Young Dexter TV Show Is In The Works – Report

As part of Showtime’s approaching merger with with Paramount+, a Season 2 of Dexter: New Blood has been discarded in favor of a possible prequel series “centered around a young version of the titular antihero.” TVLine was first to report, citing “multiple unnamed sources.”

Showtime has not provided an official comment, but the publication is reporting that a prequel is one of “a number of new iterations of Dexter” that the network is considering. That Dexter: New Blood has been cut short is something of a surprise, as the 10-episode revival averaged 8 million weekly viewers. Plus, showrunner Clyde Phillips was immediately on record in January 2022 when that season wrapped that he knew how the series would continue.

“If [Showtime] asks me if I’d like to make a continuation of this, I would say yes,” Phillips told Deadline. “I have a lot of things going on but I would drop everything for this and say yes in one second.”

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood. If you haven’t watched and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading.

With Dexter: New Blood ending with the titular character being fatally shot by his son Harrison, it isn’t a shock to hear that Phillips sees great potential in the story pivoting to focus on the newly-minted killer. “Harrison is such a complicated character and he has within him the seeds of the dark passenger,” he explained. “He’s capable. Look at that takedown of Dexter in the end, what’s in Harrison is that he has to kill this man.”

By definition, most traditional definitions of a Dexter prequel would prevent Harrison from getting any on screen time or relevance to the story. Phillips said that Harrison “brings a different perspective to the vigilantism of it all than Dexter did” and that instead of Dexter’s code, Harrison is focused on how killing “bad guys [can be about] how many lives we’re saving, that this bad person is not going to kill.”