Michael C. Hall Says The Time is Right – Literally and Figuratively – as Icy Issues Await a Familiar Face in DEXTER: NEW BLOOD

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede It’s time to clear the decks for DEXTER, because in many ways that’s exactly what the character has done. Fully titled DEXTER: NEW BLOOD, the highly anticipated SHOWTIME special event series debuts Sunday, Nov. 7 on Crave. The original DEXTER aired for eight seasons, wrapping up in 2013. In a virtual interview, Michael C. Hall – who is back in the title role, kinda sorta, because Dexter is now known to those around him as Jim Lindsay – acknowledged that there were legitimate discussions about DEXTER returning at various junctures over the past eight years. But for viewers to fully accept this version of Dexter/Jim, supposedly a decade later and living in chilly upstate New York rather than steamy Miami, was a substantial period of unexplained and mysterious separation required? In other words, could DEXTER: NEW BLOOD have worked had it emerged in, say, 2016, or 2017, or 2018? Or would the blood still have been too wet? “Something could have potentially worked then, but I don’t think THIS could have worked,” Hall said. “He’s obviously familiar to us, but there’s something – I don’t know about fundamentally, but significantly – different. And you describe it really well, that in terms of what the show does, it presents a picture that has a lot of decided blanks that the audience is left to fill in. And I think those blanks being a little more substantial than if we had gone back earlier is a good thing.” The last time we saw Dexter – a serial killer with a code, although he hasn’t always followed it – he was shockingly still alive at the end of the original series, and living in Oregon. But he obviously isn’t there any more as DEXTER: NEW BLOOD begins, which, as Hall indicated, leaves viewers to surmise that the character has endured at least one botched foray, and maybe more, on his path to a convincing and manageable new identity. “There were some fits and starts and some experiments, where he had to run away, for whatever reason,” Hall said. “But in spite of the fact that he’s living under an alias, I do think that he is making as earnest and legitimate an attempt at being a normal person as he ever has.” That always has been the push-and-pull of the Dexter character, though. There’s part of him that longs for connection – heck, for someone whose “business” requires a great deal of solitude, just think of how many close romantic partners he has had through the years! But his “dark passenger” is always with him, too, as are a few others in this latest incarnation. A few key plotlines were already exposed in the official trailer, such as Dexter’s deceased sister Debra providing profane, ghostly “tough love.” And of course, the big “reveal” in the trailer was the fact that Dexter’s now teenaged son Harrison somehow manages to track Dexter down. “One of the thematic elements of the new show is that you can’t turn your back on your past, you can’t turn your back on who you were, by changing your name, and changing all the context of your life – one way or another, you’ll have to face it,” Hall said. “And he obviously literally faces it, when he comes face-to-face with his son. It’s the fundamental relationship, and the one that exposes both the darkest and the lightest aspects of Dexter.” Hall was asked if he thought the general reaction to the first DEXTER finale ultimately played a role in the impetus for DEXTER: NEW BLOOD. “You know, had the finale of the ‘series proper’ been deeply satisfying for people, we may well not have seen any reason to return,” Hall admitted. “In a way, this return is perhaps the silver lining of the grey cloud of what was, at best, a mystifying, confounding, if not infuriating, ending. Yeah, it was a big part of it.” As for Dexter’s physical well-being, Hall added, “well, if Dexter had ended more like Walter White (the lead character in BREAKING BAD), I certainly wouldn’t be talking to you now. As I sit here on the other side of having returned to the character in this new context, I’m glad he didn’t die eight years ago, or whatever it was.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv