[Editor’s note: This piece contains spoilers for Dexter: Resurrection.]
“Dexter Morgan. Exactly who I need to be. Exactly who you want me to be.”
Dexter: Resurrection creator Clyde Phillips ended the first season with a wink to an audience who has been through the wringer with this character for two decades, concluding a story that lived up to its title by going back to the beginning. The legacy of Dexter Morgan has been redeemed. He is no longer a lumberjack in the woods, looking mournfully at the rankings that put the original finale of Dexter on a list of the worst series closers of all time. He is no longer bleeding out in the snow after the end of the depressing New Blood. Even Dexter Babies has been canceled. This is the one and only Dexter Morgan, exactly who you want him to be: on a boat, slyly smiling, his enemies vanquished, tossing body parts into the water. And it looks like this show could run for another ten years. Look out New York.
There was little reason to think that Resurrection would work. It’s not just the spin-offs that have been a bit disappointing; the last few seasons of the Showtime original weren’t exactly critical blockbusters as the show seemed lost in its efforts to top the award-winning peak of its fourth season. So how did the writers of this unexpectedly clever thriller—Phillips, Scott Buck, and Kirsa Rein, among others—pull off Dexter’s greatest assignment? They got back to the basics: high-powered guest stars, righteous justice, and captivating twists and turns. And they did so through mirror images of what fans of this show know about its characters, reflecting the themes that built the series’ legacy in the first place.
Since its first season, Dexter has played with duality, chronicling in that freshman outing how Dexter took a different path than his sociopathic brother Brian, who became the Ice Truck Killer. It’s no coincidence that he returned to haunt Dexter in the season finale, a ghostly reminder of not just a fate that Dexter could have met years ago but how the show is actively getting back to its roots.
Dexter: Resurrection uses pairs repeatedly, from David Dastmalchian’s Gemini Killer to the fact that Dexter is pretending to be Red, a.k.a. the Dark Passenger. It’s a season of reflections, most explicitly in an arc that recalls that initial battle between Dexter and his brother. Peter Dinklage’s Leon Prater is another man forged by trauma through the death of a parent. Wherein that made Dexter Morgan into a serial killer, it morphed Leon Prater into a different kind of merchant of death, someone who has turned his obsession with brutality into capitalism. When Dexter finally kills Leon, it’s because Leon can’t fathom a moral code being associated with murder. Trauma made Dexter into the Dark Passenger, but, again, going back to basics, we’re reminded how formative his father was in that journey. Without him, he could have become his brother Brian or even Leon.
The mirroring is also intentional in the final scenes with Harrison, although it’s to the end of New Blood (another clunker that needed a bit of a redo) instead of the beginning of the series. Once again, Harrison is presented with a chance to shoot his father, but he chooses instead to save him, finally understanding that dad’s moral compass isn’t the same as the monsters he erases from this planet. The writers don’t just pull Dexter from his lumberjack ending; they redeem Harrison, too, allowing the son to save the father he once killed. Even the ghost of Dexter’s dad seems to see the new charge in his son. His last line is the very un-Harry “Get that fucker.”
With both Harry and Harrison behind him, Dexter looks almost supercharged, finally ready to be himself again. Does this mean Dexter Morgan can be a normal father? It’s doubtful, but that is, of course, another formative duality that’s been a part of the show since day one: the idea that this guy can be both father and killer, cop and suspect. Almost all of his problems over the run of the show have emerged from when he crosses the lines, when he tries to either deny the Dark Passenger or let his issues become Dexter’s. But he may have finally turned that corner by vanquishing someone whose childhood trauma destroyed his moral code.
Ultimately, Leon Prater is killed while people chant his name at a gala upstairs, surrounded by his own heartless trophies. Yes, the bit with Harrison and the syringe is a tad janky, but it’s forgivable for how often the finale, and the season, has been so wonderfully self-aware, even in its music choices. The DJ dropping “Born To Be Alive” at the event after Prater has been murdered—but Dexter has been “resurrected”—is just one of the hysterical little touches. Even the use of “Stayin’ Alive” this season has layers given its connection to NYC through its instant association with Saturday Night Fever.
The show saved the best needle drop for last, and you might have missed it. That smooth, jazzy tune that plays as Dexter tosses Leon’s body parts overboard? It’s “Cristo Redentor” by Donald Byrd. Inspired by a trip that he took to Brazil, its translation is a nod to the greatest resurrection story ever: Christ The Redeemer.
Dexter Morgan has risen.
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