Beloved crime drama Dexter is set to return to a television near you Nov. 7 via Showtime. The first trailer was released to audiences July 25, the final day of San Diego Comic-Con 2021.
The events of the new series, coined Dexter: New Blood, are set 10 years after the original. This time, the setting is the small, snowy town of Iron Lake, New York.
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The serial killer fans once knew as Miami forensics expert Dexter Morgan, played by Michael C. Hall, is now going by the alias Jim Lindsay. He’s a sales associate at a local fish and game store, ironically dating a cop.
In the trailer, we meet Lindsay as he sits in his therapist’s office, telling his counselor, “It’s been a whirlwind,” as clips of what’s to come in the limited series flash across the scene. The visuals make his life seem pretty typical of someone settling down in a small town. He converses with the members of his new community, visits crime scenes and ominously sharpens his knives in tan overalls.
“I’ve always had my demons, and so I went away…,” Dexter continues. “But sometimes, I have an urge too strong to ignore… Every day I walk through this world, faking it, knowing if someone knows who I am, that’s it… This is all about blending in.”
Both Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Debra Morgan, and John Lithgow, the “Trinity Killer,” were absent from the sneak peek. However, both have signed on to reprise their roles. Julia Jones will also be in the revival as love interest Angela Bishop.
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The original series premiered in 2006 and ended in 2013, running for eight seasons. The drama won many awards during that time, including two Golden Globes, one for Hall and one for Lithgow. Showtime also received an impressive response for the show. Dexter’s finale was the most-watched broadcast in the network’s history, bringing in 2.8 million viewers.
During the Comic-Con panel, Hall noted how the polarizing fan reaction from the finale was a large part of the reason for creating the revival.
“I think the ending was ‘mystifying’ at best to people,” Hall says. “‘Confounding,’ ‘exasperating,’ ‘frustrating’—on down the line of negative adjectives. And I think this is a show that’s very important to all of us, and the chance to revisit it and, maybe in the process, redefine the sense of the show’s ending and the sense of the show’s legacy more broadly was certainly a part of our motivation.”
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During the panel, showrunner Clyde Phillips also weighed in on the new project. Although the events of the series follow those of the original, Dexter: New Blood will be markedly different.
“One of the things that we all agreed on, and Michael really insisted on—and he was completely right—is that this not be Dexter season 9,” Phillips says. “That we acknowledge the truth that time has passed, almost 10 years have passed, and we pick up Dexter in another place, in another world actually, as far away from Miami as possible.”
Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think in the comments!