For eight seasons on Showtime, we thought Dexter was one wrong move from getting caught
-- but he always got away.
And now, the vigilante serial killer is coming back for more.
Pull on some latex gloves and dig into some of the juiciest facts about Showtime's gruesome
hit series.
From "Outlander" to "Game of Thrones" and "The Vampire Diaries," plenty of hit TV shows
are based on popular series of books, and "Dexter" is no different.
But while those other examples are all extensions of wildly bestselling books, the "Dexter"
series wasn't as well-known a title when it was selected for adaptation.
Executive producer Sara Colleton decided to take a chance on developing the series when
she came across Jeff Lindsay's first Dexter-based crime novel, "Darkly Dreaming Dexter."
Oddly, she hadn't even read the book before she started working on getting it made into
a TV series.
On an episode of Sundance Channel's "The Writer's Room," Colleton revealed that she was simply
intrigued by a review of the book she read in "The New Yorker" in 2004.
"It said it was a likable, vigilante serial killer who had an 'ordinary Joe'-ness about
him.”
The first season of "Dexter" is inspired by the novel, which similarly follows a Miami
blood spatter analyst named Dexter Morgan who secretly murders horrible criminals after
being taught to do so by his ex-cop foster father.
But the show's writers used up most of the material from the first book in the pilot
episode, meaning that the show and the source material started veering away from each other
very early on.
Lindsay ultimately wrote eight Dexter novels, which only bear a passing resemblance to their
TV cousin.
For Michael C. Hall, playing Dexter Morgan just might be his signature role, the one
for which he's best and most remembered.
But before he started pretending to be a renegade dealer of death, Hall had won attention — and
an Emmy Award nomination — for his role as second-generation mortician David Fisher
on HBO's funeral home drama "Six Feet Under."
Hall said on an episode of Sundance Channel's "The Writers' Room" that he saw the "Dexter"
pilot script just a few months after he finished up his five-year run on "Six Feet Under."
He wasn't interested in another show, and certainly not one thematically similar to
his previous one.
"The last thing I thought I'd do was another television series."
"I didn't want to make another open-ended commitment to a character surrounded by dead
bodies."
But after reading the script and novel it was based off of, he ultimately decided that
it was too good of a part to pass up.
Christian Camargo portrayed the primary villain in the first season of "Dexter," a fellow
serial killer known as the Ice Truck Killer.
But for that part, co-executive producer Michael Cuesta had a different guy in mind: Jeremy
Renner, at the time best known for playing serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 movie
"Dahmer."
Renner later said in an interview with Cloture Club that he rejected Cuesta's offer, saying,
"I can't do any other serial killer movies or TV shows."
He almost took the role anyway, but had a scheduling conflict with "28 Weeks Later."
Writers name their characters for lots of different reasons.
Sometimes they just like the name, it suits a character, or just rolls well off the tongue.
But other times, character names can hold a multi-lingual web of intrigue full of secrets,
Easter eggs, and hidden meanings -- and that's the case with Dexter.
In Latin, "dexter" isn't generally a first name but rather a word, and it means "right,"
or "right-handed."
The Latin word for the left hand is "sinister."
Dexter certainly has a sinister side, what with all the secret murders.
He often refers to this side of himself as the "Dark Passenger," the nickname he gives
to the side of his personality that drives him to kill.
Taking the metaphor all the way home, then, "Dexter" would be the "normal" personality
that the character presents to others.
"Dexter" is a bloody, violent, and disturbing TV show, and it fits right in on a premium
cable channel.
And yet, for a brief period, it actually ran on a broadcast network.
In 2007 and 2008, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for more than three months.
With more than 60 scripted television series shutting down production as a result of the
strike, the big networks were left with major holes in their TV schedules.
With relatively tame crime-and-cop shows like "CSI" and "Criminal Minds" benched, CBS pulled
content from its corporate sibling, Showtime.
All 12 episodes from the first season of "Dexter" aired in a carefully edited form, which reportedly
marked the first time in TV history that a broadcast channel aired a whole season of
a premium cable series.
Two people in the cast of "Dexter" found love amidst the show's dark premise: Michael C.
Hall and Jennifer Carpenter, who played Dexter's adoptive sister Debra Morgan.
The general public didn't even know the two had been a couple for more than a year and
a half until they showed up at the Golden Globes in January 2009, having eloped and
gotten married just a few days prior.
But the marriage wasn't meant to last.
Just about three years later, Hall and Carpenter released a statement to Entertainment Weekly
announcing that they had separated and were filing for divorce.
It was evidently an amicable enough split that Hall and Carpenter continued to work
with each other on "Dexter" for a few more years.
Still, art managed to imitate life when "Dexter" writers explored a romantic relationship between
the brother and sister.
Awkward?
Well, probably -- but the actors handled it like pros.
Over the course of 96 episodes, Dexter Morgan killed a lot of people.
But how many lives did the character take in total?
The authors of the "Dexter's Kill List" page on a Dexter fan site carefully watched all
episodes and tallied the number of victims by both counting up who he killed on screen
and looking at the number of blood slides he kept in his box of souvenirs.
All in all, Dexter had something to do with the death of at least 168 people.
A lot of those killings occurred within the time frame of 2006 to 2013, when "Dexter"
originally aired.
If Dexter had been a real person, he would have been one of the most prolific murderers
in the history of Miami, if not the whole world.
"Deb, I'm the Bay Harbor Butcher."
"On the ground.
Down on the ground, motherf---er."
During the same period as the show, the real Miami witnessed between 59 and 79 murders
annually.
Proportionally, this would make Dexter single-handedly responsible for 15 to 20 percent of all the
city's murders.
Showtime's "Dexter" isn't the first screen adaptation of a book about a handsome and
unflappable young man whose demeanor hides a penchant for brutal murder.
In 1991, Bret Easton Ellis published "American Psycho," his cult classic that satirized materialistic
'80s culture and centered around an investment banker and probable serial killer named Patrick
Bateman.
In 2000, Christian Bale portrayed Bateman in the film version of "American Psycho,"
and references to the character and book he appears in have popped up throughout "Dexter."
Dexter uses several aliases in his criminal activities, and he buys animal tranquilizers
under the name "Patrick Bateman, M.D."
When he schedules an appointment with a therapist he's investigating, Dexter says his name is
"Sean Ellis."
That's another "American Psycho" reference.
In the book, Patrick Bateman's brother is named Sean, and "Ellis" is obviously the author
of the book.
Despite the loving tributes, Ellis apparently isn't a "Dexter" fan.
In 2012, he tweeted a blunt review of the series, writing,
"'Dexter' sucks big time.
A high-concept cutesy serial-killer drama that has as much depth and scares as an episode
of 'American Psycho 2.'"
In the midst of filming the fourth season of "Dexter" in 2009, star Michael C. Hall
received some devastating news: Doctors diagnosed him with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer
that attacks the immune system.
Hall didn't take any time off of work, nor did he announce his situation to the "Dexter"
cast or crew.
Instead, he kept up with the rigors of filming the Showtime drama, and then received his
first chemotherapy treatment for cancer the day after filming had wrapped for the season.
In 2014, after the series' initial run had wrapped, Hall spoke about his thinking at
the time in an interview with The Guardian, saying,
"I thought, 'Well, I can treat this successfully and if my hair falls out I'll wear a wig during
the fifth season — and I won't even have to share with anyone that this is happening.'"
Hall's hair did fall out, and when he attended the 2010 Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild
Awards, he did so with a knit cap on his head.
He didn't initially intend to reveal his diagnosis to the public, but when he did, he didn't
regret it.
He told The Guardian,
"I'm glad I did, because I really underestimated how much that would be a source of inspiration
or strength to other people.
Just to see someone who you know and spend time watching, who goes through the treatment
process successfully, is of value."
Michael C. Hall prepared for his role of Dexter by doing something right out of the Dexter
playbook -- identifying, and stalking, his potential victims.
Before shooting on the series began, Hall did some traditional preparation for the role,
watching documentaries and reading books about serial killers.
But he still felt like he needed to feel what being a stalking predator searching for their
prey might be like.
Hall said on "George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight,"
"I would go out by myself in New York and try to find someone who was also alone, maybe
go to a restaurant with a bar.
And I would watch them finish their meal and endow them with all kinds of reprehensible
characteristics, a potential victim for Dexter."
"I wasn't going to actually do anything.
I would see what it felt like to follow them a little bit."
Then Hall would quietly but intensely follow his target through the streets of New York,
seemingly doing everything a real killer would do except, well, really killing.
"I was raised with a certain set of principles."
In a tragic case of life imitating art, the fictional murders committed by Dexter Morgan
may have led to real-life killings.
In 2009, Indiana teenager Andrew Conley turned himself in to police and admitted strangling
his brother to death.
He claimed to have thought about killing for years, and felt a kinship with Dexter Morgan
for feeling compelled to do so.
In 2014, an English teenager reportedly very into "Dexter" stabbed his girlfriend to death,
then disposed of the body with tree-trimming tools.
He soon thereafter confessed to his sister that his own "Dark Passenger" had compelled
him to kill.
There's also Mark Twitchell, a "Dexter" devotee and aspiring filmmaker who made a "Dexter"-esque
fan film and posted as "Dexter Morgan" on social media.
In 2011, Twitchell turned a film studio in his garage into his own elaborate "kill room"
and lured an innocent man to his violent death.
He was caught promptly, and convicted of first-degree murder.
In 2013, "Dexter" ended its original run with a much-anticipated series finale.
Would his crimes finally catch up to him?
Not exactly.
Instead, Dexter abandoned his only child, buried his sister at sea, faked his death,
and started life over under an assumed identity as a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest.
"That's disappointing."
It wasn't just fans who wanted Dexter to face some kind of consequences after eight years
of getting away with it.
Many members of the series' creative team wanted more closure with the ending as well.
After the season eight finale in 2013, "Dexter" producer John Goldwyn told Vulture,
"They won't let us kill him.
Showtime was very clear about that.
When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said, 'Just to be clear, he's going
to live.'"
In an interview with E! News, former "Dexter" showrunner Clyde Phillips revealed what he
would have done if he'd been in charge of crafting the show's final scene.
He said,
"In the very last scene of the series.
Dexter wakes up.
[...] Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary.
They're just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the
observation gallery.
And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed."
As Phillips conceived it, the observers would have been everyone who ever died as a result
of Dexter's actions, from the Trinity Killer to LaGuerta and Doakes to his minor kills
of the week.
A lot of people didn't like the way "Dexter" wrapped up.
No matter how you feel about it, it's hard to argue that this would have been one hell
of a way to go.
The silver lining of keeping Dexter alive was always that the show could one day see
a revival, and get a second chance to wrap things up in a satisfying way.
Now, that do-over is finally coming to pass.
In 2020, seven years after "Dexter" aired its last episode, Showtime ordered 10 new
episodes, to be presented as a limited series.
Michael C. Hall signed on to once again play Dexter, while the series' original executive
producer Clyde Phillips agreed to serve as showrunner.
In April 2021, Showtime unveiled a teaser trailer for the revival and announced that
it would air the following fall.
Plot details have initially been scarce, but reports indicate that the episodes will find
Dexter Morgan hiding out under the assumed identity of Jim Lindsay in the small town
of Iron Lake, New York.
There, a mystery will ensnare the mayor, the chief of police, and a true-crime podcast
host -- as well as Dexter Morgan, back from the dead to kill again.
"Dexter's dark passenger is still with him."
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