Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Dexter: New Blood's finale.
One of the biggest criticisms of Dexter: New Blood’s finale is the plot holes that led to the twist ending - as such, here are all the plot holes from season 1. After a decade of being away from the material, there are bound to be some minor inconsistencies for returning characters. At the same time, Dexter: New Blood’s shocking twist ending essentially relies on such plot holes to get there. As a series that focuses on a serial killer who typically finds a way out of the most impossible of situations, there’s still a certain suspension of disbelief that viewers must have when watching a show like Dexter: New Blood to enjoy the major plot points.
While Dexter: New Blood’s plot holes and inconsistencies become more important as they have a major impact on the lead-up to Dexter being caught as the Bay Harbor Butcher and Harrison deciding to kill him, Dexter’s original series was also known for succumbing to plot holes, one of which is carried over into New Blood. As Dexter seasons 1-4 showrunner Clyde Phillips returned to helm Dexter: New Blood's reboot series, viewers wondered whether many of the inconsistencies in season 9 were a way to continue the story from how he had initially written it, thus disregarding many developments from the latter half of the series. While this may not be the case, many of Dexter: New Blood’s plot holes do go against storylines and behaviors established in Dexter’s last few seasons.
From minor character inconsistencies to major plot contrivances, Dexter: New Blood is riddled with details that make no sense to long-time viewers. It’s possible that certain scenes were cut that could have explained such errors, but many viewers are left without answers for the plot holes unless Dexter: New Blood season 2 happens. While one major “plot hole” was an actual retcon of an original series detail, here’s a breakdown of the biggest plot holes from Dexter: New Blood’s reboot season.
Dexter’s Magical Gun Shot Healing Ability
Dexter’s miraculous talent to become gravely injured and walk away from it quickly wasn’t written just for New Blood, it was also a problem present in Dexter’s original series. But, Dexter: New Blood episode 8 features a specific incident that makes it difficult to believe he would be perfectly healthy the next morning. After being attacked and kidnapped by Elric, Dexter crashes the truck and runs into the woods, where Elric shoots him in the leg. It’s possible that Dexter’s leg was only grazed by the bullet, but considering how much he was bleeding and the limp he ran with through the woods, this isn’t an injury that would be healed by the next day.
That said, Dexter: New Blood episode 9 picks up that same night and into the next morning, where Dexter no longer moves with a limp, bleeds, or requires any medical attention. The vigilante serial killer has been injured like this before, but it was typically continued as a plot point in the next episode. For instance, Dexter season 2 episode 9 sees Dexter shot in the leg by Doakes, with the next episode immediately showing him treating his wound. Dexter as the “Dark Defender” superhero is a great moniker for his ego, but it’s unlikely that he was also born with an inhuman ability to recover from bullet wounds.
Batista Questioning LaGuerta’s Death Investigation
One of the most inconsistent aspects of Dexter: New Blood’s finale episode was the idea that Angel Batista was still looking into the death of Maria LaGuerta after season 7, who was referenced in Dexter: New Blood's original series deaths montage. For starters, Dexter’s original series hinted that Angel wasn’t the greatest detective - the Bay Harbor Butcher was right under their nose for over a decade without detection - so although he became captain at Miami Metro, the bar was pretty low. Batista was also never shown to question the conclusion that Maria LaGuerta was shot and killed by Hector Estrada when “confronting him” in the shipping container. While it was actually LaGuerta catching Dexter killing Estrada, Deb fatally shot her in a reluctant effort to protect her brother. Dexter and Deb made it seem like LaGuerta and Estrada had both fatally shot each other, and Dexter season 8 never suggested that Miami Metro thought otherwise.
Since Dexter's Angel Batista wasn’t one to try to reopen cases and question their validity once closed, revealing that he kept an entire file on her death in his desk drawer at home seems fairly out of character. Instead, this seems to be a plot device written for Dexter: New Blood’s finale so that Batista would finally connect that Dexter could have been responsible for her murder while she suspected him as the Bay Harbor Butcher. Angela asks Batista if they ever found out who killed LaGuerta and the Dexter original series character responds nonverbally by pulling out her file, which really doesn’t make any sense unless a new detail was revealed in the time since Dexter’s season 8 finale. Also, Dexter wasn’t the one who killed LaGuerta, as Deb made the heartbreaking decision to do so herself.
Dexter’s M99/Ketamine Retcon
Out of every inconsistency from Dexter: New Blood’s 10-episode season, the biggest point of contention for viewers has been the show’s retcon of Dexter’s original sedative drug. In the original series, Dexter explicitly mentioned that he used the drug M99/Etorphine to subdue his victims, only for Dexter: New Blood to retcon this and state that the Bay Harbor Butcher used Ketamine. Conveniently, Ketamine is the only drug with similar effects that he can get in Iron Lake. When Angela begins wondering if Dexter was drugging Iron Lake residents and if he did so back in Miami, she makes a quick Google search for “Ketamine Miami Homicide,” with the search results explicitly stating that the Bay Harbor Butcher “rendered [victims] unconscious with Ketamine” The overlapping detail of Ketamine in Jasper’s system and the Bay Harbor Butcher’s use is the only major connection that Angela makes of Dexter to the serial killer, which is a pretty minor link at best.
Even disregarding Dexter: New Blood’s M99/Ketamine retcon, the idea that Miami Metro knew that the Bay Harbor Butcher used this drug doesn’t connect to information from the original series. There was never any mention or report that the autopsies found Ketamine/M99 in the systems of the Bay Harbor Butcher’s victims. Dexter even damaged the ability to perform more accurate autopsies when he sabotaged the A/C of the building where they were being stored. The idea of the Bay Harbor Butcher drugging victims with M99 wasn’t even brought up again when LaGuerta began investigating Dexter in season 7, so it seems like an odd connection to be the basis of the entire revelation of Dexter being the Bay Harbor Butcher in New Blood.
Harrison’s Age And Enrollment In School
The most commonly recurring inconsistency in Dexter’s original series was Harrison Morgan’s age. Born after the Dexter season 3 finale and before the season 4 premiere, Harrison was about three months old at the beginning of season 4. This timeline would place Harrison’s birthday around mid-2009, thus making him only about 12 years old in Dexter: New Blood. This wouldn’t make too interesting of a story for scorned son Harrison discovering Dexter is a serial killer, so it makes sense that Harrison is stated as 16 years old in Dexter: New Blood instead. Harrison’s age was also a frequent error in the original series, where his age in Dexter season 7 was three years old, then was explicitly stated as four years old in season 8, though his actor that season was 7 years old. Harrison ending his time in Dexter season 8 as a six or seven-year-old is the only possible way that he could be 16 in Dexter: New Blood (though Harrison Morgan actor Jack Alcott is 22), but it still doesn’t align with him being born around 2009.
Even worse than Harrison Morgan’s confusing age, Dexter: New Blood failed to answer how he would be able to enroll in school. For starters, would Harrison be going under the last name McKay, Morgan, or Lindsay? Lindsay seems like the best answer, but Dexter also didn’t have a passport or birth certificate for Harrison that wouldn’t say his real name on it (or something different from Lindsay), which would immediately draw red flags to Dexter’s fake identity. New York requires proof of a child’s age and identity, so even without transcripts from his school in Argentina, it’s hard to believe Harrison would have been able to enroll in Iron Lake’s high school so quickly.
Dexter Didn’t Need To Run In New Blood’s Finale
One of the greatest points of contention for Dexter: New Blood’s finale was why Dexter killed Logan to escape his holding cell. Dexter has been backed into worse corners, and the evidence against him for both Matt Caldwell’s murder and being the Bay Harbor Butcher likely wouldn’t have held up in court - a point Logan also makes to Angela. Dexter doesn’t seem to get panicked until Angela says she’s called Dexter original series character Angel Batista, but even then, Dexter could explain why he faked his death in the same way he explained it to Angela - he wanted to start over after all the death and tragedy that Dexter Morgan attracted. While Dexter had already been breaking the Code of Harry in Dexter: New Blood enough that killing an innocent isn’t too big of a stretch, this still wasn’t a situation in which the only way to not get the death penalty and go to jail was killing Logan. The original series Dexter Morgan wouldn’t jump to this conclusion so quickly, especially since Harrison wasn’t in immediate danger.