Michael C. Hall Looking For Redemption With “Dexter” Revival

In the early 2000s, Showtime’s creepy and sometimes frightening serial killer procedural Dexter was considered one of the most groundbreaking shows on TV. It was visceral and allowed audiences to follow a protagonist that was extremely flawed and not really a good person as he, you know, was a serial killer. It was a forerunner for modern storytelling, in the same way that HBO’s The Sopranos was.

However, when the show concluded its run, fans were left confused and disappointed. Michael C. Hall’s titular murderer disappeared into a forest to hide out and become a lumberjack, and that ending felt both forced and just logically wrong. That finale has been heralded as one of the worst in recent memory and has had a huge impact on the legacy of the show.

Now that the series is getting a revival, everyone is hoping for a little bit of redemption. Speaking with The Daily Beast, Hall specifically stated that:

We certainly do live in an era where the bar is very high as far as the simultaneous surprise, satisfaction and closure that should go along with a series finale. People found the way that show left things pretty unsatisfying, and there’s always been a hope that a story would emerge that would be worth telling. I include myself in the group of people that wondered, ‘What the hell happened to that guy?

It’s good to hear Hall being so upfront with the failing of the 2013 send-off that the show got. As a result, Hall didn’t seem to have much interest in returning at first and it apparently took a lot of convincing from producers to get the actor to reprise his most famous role. It seems that it came down to a quality story that would make up for the lackluster finale that has vexed everyone involved with the series.

Whether Dexter will find smart and gratifying way to definitively end the program that also repairs its legacy is still up in the air, but hopes are high that the limited series will be a return to form. There is now confirmed air date for the 10-episode run, but it’s being rumored to hit Showtime sometime this Fall.