TV Revivals: Revisiting the ‘Dexter’ season 9 talk once more

“Dexter” is in many ways the TV Revival rumor that will never die, with one of the main reasons for that being that we refuse to let it ever end up on the famed serial killer’s table. For many years, this was one of our favorite series, and we’re not going to let a fairly-terrible ending completely wash away all of the years that we really enjoyed watching this show on the air.

We’ve spoken a little bit in the past about why we feel like this show needs this chance to redeem itself, and with that in mind we’re going to approach this particular entry in our month-long series from a more practical angle. We want to look at what a good idea could be to bring the show back, and then also whether or not it could be possible in the first place.

How it ended – Following the death of Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) and with all of the walls closing in on him, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) faked his own death at sea, and went on to become a lumberjack seemingly somewhere in the Pacific Northwest while Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski) took his child Harrison to Argentina. It is still regarded as one of the worst finales in history, with many feeling confused by Dexter’s actions and wondering why abandoning him in the middle of nowhere was a fitting end to this character.

How to bring it back – The first thing you have to do here is bring Dexter back to Miami, that way he can interact once more with some of the other characters from the show. Then, you figure out if there is a way for him to either properly atone for what happened, or simply pay the piper. We know that the initial suggestion was that him living out his days as a jumberjack was a fate worse than death, but we don’t necessarily buy that. He still doesn’t really have to face what he’s done in any way other than in his head. Get a good percentage of the original cast of the show back, and then also some of the original creative team who helped to make the first four seasons (and to a certain extent, a fifth) so fantastic to watch. Focus back on the core of what the show was, and a little less on the romance and on some of the storytelling tricks like what we had with the Professor and Travis in season 6.

Could it happen? – Out of everything we’ve discussed in our TV Revivals series so far, we would at least give this one a competent chance of happening. “Dexter” is a property that Showtime loves, and they’ve never ruled out a revival. The issue comes down mostly to getting Hall and at least a few other cast members together, and then finding a story that is worthy of diving into this world once more. With show reboots / continuations being so enormous at the moment, we do think the odds are good that this will be strongly considered at some point. Whether or not that turns into anything remains to be seen.