Let’s say it loud and clear before we begin: the best thing about Dexter — now a full-blown franchise — will always be Michael C. Hall. And, of course, Clyde Phillips, the man behind such an impeccable creation, who, as he pushes forward with his impossible narrative — the killer as superhero, a cursed superhero, or better yet, a dark, elusive one — delivers a masterclass in how a plot can be twisted beyond belief if it’s spirit or humor aren’t lost. A sense of humor that has been there in Dexter from the very start, a kind of self-parody that simultaneously spoofs the genre — the police-station noir, a blurred, family-friendly Ripley — and in which Hall’s performance, the tone with which he plays the famous “Martian killer” (the idea at first was that his lack of empathy would force him to learn to be human as if he’d come from another planet) is essential.
All right, with that said, let’s set the stage. Dexter Morgan had vanished from the map. After getting rid of Debra, his police-officer sister — who continued arguing with him in his snowbound cabin, though by then she was a ghost — Dexter had fled, changed his name (to Jim Lindsay, a nod to Jeff Lindsay, the author of the novels the series is based on), and reinvented himself as a social man, a deer hunter working in public view in the small, snowy town of Iron Lake. It was there that his son Harrison found him — remember, the son he had with Rita, who, like him, had been “born in blood,” because he was discovered beside his murdered mother in a pool of blood, just like Dexter himself. After a series of bizarre twists, Harrison shot him in the chest and left him for dead.
That’s why the new (fourth) Dexter series on SkyShowtime is called Resurecction: the cold kept the bullet from reaching his heart the way it should have, and yes — Dexter didn’t die. When the series begins, he has been in a coma for several weeks. And then he wakes up.
The way Phillips — the aforementioned showrunner — manages to hold up such a shaky structure is admirable. He does it by sticking to the basics: bringing back each of the show’s pillars. The return of Dexter’s father as a spectral figure for him to talk to — a classic since the first season — is expanded here. And in that in-between world of unconsciousness, that limbo before death, those welcoming him are all the infamous killers whom the serial killer of serial killers himself had slain.
The action reinforces the show’s tone — of expected surprise, a kind of homecoming, but always with a twist — that has made Dexter a rarity untouched by time.
But that sense of familiarity — which makes the series feel so cohesive, no matter how much time has passed, with Hall wearing the exact same expression yet somehow different, and with the iconic lines and rituals still in place, because Dexter has always been a series about routine, about the macabre nature of all routine — would be nothing if it didn’t also push its protagonist further each time.
This time, the leap is a double somersault: he moves to none other than New York. And Dexter Morgan’s perfection is removed from the equation. Because now the killer is Harrison, who has learned from his father — recall the previous season, where the boy learned to dismember the bad guys, where he absorbed the routines of every self-respecting serial killer — and has set out on his own path. In a place, moreover, teeming with people: the Empire Hotel, where he works as a bellhop.
With a start like this, viewers familiar with the show’s formula — committing crimes, making mistakes, nearly getting caught, and yet never actually being caught — have sky-high expectations. And the best part is that the show delivers. It executes the formula so flawlessly that it feels as if it has never strayed from it. In other words, life has continued on-screen for Dexter Morgan, just as it has for each of us off-screen.
In that life, and in this season, what awaits us is a proud father and a shift in roles — perfectly suited to Dexter’s changed circumstances — which might, who knows, eventually turn him into the kind of spectral figure his adoptive father became for him, the creator of the Code. The ace up the sleeve is Uma Thurman, in a juicy role that makes the comeback even more compelling. Watch it.
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