Serial killers are not heroes, but you can never know the number of real crime stories and dramatized murderers who are currently populating television. Our culture has become obsessed with those who take lives and Dexter Morgan is partially responsible. Now his television resurrection aims to question this obsession.
When “Dexter” made his debut in 2006, the character of Michael C. Hall was considered the first TV serial killer. What made him palpable was who he turned off: other killers whose victims were less “deserving”. In his own way, Dex made Miami a safer place, while nourishing her innate blood.
Nearly two decades later, the appetite for killers in a fictitious – or fictitious – serial – has evolved, with romantic sockets in programs like “Monsters”, “Hannibal” and “You”. Add the real obsession with crime and a tendency to forget the victims, and there have been dissertations and endless theories on the reasons why we continue to do and watch these series.
Four episodes in and “Dexter: Resurrection” is an answer to this evolution. The showrunner Clyde Phillips, which supervised the first original seasons and all the benefits since, uses the last series to put Dexter in direct contact with original killers and explore the titles that give them their bases of fans.
It is not a spoiler to say that Dexter is alive after his son Harrison (Jack Alcott) pulled him in the final of “New Blood”, despite the phillips that insisted that the character was dead. The trailer, on the other hand, confirmed a meeting between Dex and his former friend and colleague Angel Batista (David Zayas), who has long suspected of being the butcher of Bay Harbor. The pair meets quickly in the first episode, leading to exit to leaving Iron Lake for New York in search of her son.
It is by living the life of the big city that real action takes place. Harrison tries to forget his past while working in an established hotel, until a horrible accident sends him a spiral on the same path as his father. Dexter, on the other hand, is involved in the darkest sub-(Caits, the details of which would be a spoiler to reveal. Especially since the heart of history is a slow burn, with the first episodes dedicated to the establishment of the holder of Dexter, the hiding place of Easter eggs and the construction of the new life of Harrison.
Unlike “New Blood”, in which Dexter tried to live down and far from the murders and the controversy, the character is ready to reintegrate his dark passenger in New York. This means that his father Harry (James NEME) is back like his ghostly guide. But remember, it’s an older dexter that comes back from death. And so, it is no longer capable of the same physical exploits that it was once. The scripts embrace this change for humor and frustration, reminding us that no one is really immortal here.
Just like in “New Blood” and the original series, Dexter continues to strive towards moral resolution as the episodes take place. His past trauma continues to haunt him (the only time he looked for therapy was to trap a homicide therapist, after all), and some of the most interesting scenes are when he tries to balance his pride with his sense of society.
Of course, Dexter is also there to protect and keep an eye on his son, given in Yo-Yo to the decision that he is the only one who can really understand Harrison. The series takes advantage by keeping the scenarios of the characters separated for the moment, because viewers have never really had the chance to know Harrison outside the gaze of his father. Harrison’s growth and development are only possible in the absence of his father, but having a dexter, looking at him secretly, viewers of the link must invest in his scenario. There is a reason why a series “son of Dexter” without Dexter has never occurred.
Duality leads to explorations of nature against education, generational trauma and the examination of psychology and the acceptance of killers. There is also a lot of physical action to keep up with a full rhythm in the first three episodes and hang on, not to mention a dark, comical and rarely stretch script both beyond reality as some of the last seasons of the original. (Dexter and his sister should never have been one thing, thank you very much.)
As the series arrives at the fourth episode made available to criticism, the real knot of the place where this season takes place. It is at this point that we learn more about the characters played by invited stars previously announced like Peter Dinklage, Eric Stonesreet, Uma Thurman and Neil Patrick Harris, who each bring a memorable take.
A special dinner scene plays more like a Gothic stage, which is appropriate given the backdrop of New York, and there are many head signs for real -life serial killers, including John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson. They are thrown into the same world as the fictitious serial killers. How Dexter relates to them, has the impression that he differs and interacts with them is where things become really, really interesting.
This is all that Dexter has a mirror to the current obsession of society for serial killers in an entertaining and somewhat cathartic way that makes the series relevant now. Dexter is not a hero, but he never claimed to be. Here, in particular, he seems to be the border between the intention finally or the idea of serial killers as a hero.
Is the rooting for a serial killer OK if it means the fall of many? It is a utilitarian socket that would make John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham proud, and that’s what makes “Dexter: Resurrection” relevant to the world 19 years after the beginnings of the original series.
“Dexter: Resurrection” will be presented on Friday on Paramount + with Showtime.
