Warning: Contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood episode 1.
In Dexter: New Blood, Dexter Morgan states that he is evolving but, while Dexter changes between Dexter season 8 and the revival, is he still just a killer at heart? When Dexter: New Blood opens, almost 10 years have passed since Dexter faked his own death at the end of Dexter season 8. However, like the way that Dexter (Michael C. Hall) has aged, much of the way that Dexter changes is really just surface level.
Dexter: New Blood shows a Dexter who has moved out west to the small town of Iron Lake where everybody knows his name. As in the original Dexter, he repeats his strict routine and ritual devised in order to help to avoid his impulses to kill, and is shown delivering fresh baked goods to his new place of work, Fred’s Fish & Game, just as he did to the forensics lab in Dexter. After a lot of pushing and multiple revelations that Matt Caldwell has evaded consequences for causing the deaths of others, Dexter kills the man, falling back into his old ways.
While Dexter changes between Dexter and Dexter: New Blood, a lot of those changes are caused by one single point: a new strength to hold off against his murderous impulses. Dexter is shown to have the same impulses and habits that he had before, as demonstrated by his reaction to the sight of blood when delivering a butcher’s knife and his fantasizing about attacking Matt Caldwell at the party, but Dexter changes by not acting on those impulses. When he does go back to killing, it becomes evident how shallow Dexter’s changes really are, as after the briefest of pauses he flips back into serial killer mode, rebuilding a simulacrum of his original kill space with imitations of all of its old trappings. His impulse is even to still take trophies and it is only patient thought that makes him discard the trophy.
The visible changes to Dexter between Dexter season 8 and Dexter: New Blood, episode 1 “Cold Snap,” are all about holding back a killer who has not really evolved that much. He has eschewed violence in many ways, as shown through his choosing not to shoot the white deer and admiring its beauty instead and his move to farming and a passive form of ice fishing. But when push comes to shove he just needed the right person to draw the killer back out of him, and small details, such as him still splattering hot sauce across his ritualistic meal in mimicry of blood, hint that that killer never truly went away.
The big detail that has enabled even these surface-level changes in Dexter: New Blood comes from the events of the Dexter season 8 finale. Deb’s death had a profound impact on Dexter, enough that his dark passenger is now represented by her instead of Harry. That voice is one of restraint that urges caution and to not kill symbolizing the trauma that her death left with Dexter and how he has blamed his killing for her eventual demise. Deb, as the dark passenger, states that Dexter changes between the series saying he is a “changed man,” marked by his almost ten years without a kill. However, when Dexter gets down to it, he responds to Matt Caldwell’s question of “you’re a serial killer?” with a slow acknowledgment that that is who he is. From Dexter season 8 to Dexter: New Blood, Dexter changes in some ways, but Dexter is still a killer at heart and the other changes are only skin deep.
Dexter: New Blood releases new episodes Sundays on Showtime.