‘Dexter: New Blood’ creator Clyde Phillips responded to the reaction to Dexter’s murder and explained why they chose that ending.
There are multiple Dexter spinoffs currently in production, one of which focuses on the Trinity Killer. Dexter originally ended in 2013 with Dexter faking his death by crashing his boat in a hurricane. Some time later, he ended up in the Pacific Northwest as a lumberjack with no internal monologue. He left the door open for a revival, but it was rather unsatisfying at the time. For years, Dexter was often found on lists ranking the worst endings in TV history.
‘Dexter: New Blood’ really bothered fans. After he was revealed to be a serial killer and killed an innocent cop, Dexter considered fleeing Iron Lake with his son. But Harrison realized that his father’s noble injustice had done more harm than good. Dexter realized that his actions had led to the deaths of many innocent people and told his son that he could kill him. So Harrison shot him, leaving Dexter to bleed to death in the snow.
Producer Clyde Phillips never intended to keep Dexter alive. In ‘Dexter: New Blood’s’ 2022 finale, he stated in interviews that Dexter was definitively dead and that he didn’t want him to wake up as if everything had been a bad dream. But after seeing the fans’ reaction, Phillips realized that they couldn’t land. The producer told The Hollywood Reporter that he decided to kill off Michael C. Hall’s version of Dexter because he knew he only had him for one season and didn’t want to leave it open-ended again.
“When I wrote that [New Blood] finale — which was the most-watched single episode in the history of Showtime, by the way — the internet went insane over it. Because they loved Dexter so much and they love Michael Hall so much,” Phillips recalls about the big reaction to Dexter’s death. “I wanted to take out ads at the time that said: ‘I only had Michael Hall for one year.’ Back when we did New Blood, I only had him for one year. […] I didn’t want him going off to prison or disappearing into the fog or any of that business [in the finale], so I decided to be bold about it. The internet hated it.”
Feeling unsatisfied, Phillips and Michael C. Hall tried to figure out how to revive Dexter. Not only that, they needed to create an entirely new adventure that Dexter would embark on after being exposed to the world as a serial killer and killing a cop. Somehow they managed to do that, and they will tell that story next year in ‘Dexter: Resurrection.’
‘Dexter: Resurrection’ could last more than one season. Rumors suggest that ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ will take the series to New York and characters like Harrison and Harry will return. The show is expected to begin filming soon and premiere in June 2025.
