Before Showtime’s intervention, Dexter’s life in Dexter: Resurrection looked very different.
Dexter: Resurrection kicked off right where New Blood left us, but this time, our favorite antihero trades a quiet town such as Iron Lake for one of the busiest cities in the world, New York City. It was a daring move, but it’s one that based on the end result and feedback, paid off.
The choice to relocate Dexter to New York wasn’t random. Beyond its proximity to Iron Lake, it also offered a touch of authenticity, after all, Michael C. Hall himself is a New Yorker. That connection seems to have grounded the show in quite a natural way. But what if we told you that Dexter’s life in New York was originally going to look very different?
Before diving into the interesting things showrunner Clyde Phillips and executive producer Scott Reynolds revealed, let’s revisit how the season began.
In the premiere of Dexter: Resurrection, we find Dexter waking up from a 10-week coma, lost and trying to piece his life back together. While escaping the clinic to find Harrison, he meets Blessing Kamara, a kind-hearted and outgoing rideshare driver who, learning Dexter was new to the city, offers him a place to rent, more specifically his basement right under his house, so he can stay there.
But as it turns out, this setup wasn’t the original plan. In a recent interview for Final Draft, Clyde Phillips, revealed that Dexter was initially meant to live in a glass apartment high above the city, a skyscraper with sweeping views of Manhattan. Phillips explained that the writers had the entire season mapped out that way until Showtime’s entertainment president, Gary Levine, called with a suggestion, that actually changed everything. The idea of Blessing’s basement came from him.
Scott Reynolds elaborated, saying that in their first version, Dexter lived alone in the glass apartment while Blessing was still there, but appeared in a separate storyline. It was actually Levine’s idea to merge their worlds. Reynolds noted that this change added an intriguing contrast between light and darkness, both literally and thematically.
Dexter’s secretive existence in the basement, always aware of the vibrant life with the Kamara family happening just above him, gave the season some new and interesting layers of meaning. “It opened up the show in a really remarkable way,” Reynolds explained. “We pivoted, and while we had great plans for that high-end apartment setting, this new direction just made everything click.”
And it is not only that, but interestingly enough, Phillips revealed that Dexter was also written to be the manager of that building, a twist that might have brought some extra humor into the series. Reynolds reflected on the rewrite, saying that while the original concept worked, the change Showtime suggested, made the show “ten times better.” He also added that being open to creative shifts like this is key, even when the original idea already feels strong.
It’s hard to argue with that. The basement setup grounds Dexter in a more vulnerable space, but it’s still fun to imagine what the show might have looked like had Dexter been prowling a sleek, glass high-rise instead.
What do you think? Would it have made sense for a recovering Dexter, fresh out of a coma, to be renting a glass apartment overlooking Manhattan? Or was this quieter, more grounded version exactly what Dexter: Resurrection needed? Let us know in the comments!