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[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “Dexter: Original Sin” Episode 1, “And in the beginning…”]
Ahead of Friday’s premiere, Paramount+ with Showtime didn’t provide review screeners for “Dexter: Original Sin” — a tactic that typically indicates the network has doubts about the program’s perceived quality — but in this specific instance, there may have been another reason at play. Sure, the latest “Dexter” spinoff is thoroughly unimpressive in its opening hour, which mainly reenacts scenes already described during the original series while younger actors cosplay as the older characters fans already know and, supposedly, love. But it also opens with a reveal that Showtime would want to keep hidden, since it raises quite a few questions about the future of the franchise. OK… maybe it’s just one question:
Can Dexter Morgan die?
Technically, the thought first crossed my mind before “Dexter: Original Sin” even starts. After logging onto Paramount+ and clicking play on the “Dexter” prequel, viewers are met with a preview for “Dexter: Resurrections,” the second “Dexter” sequel series (following 2021’s “Dexter: New Blood”). Over a split image of Michael C. Hall, who originated the serial killer character back in 2006, and Patrick Gibson, who plays Dexter in “Original Sin,” an offscreen voice says, “After you see how he began, see where Dexter goes next.” Then the voice switches to Hall, who asks, “Did you miss me?”
“Huh,” I thought, as “Coming in Summer 2025” flashed across the screen. “Didn’t Dexter die? Didn’t his son kill him? Wasn’t he shot in the heart and left to bleed out on the ground in an ending meant to be as definitively final as the original series’ conclusion was maddeningly unresolved?”
Yes, all that did happen in “Dexter: New Blood,” and no, it didn’t stop creator Clyde Phillips or the executives at Paramount+ from bringing him back for another stab at stabbing people. The network confirmed Hall’s return when they first announced “Resurrections” in July 2024, but “Dexter: Original Sin” offers the first explanation for how such a continuation is even possible.
The new series opens with a gasping, eye-rolling Dexter (Michael C. Hall) being rushed to the hospital in the present day. He’s in the back of a cop car, and the driver isn’t shown, but it seems safe to assume it’s not Chief Bishop (Julia Jones), who had a full conversation over Dexter’s dying body with his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), after she arrived at the scene of the crime. The crime, again, is that Harrison shot his dad in the heart, a mortal blow that, at the time, neither one of them did anything to alleviate. Blood was pooling on the snowy ground around him. Dexter’s body was motionless, inert, pre-Rigor mortis. He was, by their assessment as well as ours, dead.
Just kidding! Maybe, once Harrison fled town, the chief had second thoughts and decided it should at least look like she tried to save Dexter? But all that will have to be sorted in “Resurrections” (or, more likely, not sorted ever), since “Original Sin” only shows Dexter arriving at the hospital for emergency surgery, where the doctors soon shock his heart back to life. “Ah, a beating heart,” Hall says via voiceover. “I’ll take it.”
You’ll never guess who James Martinez plays in ‘Dexter: Original Sin’Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with SHOWTIMEFrom there, the individually illuminated letters of the hospital’s Emergency entrance fizzle out, spelling simply “EMERGE,” and Dexter’s voiceover ushers us back to his birth. “It really is like they say: Your life flashes before your eyes.”
A flash long enough, apparently, for moment-by-moment narration. As Young Dexter practices carving up cadavers in med school, before finding his way to an internship at the Miami Police Department, Hall’s voiceover punctuates each scene, just like it has in the other series thus far. “Original Sin” moves quickly and clumsily to reestablish the same scenario as the original “Dexter”: Dexter Morgan works side by side with the cops, helping to catch criminals while he’s out killing some of them himself. Angel Batista is already working there, now played by James Martinez, and Masuka (Alex Shimizu) is Dexter’s disturbingly immature supervisor. (Masuka’s sexist shtick was apparently learned at a very young age, as he’s introduced here shouting “Want to see my nine-inch nail?” at college girls, before snapping their photos when they walk away.)
Christian Slater takes on the roll of Harry, Dexter’s dad, who knows all about his son’s “dark passenger” and tries to guide him toward satisfying his urges in productive, relatively safe ways. Patrick Dempsey is also on board as the angry boss type (“I’m not a proud mama, fellas,” Captain Spencer shouts at his team. “I’m one pissed off menopausal bitch!”) and Sarah Michelle Gellar has a guest starring arc as Tanya, Miami’s best detective (other than Harry).
If all that sounds like fun to you, then you’ll probably flip for the premiere’s early ’90s soundtrack, featuring hits like “Ice Ice Baby” and “Nothing But a Good Time,” but so far, the nostalgia bait (including casting era-appropriate heartthrobs Gellar, Slater, and Dempsey) is all “Original Sin” has going for it. The first episode fails to answer the fundamental question of why this series needs to exist. We already know how Dexter got started as a serial killer. We already know his bathed-in-blood origin story. We don’t need to see it acted out (sometimes for a second time).
Perhaps future episodes will come up with worthy points of interest in Dexter’s early days, but right now it seems like “Dexter: Original Sin” exists solely because “Dexter: New Blood” was well-rated and Showtime needs a franchise. So long as that’s the case, I guess we’ve got our answer:
Dexter can’t die.
“Dexter: Original Sin” premiered Friday, December 13 on Paramount+ with Showtime. New episodes will be released weekly.
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