Spoilers follow for the first four episodes of Dexter: Resurrection, through “Call Me Red,” which premiered on Paramount+ on July 25.
Dexter just won’t die. That’s been true for a while now, both inside the franchise’s canon and outside of it, since Showtime keeps green-lighting new series in this franchise, including last year’s Original Sin prequel and the upcoming Trinity Killer prequel. And now Dexter: Resurrection, which basically does a retcon on how Dexter: New Blood ended. You thought Michael C. Hall’s serial killer was actually shot and left to die by his own son? Oopsie!
Actually, Dexter lived, and Resurrection wakes him up after a ten-week coma to evade old friend and colleague Angel Batista (David Zayas), who now finally realizes Dexter was Miami’s Bay Harbor Butcher all along. With Angel on his trail, Dexter travels to New York City to reunite with his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), who yes, tried to kill his father, but now might need his help since he murdered a serial rapist, followed Dexter’s code, and is now being investigated by the NYPD. And while all this is happening, Dexter also makes the time to start targeting other serial killers. (Dexter gonna Dexter!) That mission gets him pulled into the orbit of megawealthy venture capitalist Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage), who invests in the top tier of all industries — including murderers, spree killers, and all the other degenerates Dexter has spent his life wiping from this mortal coil. For the first time, Dexter’s surrounded by other people who have the same urges he does. Can he really kill these people when they might be his first genuine friends?
I’ll be honest: I thought I was done with Dexter years ago, around when the writers made Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) fall in love with her brother, and then again after New Blood, which was so ham-fisted in its attempt to make Harrison the Nu Dexter, and then once more during Original Sin, which retconned Dexter’s childhood and turned his adoptive father, Harry (James Remar in the original series and in Resurrection; Christian Slater in Original Sin), into a selfish monster. Even my beloved Mr. Robot couldn’t save that one. But watching Resurrection is, miraculously, like stepping into a time machine back to the early days of Dexter, when it was slyly funny and had a firm grasp on its storytelling. Every element of fourth episode “Call Me Red” signals an exciting path for the rest of the season. An evil wealthy guy who funds murderers to support his own sicko obsession? I never thought Dexter would go eat-the-rich, and I’m thrilled by it. Here are three things that have me optimistic about where Resurrection goes from here.
The winking self-awareness
Dexter narrating his inner thoughts has been an aspect of the show from the beginning, and it’s functioned as the series’s most straightforward attempt at humor. Dexter makes some judgmental asides about his co-workers, Dexter struggles to understand social norms, Dexter sighs in relief at biting into a Cubano. That voiceover is often our best glimpse into Dexter’s inner workings compared with his sometimes-robotic outer shell. Too often in the latter seasons of Dexter and in New Blood, that inner voice got dour and somber, with Dexter fretting about how he was hurting the people in his life. In Resurrection, though, Dexter is basically free because so many know who he is — Harrison knows he’s a killer, Angel knows he’s a killer, the serial killers he meets don’t know his true identity, but they also know he’s a killer. Dexter doesn’t have to hide as much anymore, and that allows his narration to take on a more self-aware, winking tone.
Resurrection centers Dexter more than New Blood did, and to its benefit, since Hall is so good at finding the exact right pitches and pauses to convey Dexter’s frustrations and boasts. When Dexter is chatting with the hallucinated ghost version of Harry, he’s bickering and bratty, as much of a petulant son to Harry as Harrison was to him; when he’s befriending rideshare driver Blessing Kamara (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), he’s shocked by Blessing’s considerate nature and his kindness toward strangers. Those pairings let Resurrection move into buddy-cop mode and lighten up Dexter’s character overall. When Dexter’s hallucinated version of the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow) tells him in premiere episode “A Beating Heart …” that Dexter is just like Jesus, because “like our savior, sometimes you have to go through hell to achieve resurrection,” that’s a glimpse of the comedy to come. Mocking Dexter’s megalomania always works, and Resurrection goes all in.
Angel Batista on the case!
Back in Miami, a number of Dexter’s colleagues suspected or knew what he was up to. James Doakes (Erik King) confronted Dexter and confirmed he was the Bay Harbor Butcher but was killed by Dexter’s pyromaniac girlfriend at the end of season two, and then successfully framed by Dexter as being the Butcher himself. (King’s cameo in Resurrection’s premiere episode to reprise his “Surprise, motherfucker!” catchphrase was a delight.) Jimmy Smits’s assistant district attorney, Miguel Prado, strong-armed Dexter into letting him participate in his killings, then went rogue and started murdering on his own. Lauren Vélez’s María LaGuerta, who suspected Dexter for years, went so far as to bring him in, only to be murdered by Dexter’s sister, Deb. And even in New Blood, Dexter’s girlfriend, Iron Lake police chief Angela Bishop (Julia Jones), suspects that he’s the Bay Harbor Butcher only to let the matter drop when it seems like Harrison had killed him. All of this is to say, Dexter is one slippery dude, and his ability to avoid capture is as delightfully silly as his invincibility.
Still: Isn’t it nice that Angel Batista is finally on the case? For years on Dexter, our favorite fedora-wearing charmer was somehow both a great detective and also entirely unable to accept that his longtime friend was a killer, no matter how many people voiced their suspicions to him. And even now, in Resurrection, he’s only on Dexter’s trail because Angela called him partway through New Blood to share her theory about her new boyfriend (an accusation she’s since recanted before leaving town, Angel tells Dexter). But still, give our guy some credit! Let him show us the investigative skills that were otherwise so diminished by Dexter operating right under his nose!
It’s not that I necessarily want Dexter to be caught; part of the fresher feel of Resurrection is how unbothered Dexter seems to be about Angel chasing him. Zayas has such gravitas and endearing screen presence, though, that watching him put the pieces together — especially once he meets Harrison in NYC and links up with the detectives investigating the murder that seems so much like the Bay Harbor Butcher’s work — is satisfying in its own way. I fear that this might eventually end with Dexter killing Angel, too, but before then, let the smooth-voiced Zayas cook!
Episode four — all of it
In general, Dexter followed an overarching villain-per-season format, and those baddies were always full of personality, which “My Beating Heart …” reminded us of by bringing back Lithgow, Smits, and King as hallucinations to needle Dexter. “Call Me Red” ups the ante and has me engaged with Dexter in a way I haven’t been for a long time by providing an array of potential friends and foes converging around the central figure of Leon Prater. While in NYC, Dexter takes it personally when a serial killer targeting rideshare drivers uses the name “Dark Passenger” (Dexter’s secret nickname for the murderous aspect of himself), leading him to kill the man and assume his identity to infiltrate a secret society of killers funded by Prater. Petty Dexter is pretty fun!
Turning serial-killing into a metaphor for consumerist culture is similar to how FX’s Fargo critiqued organized crime as a business model in its exceptional, series-high second season, and I’m so curious how Resurrection will handle this idea. Dinklage is the perfect person to play a thoroughly pleased-with-himself, secretly vicious investor, and he has great chemistry with Hall. Prater showing a bemused Dexter around his secret vault of souvenirs while being unaware of the relationships Dexter had with a number of these people — like the Ice Truck Killer, Dexter’s own older brother — is more tongue-in-cheek than this franchise has been in a long time, and that’s a good thing.
Resurrection is broadly framed as a story about two sides of Dexter fighting himself, the side who wants to be a good father to Harrison and the side who wants to pursue his code and kill people who deserve it, and “Call Me Red” gives each version of Dexter something to do. He kills Neil Patrick Harris’s Lowell, who targets people based on their tattoos (sort of a relief, because Harris’s southern accent was not entirely working), and surprises Harrison, letting his son know that not only is he alive, he’s been following Harrison for days. Admittedly, I’m way more interested in the former storyline — the repercussions of Dexter inserting himself into Prater’s circle and then immediately killing off one of its members before fully understanding what Prater expects from the serial killers he befriends and to whom he gifts hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does Prater hire these people to kill his business rivals? Does he lend them out to his business allies for their own murderous needs? You hire actors like Dinklage and Uma Thurman, who plays his henchwoman and enforcer, Charley, because their characters are going to get up to some wild shit, and I’m so excited that I have no idea where Resurrection is going to go with this subplot, with the friction between Dexter and Prater, and with the possibility of Dexter having a little clique. So excited that I almost feel fondness toward the still-irritating Harrison! Almost.
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Watching this week’s Resurrection is like stepping into a time machine back to the show’s glory days.
