When the news came that a Dexter re-visit was coming in Dexter: New Blood, I was of a decidedly mixed mind about it. The show had been over for several years, and I'd very much put it behind me -- it was no longer worthy of any time spent thinking about it. But... what if they could come back and do better than that final, uneven season and that terrible last episode? Like, how can they not do better? Ultimately, that latter impulse won out, and I looked to the reboot with cautious optimism. Now that I've seen all 10 episodes of Dexter: New Blood, I'm truly pleased to report that the optimism was warranted. The "single season revival" is a rather ubiquitous phenomenon in modern television -- and I have yet to see anyone do it better than Dexter: New Blood.
It starts, of course, with a great cast. It only takes minutes of Michael C. Hall on screen to remind you why you liked Dexter (if you liked Dexter). He gives a charming, funny, frightening performance. (Subtle too, outside of the smirking voice-overs.) He's why you kept with the original series even when it was clearly on the decline, and he hasn't lost a step here in the reboot.
Decade-old spoilers for original Dexter here, but... there's only one other character returning to the reboot, and then only as the new angel/devil in Dexter's head. You can't do Dexter without Jennifer Carpenter as Deb, and you can't have a living Deb after the way the series ended. So yes, this is sort of a thankless job for Carpenter... and yet she really does make the most of it, putting a much less tender and understanding spin on Dexter's inner thoughts.
But the new cast here is excellent too. Clancy Brown plays the main antagonist of the season, and is easily the most compelling one on Dexter since John Lithgow: oily and complicated and menacing. Julia Jones plays police chief Angela Bishop, and rises to the occasion of a wide range of material she has to play over the course of the season. The biggest discovery in the cast is young Jack Alcott, playing (New Blood episode one spoiler here) Harrison, returned to find his estranged father. The plot of the season turns on whether Harrison has Dexter's darkness inside him, and the writing stretches the taffy as long as possible to cloud the answer to that question. That sets up Alcott for a truly difficult acting challenge, trying to ride a line where his intentions are unclear... but he does an excellent job.
More important than the casting, though, is the writing. Essentially, the entire reason for Dexter: New Blood is to "apologize" for the final season of Dexter. And it does so, wonderfully. This series finale, told this way, would have been impossible back in 2013. But if somehow this could have been the series finale we got back then? I think no one would have been complaining. In short, this is a much better ending, and I'm very glad they came back to give it to us.
To be clear, though: if I had to rank Dexter: New Blood as a "ninth season" of the original, would it come out on top? No -- clearly, the famously great seasons 2 and 4 were better. Probably season 1 as well, setting the whole thing in motion. But this clearly rises above anything in the back half of the series. I'd give Dexter: New Blood a B+. If you ever loved the original, but avoided the reboot out of contempt for how that ended, do yourself a favor and watch the reboot.
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