Creator Clyde Phillips Explains Dexter Being Alive

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from the series premiere of Showtime’s “Dexter: Original Sin” now streaming on Paramount+.

“Things were a little messy in the beginning…”

That’s how Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) described his first kill when audiences saw it 18 years ago in Season 1 of Showtime’s serial killer series “Dexter.” And that’s putting it mildly. The formative moment for the killer with a code unfurled rather hastily in Episode 3 of the first season, when a shaggy haired Dexter struggles to subdue but eventually kills the nurse trying to poison his hospitalized father. 

However, it wasn’t the whole story. Those who tuned into the premiere of the new prequel series “Dexter: Original Sin” were treated to the scene again, but from a whole new perspective. In the new series, Michael C. Hall, who played Dexter for eight seasons and 2019’s “Dexter: New Blood” continuation, cedes the screen to Patrick Gibson, who plays a young Dexter as he graduates from medical school at the ripe age of 20 years old and joins the Miami Metro Police Department as a forensic intern.

This young Dexter (whose inner monologue is narrated by Hall) is far from polished in satiating his bloodlust, and he’s barely holding onto his adoptive father Harry’s (Christian Slater) mandate that he not kill anyone. But he gets the greenlight when Harry is hospitalized for a heart attack, one prompted by Dexter’s admission that he nearly killed a frat boy who tried to rape his sister, Deb (Molly Brown). In the hospital, Dexter deduces that Harry’s worsening condition is due to the deadly care of Nurse Mary, whom his father then instructs Dexter to kill.

This leads to the familiar scene of Mary coming home to her living room lined in plastic wrap, where a flailing Dexter pounces on her and eventually restrains her to his signature table. There, she pleads that she was just trying to relieve her victims’ pain, after which Dexter relieves hers with a knife to the chest — and the rest is history. But showrunner Clyde Phillips, who served in the same role for Seasons 1-4 of the original series and “New Blood,” tells Variety the context of young Dexter’s state of mind was key in deepening the scene from what audiences already knew.

“Part of it was that we understand Dexter more than we did in Season 1 of the original show, and we understand his relationship with his father and his unstoppable urge to kill.,” Phillips says. “We needed to stay in his head and see him face temptations like the fight at the fraternity. We need to see how the urge is too big.”

Phillips talked to Variety about getting to know a younger Dexter after all these years, the idea he couldn’t shake about how to film a new take on that first kill — and why the prequel series opens by undoing the cliffhanger from the sequel series, “New Blood.”

Right out of the gate, viewers get answers to the ending of “New Blood.” Dexter actually survived what was seemingly a fatal gunshot from his son Harrison (Jack Alcott). Did you always see this as a continuation of that series?

Well, it is not a sequel to “New Blood,” it is its own show. What we are doing in the first couple of minutes, which was actually [Paramount Co-CEO] Chris McCarthy’s idea, is showing that the character of Dexter is still alive so that we can use Michael’s narration and give the audience some hope because we start shooting “Dexter: Resurrection” in January, which is a sequel to “New Blood.”

Very intentionally in those first few moments though, the show plunges right into Dexter’s psyche while they are trying to save his life. As much as the original show tried to put you in Dexter’s mind, this really seems like we are living in one of Dexter’s flashbacks.

This is Dexter looking back at his origin story. And as “Original Sin” goes on, we will see that it moves from an origin story to an evolution story. In fact, in subsequent episodes, we shoot in two time periods –– the time period we’re in, which is 1991 when Dexter is 20; and in 1973, when Harry met Dexter’s mother Laura and everything that ensued from that. It is really a lot of fun because anytime you move back and forth between them, it is invigorating.

With the return of Dexter in “New Blood,” and with “Resurrection” coming soon, this world has been more sprawling. Was it an enlightening exercise to reacquaint yourself with what made Dexter who he is as you start looking toward his future?

It has been a blast. I had been part of the OG “Dexter” show, and I get to go back and look at it from a couple different standpoints. A family standpoint, a father-and-son standpoint. You see in the premiere, the drowning of Harry’s first baby, and how that really explains everything that he does. We get to explore the Dexter and Deb relationship, how fraught and ultimately loving it is. And then Dexter showing up at work at Miami Metro at the end of the premiere.

We shot this show in California and we built the exact same Miami Metro set on a soundstage in Studio City, based on the actual paper blueprints of the original set that my guy somehow found. Nothing is on paper anymore, but he found them. So it is exactly the same. It was amazing when Michael came to set and saw it. We all time traveled a bit in making this show, while time stood still.

The premiere debuts the younger iterations of Batista (James Martinez) and Masuka (Alex Shimizu), who are dressed and act almost identical to their counterparts from the original series. It’s uncanny, as if they hadn’t changed in 15 years. Why bring back these characters in this way?

We always went for the best actor. I was so lucky to get all of my first choices, and that never happens. James Martinez, who plays Batista, had a full beard when he started. But we trimmed it down, put a hat on him and he just immediately became Batista. Same with Alex Shimizu, who plays Masuka. He is an actor and a dancer, and looks enough like C.S. Lee that we could make it work, and then he got that laugh down perfectly. He actually went to meet C.S. and they practiced the laugh together. Patrick Gibson, he’s Irish so we call him Paddy, was our first choice for Dexter. He got together with Michael C. Hall and just studied and studied and studied, and now I think Paddy’s gestures are becoming Michael’s. But we don’t say they are the same because he has to evolve into it.

And we’ve got Patrick Dempsey and Sarah Michelle Gellar. I mean, what a get. When I told my daughter that we got Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she told me, “Dad, now my generation is going to watch this show too.” That’s really what we are looking for. We’ve got a very good built-in audience that we don’t take for granted by any means. But we want to grow the audience in both directions as much as we can. This cast of early ‘90s TV stars just works for us.

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Speaking of the diehard fans that know Dexter’s mythology so well, they will know that his father Harry is not long for this world. He has a heart attack in the premiere, and he recovers. But canonically, he dies pretty soon after Dexter joins Miami Metro. How are you going to play with expectations to keep even those fans guessing?

We talked with Christian about this a lot. When you see the whole season, all 10 episodes, it will have only taken place over two or three weeks. We can keep doing that until it is time to say goodbye to Harry, but we plan on keeping Christian and Harry around for a long time. It was the same thing with “New Blood.” It took place from just before Christmas to just after Christmas.

A huge touchstone of Dexter’s story was always his first kill, but you already did it in the original series. How did you approach it again for this episode?

It was an interesting thing. We sat with white boards in the writers’ room, and we talked and talked about everything. The way we realized we needed to look at it was from a different point of view from the first season. Part of it was that we understand Dexter more than we did in Season 1 of the original show, and we understand his relationship with his father and his unstoppable urge to kill. We needed to stay in his head and see him face temptations like the fight at the fraternity. We need to see how the urge is too big. And also, this nurse is killing his father and that just ain’t going to happen.

In the original series, that moment is merely a flashback. But “Original Sin” gives you the context of everything around that kill.

Visually and viscerally.

What struck you most about redoing Dexter’s first kill nearly 20 years later?

There is humor built into this show, and I had the image of Deb playing volleyball and Dexter doing his first kill at the same moment. Which means that they each let each other down because they were not there for each other. But I also wanted to go for the humor of Deb spiking the ball at the same moment Dexter stabs the nurse and you hear the announcer say, “And it’s Morgan for the kill!” I just had that image. We have a saying in our writers’ room: “If you can think of it, you can do it.” We put that image on the board, and it stuck. That becomes the fulcrum scene, and you have to earn it and you have to pay it off.

With everything that is to come this season, was it easier or harder than you expected to find who Dexter was as a young man?

“Harder” isn’t the right word. It wasn’t easier, but it was more challenging because we have such a fan base. We are Showtime’s No.1 show ever. We have this great fan base, and we have to honor them. We always want to write up to the audience, rather than down or at them, which makes my job more challenging and, thank God, more interesting. We had a great writers’ room, and we just understood the mission for this show. We are working on several relationships: Harry and Dexter, Harry and Deb, Deb and Dexter. All of that adds humanity to the show.

Audiences might pick up on a lighter, kookier tone to “Original Sin” versus the original series. Was that intentional as you follow a younger, messier Dexter?

There is a tonal shift because we are not seeing someone who is fully formed. And also, the early ‘90s in Miami were a really hot place to be. Not only was it the murder capital of the country, but the music and the scene was great as well. We’ve got songs like George Michael’s “Freedom” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” We took advantage of what was there in Miami.

What does the evolution of Dexter look like over this first season of “Original Sin?”

When we started “Dexter,” he was fully formed. Our Dexter here, instead of being in the relatively protected atmosphere of medical school, he’s now out in the real world and he has to learn how to navigate that. He has to learn how to date. How to not get in fights. Basically, the phrase is “blend in.” And also evolve his killing method and body disposal method. He can’t always rely on Alligator Alley, and that will become a challenge for him later on in the season. Everything is in motion here for Dexter, especially the intensity of his relationship with his father and the vibrancy of the relationship with his sister. And he’ll be dating! He never dated before.

So this is the Dexter people know and love, only at the mercy of his hormones and his unrefined urges –– all of which are just things you deal with in your 20s. 

Funny you say that, because when he makes a mistake, it is not like, “Oh gee, I just kissed a girl who didn’t want it and I got the signals wrong.” For him, it is, “Oh gee, did I screw up what I just did with this killing?” The stakes are brutal here. No 20-year-old goes through what Dexter is about to go through.

This interview has been edited and condensed.