Dexter’s Michael C. Hall has spoken about his character’s choice to take up life in a small rural town, suggesting the decision was made as an attempt to avoid falling back into old habits. Based on the bestselling novels by Jeff Lindsay, Hall first wowed audiences as Dexter Morgan in the multiple award-winning series which first began in 2008. Hall’s character, a forensic scientist working for the Miami Police Department who led a double life as a vigilante serial killer, quickly became a fan-favorite and ultimately earned him a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and many others throughout the show’s original 8-season run.
In October last year, it was officially announced that Hall would be returning to the role in a limited season, along with the show’s original season 1-4 showrunner Clyde Phillips. In the original series finale, Dexter had faked his death and ultimately found himself in “self-imposed exile” as a lumberjack in Oregon, a controversial ending that left many fans sorely disappointed. The original Dexter finale is still widely regarded as one of the worst TV endings of all time, a bitter contrast to the high quality the show had managed to maintain over each of its prior seasons.
Now with Hall set to bring the character back to screens later this year, he has spent some time talking about the upcoming series revival during a virtual panel at Comic-Con@Home. Hoping to give fans a better sense of closure, the new series picks up to find Dexter now living under the pseudonym of Jim Lindsay (a special nod to the original novelist), a cashier in a fishing and game store in a small town. When asked if his choice of location was intended to limit his exposure to potential new victims, Hall had this to say:
Yeah, I think, difficult to answer without giving things away. But I think, you know, going back to the way the show ended, I think I think we see Dexter having made a choice to go into a sort of self-imposed exile. And I think he's doing a very, very long protracted penance for the people who've died who were close to him and not intended victims because of how he'd been living, how he perhaps didn't. Yeah, it was playing fast and loose with the code, etc, etc…
I think I think, you know, as far as abstinence goes, as I imagined it, I think Dexter is maybe exercising the power of his restraint, you know, that his ability to not do it is something that he fixates on as a new kind of power. It's the only way I can imagine him living without killing, if in fact he hasn't been killing…
But yeah, I think I think choosing I think choosing to live in an environment that is not as sort of chock full of potential victims might indicate that he's attempting to do that. He's hoping to abstain.
Given the compulsive need for Dexter to feed his “Dark Passenger,” many fans wondered whether he would ever manage to find his way back to killing after leaving his shattered life behind in Miami. While the code imparted to him by his adoptive father taught him to channel his desires by targeting only those who themselves killed, the question is whether Dexter’s darker impulses could ever be suppressed for long. While Hall suggests that Dexter is trying very hard “to abstain”, from the latest trailer released during the Dexter season 9 panel, it seems that temptation is never too far away.
One thing Dexter will need to come to terms with, however, is finding convenient ways to cover for his crimes should his Dark Passenger take the reins once more. Unlike the advantages Dexter had in working for a police department in a major city, the chances of concealing his extra-curricular activities will certainly be much harder in a small town where he has no official role in law enforcement. With these latest hints, fans are now more eager than ever to see Dexter’s triumphant return on Showtime on November 7th.
Source: Comic-Con@Home