WATCH: ‘Dexter’ Season 9 Teaser Promises A Fresh Start

Shaving off that godawful lumberjack beard and revelling in his natural element with another victim wrapped to the table while Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Understood’ scores the scene, Michael C. Hall has returned to rectify one of modern television’s greatest finale blunders in Showtime’s 2021 limited-series revival: Dexter season 9.

Reprising his role as the titular Dexter Morgan – former Miami police department blood-spatter expert by day, serial killer who exercises his murderous intent on criminals by night – the upcoming 10-episode reboot will also mark the return of original showrunner Clyde Phillips, who has every hope, intention, and desire to recapture the lost magic.

“We’re not undoing anything… we’re not going to betray the audience and say, ‘Whoops, that was all a dream’,” Phillips tells The Hollywood Reporter.

“What happened in the first eight years happened in the first eight years. Ten years, or however many years, have passed by the time this will air, and the show will reflect that time passage.”

“In so far as the ending of the show, this will have no resemblance to how the original finale was. It’s a great opportunity to write a second finale for our show, and Showtime was very gracious about that.”

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“Dexter is such a special series, both for its millions of fans and for Showtime, as this breakthrough show helped put our network on the map many years ago,” says Gary Levine, Showtime Co-President of Entertainment.

“We would only revisit this unique character if we could find a creative take that was truly worthy of the brilliant original series. Well, I am happy to report that Clyde Phillips and Michael C. Hall have found it, and we can’t wait to shoot it and show it to the world.”

Picking up where season 8 left off, as confirmed by Phillips himself and numerous insider reports, we’ll get to see how Dexter has been coping with his new life post-Oregon… in the fictional town of Iron Lake, Upstate New York. To refresh your memory, Hall’s iconic anti-hero finds himself here after:

• executing rival serial killer Oliver Saxon (portrayed by Darri Ingolfsson)
• escaping from hospital with the body of his dying sister Debra (portrayed by Jennifer Carpenter)
• sending his son Harrison (portrayed by Jadon Wells) and love interest Hannah (portrayed by Yvonne Strahovski) to Argentina for their safety
• and faking his own death in a boat crash to forge a new lumberjacking identity in Oregon

Although not much else has been revealed in regards to narrative direction, what we do know is that Clancy Brown (Carnivale, Billions) will portray the main antagonist Kurt Caldwell – the unofficial mayor of Iron Lake – while Jamie Chung (Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, Lovecraft County) takes on the role of a true-crime podcaster from Los Angeles who finds herself tangled in the central conflict. Other cast members locked and loaded for the revival include Julia Jones (Wind River, Westworld) as Iron Lake’s first Native American Chief of Police and Alano Miller (Atlanta, Underground) as an Iron Lake Police Department sergeant.

Showtime’s Dexter season 9 will premiere in the US fall (meaning sometime between September to November).