In ‘Dexter: Resurrection,’ Michael C. Hall Rises From the Ashes—and Hopes to Stick Around

Dexter Morgan knows what the end feels like, and he’s not too keen on it. The morally minded serial killer portrayed by Michael C. Hall first showed up in Showtime’s eponymous drama series Dexter, in the bulky of the late-2000s antihero boom alongside Walter White (Breaking Bad) and Don Draper (Mad Men). The hit show ran for eight seasons before reaching a widely maligned conclusion, in which Dexter decided to counterfeit his own death and go live as a lumberjack in a secluded mountain town. Hall then reprised the role in a sequel series, New Blood, which ended with Dexter seemingly actually dying—at the hands of his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott). That finale was fairly divisive too.

Still—dead is dead, right? Not quite, it turns out. “We thought it would be the end, but he’s a remarkably resilient guy, so the possibility was always—at least for me—percolating,” Hall says over Zoom. He’s speaking to me on break from a day of production on Dexter: Resurrection, whose title should tell you that New Blood was not, in fact, the end. Hall reiterates that he personally pushed to bring his signature character back to TV. He called Clyde Phillips, Dexter’s original showrunner and New Blood’s creator, to see what could be done. Here’s how Phillips remembers the pitch: “Michael said, ‘Dexter is in my bones, and I know what’s in your bones, Clyde. Can you figure out a way to undo what we did at the end of New Blood? Is there a way to make him survive?’” Within a week, Phillips and fellow executive producer Scott Reynolds came up with an idea. They told Hall it was a yes.

They put a Resurrection writers’ room together while shooting Original Sin, a prequel starring Patrick Gibson as Dexter in his 20s, set about 15 years before the events of the initial series. Sin’s first season, which concluded in February (it’s been renewed for a second season), has turned out to be a crucial text. It’s narrated by Hall’s Dexter in the immediate aftermath of New Blood; as he’s revived by doctors, his life flashes before his (or really, our) eyes. He looks back on how he got into the killing-for-justice game in the first place. “The character was severely traumatized by a lot of what happened to him in the original incarnation, and is only now at a place where he’s able to shed that,” Hall says. “Spending time with that [Original Sin] material helped embroider and color in what was maybe a line drawing or an outline that I had in my mind from the beginning—so it’s a tool for us.”

Premiering this summer on Paramount+ With Showtime, Resurrection takes place a few weeks after New Blood and is framed by the intense active between father and son. Dexter chases a missing Harrison to New York City, where David Zayas’s Captain Angel Batista is scorching on their trail from way down in Miami. Zayas is far from the only original cast member returning: “John Lithgow and Jimmy Smits will be in for a minute,” Phillips says, referring to their beloved respective roles of the Trinity Killer and ADA Miguel Prado. Dexter’s tardy adoptive father, Harry, who instilled the code of killing in his son, will return in ghost form, again portrayed by James Remar. Then there’s the matter of Harrison—secure to say, he’ll play a prominent role.