Why I Chose Not to Watch Dexter: New Blood...But Am Eagerly Anticipating Original Sin

 

Those of you who read my blog know that I have always been willing to give more rope to the reboot then my fellow critics. But I’ve also spent a fair amount of time differentiated between them and that the one I have the least use for is what I call the continuation  - in which members of the original cast return several years later and pick up right where they left off.

I’ve spent much of the last decade enjoying  decidedly mixed returns: for every Twin Peaks: The Return, there’s another …And Just Like That; for every City Primeval, we get five more seasons of Will & Grace… honestly by the time of Season 11 of The X-Files I was running out of patience for them. And I had similar doubts when it came to Dexter: New Blood when it aired in the winter of 2021 – doubts I feel were well-met given the immense controversy of the ending…or I guess not the ending if the trailers for Original Sin are to be believed.

Yes Dexter Morgan is still with us at least from limbo as the opening moments of the teaser have played out over the years. But I’ll be honest, while there were few compelling reasons for me to watch New Blood  I’ve decided to watch Original Sin because there are many more intriguing ones. And that’s because, as we all know now, Original Sin is being billed as ‘a serial killer origin story’. And if we’ve learned one thing from the era of Peak TV, the origin story or the prequel far more often offers opportunity for brilliance then the majority of most reboots.

I became fond of the origin story when the WB was still in existence. It was in that context I first watched Angel, a spin-off of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that achieved greatness when it delved into the backstory of the title character – and that backstory went back nearly two hundred and fifty years. Through it we saw the story of Darla (that was the first time I noticed Julie Benz) as well as the story of two of Buffy’s greatest villains Drusilla and Spike. So much of the show’s greatest moments came through the story of Angel’s complicated relationship with all three of those vampires, all of whom had major roles during the series five year run.

During that same period we were all introduced to Smallville, in my opinion still the gold standard when it comes to any television show related to a comic book. Because it chose to be the story of Clark Kent growing up and made a promise to leave Superman out until the series finale, we got to see not only Clark’s long story but the best versions of Lex Luthor on any medium to this point, a fascinating if overextended use of Lana Lang, and longer stories on Martha and Jonathan and eventually Lois Lane herself. In the second half it became more interesting as it began to fill out the backstories of many of the characters in the DC universe, including a brilliant arc by a then unknown Justin Hartley as Oliver Queen. There’s an argument that his storyline as the Green Arrow was more fully realized that anything we would get from Greg Berlant in the following decade. (Indeed some of the characters from Smallville ended up becoming part of DC’s official lore.)

Much of the better origin stories have been used for comic books in the next two decades (Gotham tried and occasionally succeeded in painting a universe of the city before Bruce Wayne became Batman) and other sci-fi shows (Caprica was a short-lived attempt to give a perspective of the origin of Battlestar Galactica.) But in the 2010s, some extraordinary television has come from what would be prequel series to characters that even in their original form were downright villains. The greatest example of this is Bette Call Saul which went past its shaky start to being considered one of the greatest TV series of all time, but there have been versions that have involved serial killers before. Bates Motel attempted to be both a prequel and a modern version of the saga of Psycho and did so superbly for five seasons led by the extraordinary performances of Freddy Highmore and Vera Farmiga. And nearly ten years after it was canceled there are still millions of people who are demanded another season of Hannibal, a prequel so brilliantly gruesome I’m still astonished it aired on NBC for three seasons.

What all of these series had in common was that they used what we knew about the lead characters and then went out of their way to use the outlines of the original story to expand on them in ways the source material never left room for. Obviously Saul was by far the best at it, not only in filling in the blanks of Saul Goodman and the cartel from Breaking Bad but by building a life around Jimmy McGill and creating a world of characters just as fascinating and far more human than so many of the ones we met in Breaking Bad. That idea may be one of the most critical reasons I’m already giving an advantage to Original Sin: just as Saul expanded upon the Albuquerque of Walter White by going back roughly five years from the moment Walter crossed paths with Saul Goodman, Original Sin is going back what appears to be about a decade (maybe more, maybe less) to the Miami of Dexter Morgan. One of the reasons Dexter was such a brilliant series at its peak was because it remembered not to focus so much on Dexter but on Miami Metro itself.

But the other reason for my comparison to Saul is what the show is promising to be. Vince Gilligan decided very early in Season 1 to change how the series would work by looking at Jimmy McGill and the two major figures in his life: his brother Chuck and Howard Hanlon. In the original imagining of the series Chuck was the force of good and Howard his nemesis but halfway through Season 1 the writers decided to flip the script and have Howard be basically good and Chuck be the person who never really trusted his younger brother.

As anyone who remembers the original series the major figure in Dexter’s childhood was his adopted father Harry. It was through him he learned his code and how to channel his energy. But eventually he learned that Harry had been lying to him his entire life about how he was found and who his family really was – and eventually that while Harry went out of his way to make Dexter into who he was, when confronted with his first kill Harry couldn’t bare the guilt and killed himself. In the first two seasons Harry was seen as who he was in flashbacks; after that he was seen as the voice in Dexter’s head.

But we never really got much of a look at who Harry was outside of how Dexter himself saw him. Original Sin looks like it is going to change that narrative at least partially. The show seems to have Dexter working at a part-time job at Miami Metro when he’s just about at the time when he’s considering his career. As a result we’ll see how Dexter ended up at Miami Metro for the first time. And I’ll be honest that’s the part about Original Sin I want to learn more about than how Dexter became a serial killer.

One of the questions that was posed in the Pilot was how none of the detectives nobody had the slightest clue there was anything off about Dexter. We spent a lot of time learning how Dexter became the killer he was but what I want to know more was how he managed to put up the mask that fooled everyone around him. Seeing how he came in as someone in his late teens (Patrick Gibson does resemble a young Michael C. Hall) might give illustration to that.

But I also want to learn more of Dexter’s adopted family and his work family’s origin stories and it does look very much like Original Sin is willing to do that. It helps that in this version Harry is played by Christian Slater who already spent four years of his life playing both a bizarre father figure and the voice in someone’s head in Mr. Robot. He may not resemble a young James Remar but in that sense, he’s perfectly cast for the role of Harry.

We’re also going to see for the first time how Harry interacted with his colleagues at Miami Metro itself. That will mean meeting younger versions of Vince Masuka, Angel Batista (James Martinez here) and Maria LaGuerta (Cristina Milan). Considering how critical all of these characters were to Dexter in the original series I’m curious to see not only how they interact with Dexter for the first time but how they interact with Harry. And more importantly I’d like to see what they were like when they were more fresh-faced. Was Vince always the dirty old man he seemed to be? Was LaGuerta always such a hard-ass? I’m assuming Angel’s still married at the time Original Sin begins so I’d like to see what he was like as a family man.

Most of all, I want to learn about Deb. Played by Mollie Brown in this version, she’s clearly still in high school and still swearing up a storm. I’ve always suspected the only reason Deb became a cop in the first place was because she wanted to make Harry proud of her. We already know he spent most of his time on Dexter growing up and we saw in some flashbacks how badly that scarred her emotionally. Debra spent all of her time on the show trying to live up to the reputation of her father and then to earn the respect of her brother – and she paid the ultimate price for it. I want to know who Debra Morgan was and I’d like to how she was put on her path even more than Dexter was on his.

And that’s before you get to one of the biggest draws: Sarah Michelle Gellar. Ever since she left her role of a lifetime on Buffy back in 2003, appearance by here anywhere have been few and far between. She had leading roles in two of the best one and done series of the 2010s: Ringer and The Crazy Ones but did very little the rest of the decade. Now in the new decade she seems to be making a return to TV and she’s getting back to her roots: first in the supernatural series Wolf Pack and now playing the blood spatter analyst who the young Dexter becomes an intern under. This too is a perfect role for her to play: if ever there was an actress known for playing characters who need a double life, it’s Sarah Michelle Gellar. Even Patrick Dempsey’s return as Harry’s boss pales in comparison.

Some might argue – with good reason – about wanting to expand the Dexter universe the way one would a superhero. But there is precedent for this before as well as the possibility for interesting stories. And there were other parts of the show that original sin could expand upon. Will we learn anything about Dexter’s adopted mother who we almost never saw in the flashbacks? Will we meet the young Tom Matthews who was one of Harry’s closest friends when he was on the job and was high in the ranks in Miami Metro? The one I’m most interested in is the story of Camilla, the human resources worker played by Margo Martindale in the original series and who seemed to be one of Dexter’s better angels over the course of the show. Considering she knew more about Dexter than she let on, there’s material to be mined there.

I have no idea if Original Sin is going to be one-and-done but since they’re expanding Dexter’s universe a bit (there seems to be another related series planned) they might very well do more seasons than that. What I do know is that unlike New Blood, which I had no real desire to watch, I’m actually going to watch every episode of Original Sin and Michael C. Hall’s voice is not the only reason. That said, I won’t mind hearing it again. It was always intriguing when it told us about his past in the original series. It will be just an interesting to hear how he dealt with it when we see it happening to him.