New Blood Creator Addresses Backlash to Killing Dexter

Dexter: New Blood creator Clyde Phillips has broken his multi-year silence over the controversy that came from killing Dexter Morgan. Endings are hard. Endings for ongoing stories, like a TV series or film franchise are even harder. You have to stick a landing after spending years of building a story, developing characters, creating all kinds of arcs. Sometimes creators want to be unpredictable, sometimes they want to give fans exactly what they expect, sometimes they think that something unpredictable is what fans deserve. It’s a tricky situation and there’s no series that knows that better than Dexter, a show that has now had two endings that both caused uproar amongst the fans. Now, a sequel series known as Dexter: Resurrection will take a third crack at ending the series.

Videos by ComicBook.com

Dexter is Showtime’s biggest series by a large margin and one of the most popular shows out there in general. It’s why there are currently multiple Dexter spin-offs in the works, including one focused on the Trinity Killer. People really care a lot about the serial killer known as Dexter Morgan and don’t really even want him to go away, but if he must, they hope for a satisfying ending. Dexter originally ended in 2013 by having Dexter fake his death by crashing his boat in a hurricane. Sometime later, he ends up in the pacific northwest as a lumberjack without any internal monologue. It left the door open for a revival, but at the time, it was deeply unfulfilling. For years, Dexter was frequently found on lists ranking the worst endings in TV history.

Dexter: New Blood really rubbed fans the wrong way, though. After being exposed as a serial killer and killing an innocent cop, Dexter looked to flee Iron Lake with his son. However, Harrison realized his father’s “noble” acts of vigilantism were causing more harm than good. Dexter realizes his actions have resulted in the deaths of many innocent people and tells his son that he can kill him. So, Harrison shoots him, leaving Dexter to bleed out in the snow. Of course, that was until Dexter: Original Sin revealed he’s still alive thanks to the help of some doctors!

Why Dexter Died in Dexter: New Blood

However, showrunner Clyde Phillips never intended to keep Dexter alive. He noted in interviews at the time of Dexter: New Blood‘s 2022 finale that Dexter was definitively dead and that he had no plans to have him wake up as if it was all a bad dream. After seeing the reaction from fans, though, Phillips realized they didn’t stick the landing. The showrunner told The Hollywood Reporter that he decided to kill Michael C. Hall’s version of Dexter because he knew he only had him for one season and didn’t want to leave it open-ended again.

“When I wrote that [New Blood] finale — which was the most watched single episode in the history of Showtime, by the way — the internet went insane over it. Because they loved Dexter so much and they love Michael Hall so much,” Phillips recalls about the big reaction to Dexter’s death. “I wanted to take out ads at the time that said: ‘I only had Michael Hall for one year.’ Back when we did New Blood, I only had him for one year. […] I didn’t want him going off to prison or disappearing into the fog or any of that business [in the finale], so I decided to be bold about it. The internet hated it.”

Naturally, feeling unsatisfied, Phillips and Michael C. Hall sought to try and figure out how to revive Dexter. Not only that, they had to feasibly create a whole new adventure for Dexter to embark on after being outed as a serial killer to the world and killing a cop. Somehow, they managed to do so and will tell that story next year in Dexter: Resurrection.

Phillips was the showrunner for the first four seasons of Dexter, so he wasn’t involved for the ending of the original season eight ending. However, he has seemingly learned some lessons from New Blood. It has been suggested that Dexter: Resurrection could go for multiple seasons, so fans likely won’t need to worry about the show having another rushed ending that swings a bit too big. Rumors suggest Dexter: Resurrection will take the series to New York City and feature returning characters such as Harrison and Harry. The show is expected to begin filming in two weeks and will premiere in June 2025.

In the meantime, Dexter fans can whet their appetite with a new prequel series known as Dexter: Original Sin. Despite being a prequel, it does have some scenes in the present day that bridge the gap between New Blood and Resurrection. As an added bonus, Michael C. Hall also returns to narrate the show, allowing fans to get more of that sly Dexter narration.