After over eight years, the psychological-thriller, Dexter, is back with a new season. New Blood is here to test monstrous family bonds, says actor, musician and producer Michael C Hall
We finally caught America’s favourite serial killer hiding out in upstate New York and the good news is that he hasn’t killed anyone in a decade. The bad news is his knife skills are still top-notch. The lead actor Michael C Hall, who plays the troubled hero of the Dexter series, steps back into the role once again with the forthcoming season — Dexter: New Blood — ressurecting one of TV’s darkest characters after almost a decade-long break and an ending that many found unsatisfying.
Hall shares, “The fact that the ending of the series was both open-ended and unsatisfying was part of the motivation to come back and revisit the character; especially after all this time, to find out more definitively what happened to him”.
The latest series isn’t just the ninth season of the show, but a departure. Dexter Morgan has shunned warm and bustling Miami for the fictional small town of Iron Lake, New York. The 10-episode series takes place over 17 days in the icy winter, as blood mixes with snow.
Dexter left a trail of corpses in Florida, but in New York, he has managed to keep his murderous impulse — he calls it his dark passenger — in check for 10 years. With just 3,000 residents, his new town has few secrets. He’s got a job at a fish and game outfitter, which provides access to guns and knives — and is even dating with the chief of police. They also perfectly line dance to a Blondie song at the local bar.
But this charade ends as the new twist comes in the face of his dead sister, played by Jennifer Carpenter, who haunts Dexter. Additionally, Harrison — his long-lost son, now a moody teen with lots of questions about why he was abandoned by his dad — forces Dexter out of his comfort zone.
“People are going to die. We all know that. I wanted to present Michael with a theme; and the theme, which is very dear to me, is fathers and sons,” expresses showrunner and executive producer Clyde Phillips. The arrival of Dexter’s son coincides with the bubbling out of his murderous impulses, notes Hall, as he explains, “A sort of door to his humanity, that he’s shut, is opened, but you can’t selectively open internal doors. They all open and everything starts to get out.”
Dexter is both fearful and excited in addition to coming to grips with fatherhood and by the notion that his son also might have a dark passenger. Is his murderous streak genetic? Or does it have to do with both of them experiencing horrific events when they were infants?
He adds, “The lines remain blurred and the blacks and whites turn to gray. And that’s a part of what the show always does, and where the show has always lived, I think.”
While the nurture-versus-nature debate takes centre-stage, the series also delves into opioid abuse, bullying, school shootings and climate change. And it goes without saying that the show is underlined by its trademark dark humour. In one scene, Dexter butchers a body while the Christmas song God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is sung by a choir. “Sorry about the mess,” he tells the victim, “I’m out of practice.”
Hawk-eyed fans will watch as Jack Alcott, who plays Harrison, mimics many of Dexter’s behaviors, like the way he eats his food aggressively or the similar ways they sleep or cross a room. Phillips shares, “It’s all reminiscent. The question on everyone’s mind is whether he has the essence of Dexter? Does he have the dark passenger?”
Dexter ran for eight seasons from 2006 to 2013, winning four Emmys and a 2007 Peabody Award. The lead actor Hall also earned five straight Emmy nominations as the title character between 2008-2012.
Dexter: New Blood was shot earlier this year in northern Massachusetts over 119 days. They began in frigid February when, the temperature would drop from 20 degrees to two degrees, if the wind changed. All the snowy scenes were filmed first before spring arrived and the cast and crew had to act like it was cold, even when it wasn’t anymore. Phillips laughs about one final scene which was shot on July 28 when the crew was in shorts and T-shirts and the cast was in overcoats, boots and hats.
Phillips reveals, “It was a very challenging and rewarding shoot, You stand there in a snowstorm, in knee-deep mud and you look at each other and you say, ‘God, I love what I do for a living!’”
Since the conclusion of the last season of Dexter, Hall has been on Broadway in The Realistic Joneses and Hedwig And The Angry Inch as well as in the film In The Shadow Of The Moon. He has also been making music with his band, Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, but Dexter still tempts.
“The fact that the show is as broadly appealing as it is would suggest that perhaps we all have some version of a dark passenger we contend with. Our experience of being human is at least a part about managing our darker impulses,” concludes a thoughtful Hall
