Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Dexter: New Blood.
Dexter: New Blood certainly offers audiences the chance to see their affable serial killer in a new light, but in doing so, it also retcons the original Dexter series three times. Conceived to improve on the much-maligned series ending of Dexter season 8, Dexter: New Blood sees the titular protagonist struggle to control his murderous urges in the small town of Iron Lake. However, despite Dexter: New Blood's fresh setting and a whole host of new characters for Dexter (Michael C Hall) to manipulate, the series inevitably contains ties back to Dexter's days working as a blood-spatter analyst for Miami Metro Homicide.
Original Dexter showrunner Clyde Phillips goes to great lengths to ensure Dexter: New Blood is a natural part of the franchise's continuity. The finer points of Dexter's escape from Miami, explaining why Miami Metro still believes Doakes (Erik King) is the Bay Harbor Butcher, and establishing canon for Hannah's (Yvonne Strahovski) death are all well-crafted plot elements seen in Dexter: New Blood. The new Dexter series also faithfully restores several legacy characters into supporting roles, with appearances by Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), Angel (David Zayas), and the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow) all appearing natural and well-timed in the context of the show.
Yet despite the entire Dexter: New Blood team's clear passion for the franchise revival, there still remain several glaring retcons from the original Dexter continuity. While some of these are subtle, such as changes to Dexter's persona, others are far more jarring. Here are the three times New Blood retconned Dexter and how they did it.
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Dexter's Bay Harbor Butcher Drug
Dexter: New Blood's most glaring retcon by far is the series' decision (or oversight) to change Dexter's drug of choice to incapacitate his victims. As Angela (Julia Jones) does online research on the killer in Dexter: New Blood episode 8, "Unfair Game," she begins to suspect Dexter of drugging Iron Lake residents with the ketamine he secured "for his goats." Angela searches “Ketamine Miami Homicide” on Google, with the results stating: “Doakes’ victims were… rendered unconscious with Ketamine injected into their neck.” The accompanying results to her search also state that the Bay Harbor Butcher drugged his victims with ketamine, standing in stark contrast to Dexter's internal monologues from the original series, in which he describes using M99/etorphine (animal tranquilizer) when out hunting.
While Dexter using ketamine instead of M99 in Iron Lake is not a retcon of Dexter’s original M.O. in any way, the Google search results in New Blood episode 8 claiming he used ketamine back in Miami most definitely falls into this category. This seems a strange yet stark retcon for the Dexter: New Blood team to include, particularly given Dexter's earlier monologue in New Blood that explicitly describes why he has to get ketamine from a veterinarian. Even stranger is the choice to retcon his drug of choice in Miami, given the fervent nature of the current Dexter fanbase. If this is indeed a nod to Miami Metro slipping up once again and misdiagnosing the Bay Harbor Butcher's drug, it is far too subtle and leaves a gaping retcon in the heart of Dexter: New Blood's narrative as a result.
Harrison's Age
From the series' title confirmation, Dexter: New Blood was always set to include Dexter's teenage son Harrison (Jack Alcott) wrestling with his own Dark Passenger. Yet the showrunner's insistence on connecting Dexter's Iron Lake story with Harrison as a 16-year-old forces New Blood to retcon its own Miami character's timeline. Harrison's first birthday is depicted in the Dexter season 5 finale, "The Big One," while canonically, Dexter mentions his son is three years old across Dexter season 7. With just a few months passing between Dexter season 7 and season 8, giving Deb time to leave Miami Metro and Hannah to return to Miami, this timeline of events places Harrison between ages three and a half and four by the end of season 8.
Dexter: New Blood occurs exactly ten years after Dexter fakes his death in hurricane Laura, yet Dexter: New Blood confirms Harrison is 16 when he arrives in Iron Lake. This means New Blood has pushed Harrison's age forward by about two years, presumably to make his character better equipped to handle the psychological fallout of seeing Dexter's Dark Passenger in action. Newcomer Jack Alcott's performance in New Blood does act as confirmation that this age change was a good decision by Phillips and company, but it remains a retcon to Dexter's son's age nonetheless.
Dexter's Personality
The largest yet most skillfully interwoven retcon from Dexter: New Blood is the titular protagonist's personality itself. Portrayed in the first Dexter season as somewhat emotionally colorblind, Dexter grew to become a rather empathetic, albeit ruthless version of the killer Harry (James Remar) taught him to be. By the end of Dexter season 8, Dexter had had numerous relationships with women he genuinely cared about, fathered a child he loves unconditionally in Harrison, and became a genuine family with Astor (Christina Robinson) and Cody (Preston Bailey) until Rita's (Julie Benz) death at the hands of Trinity. Contrary to his adopted father's assessment, Dexter also learns to read his co-workers and fellow humans to such a degree that he begins to experience genuine feelings of guilt, shame, and sadness by the end of Dexter season 8.
Yet in Dexter: New Blood, the one-time antihero touted as the Dark Defender seems to have regressed to his earliest season 1 state emotionally. He cannot recognize the disgust on Harrison's face when he dispatches New Blood's killer Kurt Caldwell (Clancy Brown), nor can he pick up on the increasingly overt signs that his girlfriend Angela first suspects and later outright despises him before New Blood's end. The Dexter of old would have surely noticed these clear emotions being displayed by those around him and likely would never have been caged with such ease as he was in New Blood's final two episodes. While there is an argument to be made for dearly departed Dexter simply being rusty after so long away from Miami, the complete devolution of his survival skills on an emotional level suggests a character personality retcon was made for Dexter: New Blood's protagonist.