Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Dexter: New Blood's finale.
The timeline of Dexter: New Blood is set 10 years after the original series finale, but how much time actually passes during the short reboot? Compared to Dexter’s original series, the pace of New Blood was extremely fast, allowing for only 10 episodes to travel from Dexter’s return to killing to his shocking death in the season finale. While Dexter: New Blood’s 10-episode length may have fixed some of the original series’ pacing problems, it also leaves logistical questions about how so many events occurred in such a short time.
Dexter’s original series ran over 8 seasons from 2006 to 2013, consisting of gradual growth in telling Dexter Morgan’s story as a serial killer before he controversially decides to fake his death, abandon his son Harrison, and become a non-murderous lumberjack in Oregon in the finale episode. As a limited series, Dexter: New Blood had much more to accomplish in only a short amount of time. While 10 episodes seem short for a Dexter season, the amount of time that passes over the entire reboot series is even shorter than imagined, with the timeline rapidly progressing before Dexter: New Blood’s twist ending.
While the real-world time frame for Dexter: New Blood’s season ran for 10 weeks, Clyde Phillips revealed the entirety of the series takes place in only a two-and-a-half-week timeline during December 2021. From the time Dexter is shown running after a white deer in the woods during Dexter: New Blood’s opening scene to the moment where he is similarly shot and killed in the woods clearing by Harrison in the finale, only two and a half weeks’ time has passed. Although two weeks seems short for the sheer amount of events that take place in the season, it makes sense when considering episode 1 begins on December 7 and it’s finally Christmas day in Dexter: New Blood episode 9. Additionally, each episode seems to take up only a day or two’s time, with many subsequent episodes picking up either the morning after the previous event or within the same moment.
Dexter: New Blood episode 1 seems to occur over three days, with episode 2 picking up that night and carrying over into the next day. Episodes 3-7 each take place over the course of two days, with Dexter finding a check marked December 23 during episode 7. Episode 8 then takes place in a single day on Christmas Eve, episode 9 takes place on Christmas Day and carries into December 26, and the story concludes with Harrison killing his father in New Blood's finale on December 27. If no days are unaccounted for and the events of the finale truly only occur over a two-day time period, then the time passed over Dexter: New Blood’s season comes in at just below 3 weeks.
This does beg questions about how Angela could figure out Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher in only two weeks, since Miami Metro couldn’t puzzle the pieces together in the 20 years that he killed there. Also, it’s curious how Harrison could start school, join the wrestling team, participate in matches, and be caught up enough to take his finals all in a two-week period. Kurt Cadwell's Runaway Killer also murdered three girls within Dexter: New Blood’s timeline, which seems like a lot compared to the missing persons wall in Angela’s office that has been growing for 25 years. Considering the progression of events in Dexter: New Blood seems more likely to occur over a few months to a year, a two-and-a-half-week timeline is a short passing of time for Dexter to go from not killing anymore to being killed for his crimes by Harrison.