Dexter: New Blood is one of the most successful TV revivals in recent memory. But the finale left viewers divided, with some deeming it a fitting conclusion for the beloved anti-hero and others ranking it even lower than the original series finale. While creatives behind the show seem to stand by what happened to Dexter Morgan, some viewers think the original idea for his return would have been more satisfying.
A ‘Dexter’ writer detailed the original idea for his return in an interview
Dexter ended its eight-season run in 2013 with Dexter faking his death and going on the run, after leaving behind his son Harrison Morgan. The finale was met with widespread outrage from viewers, many of whom expected Dexter to meet a more tragic fate. However, show producer John Goldwyn told Vulture that Showtime had allegedly prohibited certain endings with the hope of bringing Dexter back one day.
Writer Scott Buck claimed to Bloody Disgusting that Showtime eventually had the idea to bring Dexter back as a doctor. While he was “intrigued” by the idea, he also thought it was “farfetched” that Dexter would become a doctor in a short few years. Instead, Buck came up with the alternative to bring back Dexter as a paramedic.
“In a lot of ways, it seemed to make sense, because he’s still working on some level with human bodies as a scientist,” he shared. “And it was never that he wanted to help people, that he wanted to atone, but rather … if killing was his heroin, then holding lives in the balance [as a paramedic] would sort of be his methadone. And it’s not that we would draw a whole lot of work-related stories. It was just the background to sort of place him in.”
Buck said the show would have featured Dexter in the Pacific Northwest when a “big bad” began killing, causing his dark passenger to re-emerge. He imagined there would be few original characters but noted Dexter would rely on his tech skills to spy on Harrison and Hannah McKay in Argentina via “cameras and street footage and banking accounts.”
How fans reacted to the original idea for Dexter’s return
Although Buck did not share his idea for the imaginary show’s finale, fans still liked the setup.
“Oh man I love the idea that in this version he is still in fact watching over Hannah and Harrison by hacking over their devices and stuff,” read one Reddit comment.
“I also love the paramedic career as methadone idea, him keeping an eye on Hannah and Harrison over the years, and eventually going to find them,” said another.
Some said they even preferred that idea over Dexter: New Blood.
“His concept is better than what we got in New Blood,” one comment said in part.
“I would have preferred this so much more,” read another.
A different person said, “Scott Buck’s idea of more focused on Dexter’s dark passenger reawakening through hunting down a serial killer might have been more interesting than episode after episode of frustrated father-son stuff while Kurt Caldwell, who we knew from the first nanosecond he showed up on-screen was a serial killer, is practically begging Dexter to pay attention to him throughout the season.”
But others weren’t sold on the idea
At the same time, not everyone liked that alternate version.
In response to the comment that Buck’s idea was better than Dexter: New Blood‘s story, one fan wrote: “Lol no.”
“Thank f*** this didn’t happen,” said another.
“The fact that he planned to keep Hannah alive tells me Scott Buck had zero idea of the actual show,” a third fan wrote. “Hannah was one of the reasons the latter seasons sucked and if he couldn’t realize that, there was no hope for his show idea.”
Yeah, Hannah wasn’t exactly a fan favorite. Still, we can’t help but wonder how things would have panned out for the characters if things had played out differently. Would Dexter still have died? Would Angela Bishop be around? And what would have happened with Dexter and Harrison? We guess we’ll just have to dredge up our own ideas.
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