's nice to see both Carpenter and Debra's return, a person in Dexter's life who he did genuinely love but who was also one of his victims, leaning more heavily into the bitterness she harbored until her final breath. 

Dexter: New Blood attempts to wrestle with a villain who is dealing with a bit of self-hatred, even though he isn't actually refraining from murder. He's trying to bond with his son and reckon with the idea that he is, and always was, a broken being. But how does that change with the reappearance of Harrison, which forces him even more to be a "normal" person with feelings that he is unable to embody?  

Phillips delves into that here in a story that touches on redemption in terms of both coming back from a series finale that was widely panned and the idea that its dangerous antagonist could somehow be reformed with the possibility of real emotion. Angela (Jones) is quick to say "I love you" to him at the end of every phone call, but Dexter can only stoically reciprocate the affection. He also struggles with fatherhood in a similar way that his father, the person who groomed him to be the killer he is, did. But beyond the fear that he could be grooming Harrison, he worries whether his obsession with violence could have been passed down to him — something that this new series seeks to examine in increasingly ominous fashion by Episode 4. "I may be a monster, but I'm an evolving monster," he tells himself in one of many internal monologues. 

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Along with peeling away the scabs of the past and confronting the humanity of a man who is merely a shell, Dexter: New Blood expands to a broader cast of characters that pepper Dexter's new world. The Native people that have a vested interest in preserving the sanctity of a land that has once again been affected by bloodshed at the hands of a white man; a female cop and single mother struggling to keep the peace; and a son who might not be able to be saved after all.  

It's thrilling to watch a series find its footing once again, one that is as chilling as ever, and come into present day grappling with today's complex ideologies of redemption and a potential myth of goodwill. It is as dark as it is thoughtful.  

TV Guide rating: 4/5 

Dexter: New Blood premieres Sunday, Nov. 7 on Showtime.