Warning: Contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood.
Unlike its predecessor, the limited series Dexter: New Blood only released 10 episodes, and in doing so fixed a major Dexter problem. The original Dexter aired on Showtime from 2006 to 2013 and ran for 8 seasons. In 2021, Michael C. Hall returned to play the serial killer once again as the franchise set about to fix the controversially open-ended nature of the original series.
In the original Dexter, the show had a large cast of characters split between Dexter’s personal life, his plans to kill in each season, and the machinations of the Miami Metro homicide department. Dexter dealt with a revolving cast across the 8 seasons as, set in a large bustling city, there were always new people and communities to introduce. In Dexter: New Blood, following the faking of his own death, Dexter has set up a life for himself in the quiet town of Iron Lake, NY, where everybody knows your name.
Every Dexter season contained 12 episodes that saw Dexter set up against a major foe as well as minor antagonists while trying to evade the law. While the setting of Miami meant that there were plenty of stories to tell, Dexter faced a major problem as sometimes minor plot threads drew too much attention from the major story and led to the season feeling like it was dragging on too long. Even worse, sometimes the story felt contrived to enable the season to stretch out to span 12 episodes, as with Dexter season 6 where he faced the Doomsday Killer and Travis Marshall repeatedly got away so that he could be caught again later. Dexter: New Blood has neatly avoided this issue by only using the 10 episodes necessary to tell the story that they set out to tell. The series keeps its focus almost entirely on the two major plot lines: Kurt Caldwell as the Runaway Killer and Dexter’s final downfall, with both plots being inextricably intertwined.
Sitcoms that are more about the situation and the comedy than the story can often handle a long-running season. Similarly, plenty of “monster of the week” style shows manage to create an episodic form with a larger over-arching meta-plot. However, for shows like Dexter and Dexter: New Blood that focus on season-long stories, having too many episodes quickly leads to unimportant side-stories coming in as filler. The lack of the need for these filler storylines in Dexter: New Blood is evident in how few kills Dexter makes in the revival compared to the original. While Dexter often included multiple, unconnected kill scenes per season, every kill in Dexter: New Blood is crucial to the larger plot.
This choice to use a smaller number of episodes is part of a larger trend in television. Likely brought about by the mass popularity of streaming services that are beholden to subscribers rather than advertisers and release schedules, more and more shows are using variable lengths to tell their stories. While it was once the norm for seasons to be 12 or even 24 episodes long, plenty of shows are moving to shorter series that eschew filler. This is particularly notable with Disney+'s latest offerings where several of the MCU shows have used only 6 episodes as series move towards a model reminiscent of the BBC’s longer episodes and only releasing 3 episodes for a season. While short seasons are not the solution for every show, the 10-episode model helped Dexter: New Blood to feel tight and complete and it is important to see stories driving production, rather than the other way around.