Michael C. Hall Talks Dexter: Resurrection and How Dexter Morgan Will ‘Reclaim Himself’

Dexter Morgan is returning once again in Dexter: Resurrection. Though it was assumed that he was dead and his story was complete at the end of Dexter: New Blood, Michael C. Hall’s desire to continue playing the character opened up new possibilities. 

I recently spoke with Hall about that desire to embody the character again and Dexter Morgan’s new perspective in the series. (You can watch the full interview below.)

“I think it just started with a curiosity about what storytelling possibilities might be there for us if that gunshot weren’t fatal,” Hall said, referring to the finale scene in Dexter: New Blood when his son, Harrison, shoots him in the chest.

“If he didn’t die — if he almost died, if he found himself in that sort of space between life and death, and came out the other side, what would that look like? And how would he change? What would he be able to put down?”

“I think it was initially interesting because if Harrison didn’t kill him, I think he did kill something, and maybe killed a sort of obligation to do this perpetual penance and carry around the burden of his past. Would it allow him to put it down and reclaim himself in a way that we haven’t seen him quite be able to do?”

“And it did, and we’re watching in this new season, a character who’s still leading a very complicated life, and up to very weighty things, but with a sort of lightness and a sense of like, ‘I can’t even believe I’m alive,’ about him,” Hall continued. “And seeing Dexter engage his world with that perspective is a new and fresh thing.”

Watch the full interview with Michael C. Hall:

While Deborah took the place of Harry in Dexter’s mind during Dexter: New Blood, Harry returns in Dexter: Resurrection. For Hall, that says something important about the changes in Dexter’s state of mind. 

“I think it says that he’s put something down. I think the internalized version of Deb that was alive in him in New Blood was a very severe, admonishing kind of self-flagellation energy, understandably. The fact that that’s been released and his father is back in his unconscious — or conscious internal landscape is a cue that Dexter’s back on the beam — that he’s done his penance, that he’s not beating himself up in the same way.”

The conversations Dexter and Harry have are a bit different in Dexter: Resurrection as well.

“He’s also reexploring and redefining that relationship with his father. He’s not just his father’s son who’s doing his father’s bidding,” Hall said.

“They’re more, I think, evolving into a place where they’re peers, where there can be some pushback, where Dexter can lay some claim to expertise that maybe his father doesn’t have. That he can know better. But he still needs that. You know, he’s a fundamentally isolated and lonely person, so this internalized relationship is one that he needs to cultivate and hold on to.”

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Dexter: Resurrection premieres Friday, July 11th on Paramount+ with Showtime.

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