[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “Dexter: Original Sin” Episode 1, “And in the beginning…”]
Forward of Friday’s premiere, Paramount+ with Showtime didn’t present evaluation screeners for “Dexter: Unique Sin” — a tactic that usually signifies the community has doubts about this system’s perceived high quality — however on this particular occasion, there could have been another excuse at play. Positive, the newest “Dexter” spinoff is completely unimpressive in its opening hour, which primarily reenacts scenes already described in the course of the authentic sequence whereas youthful actors cosplay because the older characters followers already know and, supposedly, love. However it additionally opens with a reveal that Showtime would wish to preserve hidden, because it raises fairly a number of questions on the way forward for the franchise. OK… possibly it’s only one query:
Can Dexter Morgan die?
Technically, the thought first crossed my thoughts earlier than “Dexter: Unique Sin” even begins. After logging onto Paramount+ and clicking play on the “Dexter” prequel, viewers are met with a preview for “Dexter: Resurrections,” the second “Dexter” sequel sequence (following 2021’s “Dexter: New Blood”). Over a cut up picture of Michael C. Corridor, who originated the serial killer character again in 2006, and Patrick Gibson, who performs Dexter in “Unique Sin,” an offscreen voice says, “After you see how he started, see the place Dexter goes subsequent.” Then the voice switches to Corridor, who asks, “Did you miss me?”
“Huh,” I assumed, as “Coming in Summer season 2025” flashed throughout the display screen. “Didn’t Dexter die? Didn’t his son kill him? Wasn’t he shot within the coronary heart and left to bleed out on the bottom in an ending meant to be as definitively remaining as the unique sequence’ conclusion was maddeningly unresolved?”
Sure, all that did occur in “Dexter: New Blood,” and no, it didn’t cease creator Clyde Phillips or the executives at Paramount+ from bringing him again for one more stab at stabbing individuals. The community confirmed Corridor’s return after they first introduced “Resurrections” in July 2024, however “Dexter: Unique Sin” affords the primary clarification for the way such a continuation is even potential.
The brand new sequence opens with a gasping, eye-rolling Dexter (Michael C. Corridor) being rushed to the hospital in the current day. He’s behind a cop automobile, and the motive force isn’t proven, however it appears protected to imagine it’s not Chief Bishop (Julia Jones), who had a full dialog over Dexter’s dying physique along with his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), after she arrived on the scene of the crime. The crime, once more, is that Harrison shot his dad within the coronary heart, a mortal blow that, on the time, neither certainly one of them did something to alleviate. Blood was pooling on the snowy floor round him. Dexter’s physique was immobile, inert, pre-Rigor mortis. He was, by their evaluation in addition to ours, useless.
Simply kidding! Possibly, as soon as Harrison fled city, the chief had second ideas and determined it ought to no less than appear to be she tried to save lots of Dexter? However all that should be sorted in “Resurrections” (or, extra possible, not sorted ever), since “Unique Sin” solely reveals Dexter arriving on the hospital for emergency surgical procedure, the place the docs quickly shock his coronary heart again to life. “Ah, a beating coronary heart,” Corridor says by way of voiceover. “I’ll take it.”
From there, the individually illuminated letters of the hospital’s Emergency entrance fizzle out, spelling merely “EMERGE,” and Dexter’s voiceover ushers us again to his delivery. “It truly is like they are saying: Your life flashes earlier than your eyes.”
A flash lengthy sufficient, apparently, for moment-by-moment narration. As Younger Dexter practices carving up cadavers in med faculty, earlier than discovering his option to an internship on the Miami Police Division, Corridor’s voiceover punctuates every scene, identical to it has within the different sequence so far. “Unique Sin” strikes rapidly and clumsily to reestablish the identical state of affairs as the unique “Dexter”: Dexter Morgan works facet by facet with the cops, serving to to catch criminals whereas he’s out killing a few of them himself. Angel Batista is already working there, now performed by James Martinez, and Masuka (Alex Shimizu) is Dexter’s disturbingly immature supervisor. (Masuka’s sexist shtick was apparently realized at a really younger age, as he’s launched right here shouting “Need to see my nine-inch nail?” at school ladies, earlier than snapping their pictures after they stroll away.)
Christian Slater takes on the roll of Harry, Dexter’s dad, who is aware of all about his son’s “darkish passenger” and tries to information him towards satisfying his urges in productive, comparatively protected methods. Patrick Dempsey can be on board because the indignant boss sort (“I’m not a proud mama, fellas,” Captain Spencer shouts at his group. “I’m one pissed off menopausal bitch!”) and Sarah Michelle Gellar has a visitor starring arc as Tanya, Miami’s greatest detective (aside from Harry).
If all that appears like enjoyable to you, then you definitely’ll in all probability flip for the premiere’s early ’90s soundtrack, that includes hits like “Ice Ice Child” and “Nothing However a Good Time,” however thus far, the nostalgia bait (together with casting era-appropriate heartthrobs Gellar, Slater, and Dempsey) is all “Unique Sin” has going for it. The primary episode fails to reply the basic query of why this sequence must exist. We already know the way Dexter received began as a serial killer. We already know his bathed-in-blood origin story. We don’t have to see it acted out (generally for a second time).
Maybe future episodes will give you worthy factors of curiosity in Dexter’s early days, however proper now it looks like “Dexter: Unique Sin” exists solely as a result of “Dexter: New Blood” was well-rated and Showtime wants a franchise. As long as that’s the case, I assume we’ve received our reply:
Dexter can’t die.
“Dexter: Unique Sin” premiered Friday, December 13 on Paramount+ with Showtime. New episodes shall be launched weekly.