Dexter Resurrection season 2 can still fix the show’s biggest problem
From Dracula to Michael Myers, one of the horror genre’s ultimate rules has always been that no matter how many times you kill the big bad, they find a way to come back. Now, we can add another murderer to that list, one who doesn’t kill quite as indiscriminately. Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) returned from the dead this year in Dexter: Resurrection to stalk the serial killers of New York City.
Resurrection got rave reviews from critics and fans alike. But as this season comes to an end, I can’t help but feel it was missing something pivotal that season 2 should correct: a central serial killer for Dexter to hunt down.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the entire first season of Dexter: Resurrection]
All the best seasons of Dexter pit the anti-hero against a big bad serial killer he has to hunt down, unmask, and murder as part of an unending effort to feed his own innate need for bloodshed. In season 1, that was the Ice Truck Killer, who turned out to be Dexter’s older brother in a brilliant twist that shed light on their disturbing childhood. In season 4 (a high point for the series) we got the Trinity Killer, played to perfection by John Lithgow in a performance that leveraged his good-guy persona to keep audiences in the dark. Even New Blood, the Dexter revival from 2021 that ends by (temporarily) killing off Dexter, got this right with a terrifying sociopath played by Clancy Brown.
Dexter: Resurrection tried something new. Instead of one serial killer, the series gave us an entire murderers’ row. After Dexter infiltrates a secret society of serial killers (organized by a philanthropic billionaire played by Peter Dinklage), he decides to take them out one by one. This makes for some entertaining murders, especially since the ensemble includes great actors like Neil Patrick Harris and Krysten Ritter, but none of these serial killers ever provides much of a challenge.
The closest Resurrection gets to a true Dexter villain is the Gemini Killer, played by David Dastmalchian with his penchant mix of scary and serene. Dexter manages to kill Gemini pretty easily, but in the season’s smartest twist, we later learn that Dastmalchian is actually playing a pair of identical twins who act as one, never appearing together and only communicating via hidden notes. It’s a great fakeout, but Resurrection doesn’t spend long enough building the Gemini Killer to make us really care when he’s ultimately cut down.
The season’s true villain is Dinklage’s charming Leon Prater, who doesn’t kill anyone himself but enjoys controlling and manipulating other serial killers via both money and blackmail. Prater is a fine enough antagonist, but there’s no big twist; he’s just evil.
By the end of Dexter: Resurrection, pretty much all these characters are dead (only one other member of the serial killer group, played by Erin Stonestreet, manages to survive). It’s a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion for anyone who expected Dexter to face off against a true adversary but instead watched him slice through a buffet a sub-par rivals. However, there’s a chance this could all be corrected in a follow-up season.
Throughout Dexter: Resurrection, we get occasional references to a retired serial killer called the New York Ripper, a serial killer who was never caught but still occasionally calls the families of his victims to torment them. The Ripper never actually played a direct role in the story, but in the season’s final moments, Dexter discovers the identity of the killer: a man named Don Framt.
Who is Don Framt? We literally have no idea, which is why it seems like an obvious setup for Dexter: Resurrection season 2. While a follow-up season hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, the popularity of season 1 makes it likely we’ll get more. And if that does happen, perhaps Framt can finally become the one thing this show is missing: a worthy antagonist for Dexter Morgan.