‘Dexter: New Blood’ Made No Sense Because Of One Line
by Frank Martin
The Dexter revival, titled New Blood, had mixed results as a return for the title character played by Michael C Hall. Even though it takes place roughly ten years in the future, it more or less picks up Dexter’s story where the original series left off. The main difference is that Dexter’s son, Harrison (Jack Alcott) plays a huge part in the story now that he’s much older and creating a life for himself. A running theme of Dexter is whether or not he’s a good person that does terrible things or if he really is a bad person at heart. This theme transfers over to his son, but a single line at the end of the finale ruins any sort of legitimate character arc these characters have been on.
(Spoilers Follow)
After Harrison arrives in the upstate New York town where Dexter is hiding, the elder Morgan begins to worry that his son may have inherited some of his own dark tendencies. The boy is prone to violence and extremely susceptible to dark behavior. Dexter tries to cultivate his son’s darkness by teaching him the code and recruiting him into dishing out his own brand of justice. But it seems as if Dexter introduced his son to that darkness too quickly. His son becomes appalled by his father’s behavior, and the finale ends with Harrison actually killing him.
After this takes place, Harrison hits the road. As he’s driving, a voice over of the letter Dexter left for his son’s caregiver is read. This letter is the catalyst that sparked Harrison going on a journey to find him. One of the letter’s closing lines orders the caregiver to reach out should Harrison express any dark tendencies. This is obviously a reference to his son growing up to become dark and violent just like his father, and he did show dark tendencies. The boy is fully aware that he’s prone to violence, so he would have been suspicious and curious as to why his father would include something like that in the letter. But this issue is never addressed. The boy never asked Dexter what he meant by that. This is a key plot point that would have changed everything these characters went through. And instead, it was left ignored for the entire season. This just goes to show that sometimes a single line can change the context of an entire story, and not always for the better.
Dexter: New Blood is now streaming on Paramount+.
