[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Dexter: Original Sin series premiere, “And in the Beginning.”]
The collection premiere of Dexter: Unique Sin, which arrived on Paramount+ with Showtime on Friday (December 13), achieves lots in its less-than-one-hour runtime. First, it solutions the query about Dexter’s destiny after the occasions of New Blood and main as much as Resurrection. Then it takes us again to fifteen years earlier than the occasions of Dexter to indicate how Dexter Morgan (this time, performed by Patrick Gibson) first got here to be Miami Metro P.D.’s esteemed blood spatter analyst and, ya know, a serial killer within the first place, revisiting his first kill of Nurse Mary. It additionally provides one thing utterly new to the Dexter lore: the loss of life of Harry Morgan Jr., a personality who didn’t exist within the prior collection.
That’s proper. Harry (Christian Slater on this iteration) had a organic son lengthy earlier than adopting Dexter, and it didn’t go so nicely for both of them. In a flashback to the ’70s, we see him watching soccer and consuming a beer earlier than he realizes his son isn’t within the room with him, and the again door is open. He rushes to search out the tiny little one from the underside of the pool and jumps in to save lots of him, however it’s too late. When Doris comes residence to search out her little one being carted away in a physique bag, each dad and mom are visibly destroyed.
“I believe that tragedy can be one thing that’s simply unrecoverable from,” Slater informed TV Insider of the devastating growth. “And I believe it motivates so a lot of his decisions with Dexter, decisions with Deb… As we went from episode to episode, it was actually fascinating to comply with the alternatives that he makes and a number of the errors that occurred, and it’s arduous to foretell the longer term. You’re making an attempt to do one factor, after which this occurs. You may’t plan for all the things, however I believe all of these components and features actually led to who Harry finally ends up changing into and expressing unconditional love for Dexter.”
Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with Showtime
Creator Clyde Phillips stated the concept for this gutting new wrinkle within the Morgan household historical past struck him at an inopportune time (within the video interview embedded above). “I believed in regards to the swimming pool sequence in the course of the evening, and I simply wrote down — I do that factor known as ‘midnight notes,’ it drives my spouse loopy — and I simply scribbled, ‘Swimming pool.” Fortunately, I remembered what it meant the following morning.”
Phillips agreed that the impact of this growth might be felt going ahead in Harry’s journey on the prequel. “It’s such a formative and transformative second in an individual’s life, in a father’s life, in a wedding. They wrestle to remain married, and it additionally reveals why Harry needed one other son so unhealthy, and there’s a tug of guilt that lives inside Harry as a result of Harry is accountable for that. He left that door open. He’s watching a soccer recreation, not being attentive to what’s happening outdoors. And that simply so informs and helps Christian Slater play the scenes that he subsequently performs in 1973 and in 1991,” Phillips defined.
As for whether or not Dexter will discover out in regards to the elder brother he by no means knew about? “Not within the first season, and so once we get picked up, that’s one thing that we intend to discover,” Phillips stated.
One other new factor of the prequel collection is, after all, the intro, which presents a brand new morning ritual with some acquainted components — the music, squashing mosquito on Dexter’s arm, a morning shave (this time, by Harry), shoe-tying, and a stretched t-shirt — together with some new options, like a blended tape, toothpaste, scrambled eggs and bacon, and nail polish, to call a couple of.
“If you happen to’ve by no means seen the present earlier than, we would like you to benefit from the opening credit. If in case you have seen the present earlier than, you may take pleasure in them much more,” Phillips defined of the inventive decisions there. “They had been taking pictures some promo stuff, and we had been watching them. We had been behind the behind-the-scenes folks, and we had been watching this [and said], ‘Wait a minute.’ After which we requested them to get a few pick-up photographs for us. After which we constructed that sequence as if it’s 1991, not 2006, so it’s as an alternative of the French press espresso maker, it’s a Mr. Espresso, and she or he’s making it. It’s Deb is making a combination tape, and all of the stuff that occurred within the early ’90s. So we received to combine and match each of them. After which the music by Ralph Kent… it simply brings you residence once more. You already know the place you might be.”
Dexter: Unique Sin, Fridays and Sundays, Paramount+