After roughly seven years away from our television screens, Showtime’s Dexter is returning for what is expected to be a one-season run. Clyde Phillips, the original showrunner, is running the show again, and he’s promised to give fans a second ending, one that is more satisfying than the original but that does not undo the events of the first finale.
We have our own wish list for the second final season, and it appears that Clyde Phillips will likely follow through on at least one of those elements, bringing back Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter’s new Dark Passenger. He didn’t specifically say as much, but by saying he wouldn’t undo the original finale, he’s saying that he won’t resurrect Jennifer Carpenter’s character, Debra, while also saying (via Us Weekly) that there is “some flexibility to do some movie magic.” That, combined with the fact that Carpenter is promoting the revival on Instagram, certainly suggests that she will return as Dexter’s dark passenger.
However, maybe the most telling piece of news that Clyde Phillips has dropped, so far, is not who will be in the Dexter revival, but where it will be set. Specifically, Phillips said that it will not be set in Miami, the setting for all eight seasons of the original run. Why is this telling? If the setting were in, say, Portland, where Dexter relocated, then how would Angel Batista, Vince Masuka, and Joey Quinn appear? Because there’s really only one logical way to bring back the members of the Miami police department and the three surviving series-long regulars — Batista, Masuka, and Quinn — if the series is not set in Miami.
It has to be a manhunt. Eight, nine, or ten years after staging his death, presumably Dexter continues killing in Oregon (or wherever he might have moved), and this time, Dexter is found out, which leads to a sort of manhunt. And if there is a manhunt for Dexter in Oregon, there’s reason to bring Batista, Masuka, and Quinn back in order to help local police investigate Dexter and track him down, because those three will presumably know more about him than anyone else. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t sympathize with Dexter, particularly if Dexter is caught killing someone who deserves to die. Either of the three could work with local authorites to capture Dexter or help him escape from behind the scenes.
It’s either that, or none of the three return, and the revival brings back only Dexter, Jennifer Carpenter as his Dark Passenger, and maybe Yvonne Strahovski, but it seems like it wouldn’t be much of a Dexter revival without returning some of the characters that made the original series so beloved.
We’ll find out when the ninth (and final) season of Dexter returns in the fall of 2021.
(Via US Weekly)