Dexter revival showrunner: new episodes won’t undo the original finale

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

I have never watched the Showtime series Dexter, but I do know that a lot of the show's fans were very disappointed with the series finale that aired seven years ago. Those fans were probably very happy to hear that Clyde Phillips, who served as showrunner on the first four seasons, is overseeing a 10-episode limited series revival that will be a 

continuation of the original, eight-season series, which ended in 2013 with Hall's Dexter Morgan going on self-imposed exile as a lumberjack and living a solitary life.

I saw some fans speculating that Phillips might ignore the finale or even wipe out the events of seasons 5 through 8 entirely so he could pick up where he left off at the end of season 4, but during an interview on the TV's Top 5 podcast Phillips assured viewers that the revival won't be undoing anything they had spent their time watching.

We basically do get to start from scratch. We want this to not be Dexter Season 9. Ten years, or however many years, have passed by the time this will air, and the show will reflect that time passage. So far as the ending of the show, this will have no resemblance to how the original finale was. It’s a great opportunity to write a second finale. This is an opportunity to make that right. But that’s not why we’re doing it. We’re not undoing anything. We’re not going to betray the audience and say, ‘Whoops, that was all a dream.’ What happened in the first eight years happened in the first eight years."

As someone who intends to get around to watching Dexter someday, I'm glad to hear that some of the seasons I'll be watching aren't going to be brushed aside as being irrelevant. Everything in the first eight seasons is still canon, and this revival is going to pick up years after Dexter became a lumberjack.

Michael C. Hall is set to reprise the role of Dexter and will be executive producing the revival with Phillips, John Goldwyn, Sara Colleton, Bill Carraro, and Scott Reynolds.