Dexter showrunner addresses original ending, calls new series "an opportunity to make that right"
As a rule, people—up to and including star Michael C. Hall, who basically gave the whole thing a “Hey, what are you gonna do about it?” shrug when asked—did not love the ending of Showtime’s Dexter. Some of that is probably down to our nation’s rampant lumber-jack-o-phobia, but a lot of it can be linked back to the show’s increasingly strident steps away from reality in its last few years on the air, and some fairly intense eye-rolling at the idea of our old pal Dexter Morgan managing to extend his magical ability to get away with anything with anyone to the literal forces of nature itself.
All of which, Dexter revival series showrunner Clyde Phillips assures you, he knows. Phillips—who has an interesting relationship with the series, in so far as most people divide the “good” and “bad” seasons of Dexter at the same point he left the series, after running it for its first four seasons—has stated that the just-announced revival series won’t “undo” anything that already happened on the series. But, Phillips noted in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast, “So far as the ending of the show, this will have no resemblance to how the original finale was. It’s a great opportunity to write a second finale.”
Phillips went on to add that, while it’s explicitly not why the new series is being made, “This is an opportunity to make that right,” in reference to the disappointing response to the show’s original 2013 finale. The new series won’t serve as a direct sequel to said logging odyssey, either, instead jumping forward the same amount of time as has passed in the real world, during which we can only assume Dexter has murdered himself a whole forest worth of trees. “We want this to not be Dexter Season 9,” Phillips said, while still making clear that, “We’re not going to betray the audience and say, ‘Whoops, that was all a dream.’ What happened in the first eight years happened in the first eight years.”
Showtime announced the Dexter revival earlier this week, with Hall committed to returning as everyone’s favorite serial-killer-but-he’s-nice.