Dexter: Season 6 Premiere

D-day has come. Dexter’s back. This season he’s single, Lumen is out of the picture (thank God), and we’re ready to see our old killing machine back in action. If the first episode is any clue, we’ll see plenty of blood this time around. But the question everyone’s asking is “can they keep it interesting?” The show is in its sixth season and the guest-star-killer format is becoming all too familiar. Lucky for us, they’ve got a plan.

Like other great television series, the producers and writers for Dexter have decided to revive this season with a new journey for their main character, avoiding the “bigger and better” route that usually leads to a show’s demise. Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is about to tackle God, religion and good vs. evil (explaining the posters lining town with Dexter’s blood-spattered angel wings). Sarah Colleton, the show’s producer, told the Hollywood Reporter that Dexter, “realizes he needs to know what he does want to pass on to Harrison. It sets him on an odd Dexter-ish spiritual quest.” We’ll see him struggle more with faith and the nature of faith, a way of being. Presenting Dexter with a controversial, unexpected quest, most likely his most difficult yet, sounds like just the way to preserve the audience’s interest and the show’s longevity.

Faking a stab wound, sedating the paramedics, and killing them in their own ambulance by shocking them to death….yes! Dexter at his best! A year has passed from last season and each character has progressed. Deborah (Jennifer Carpenter) and Quinn’s (Desmond Harrington) relationship is getting more and more serious, La Guerta (Lauren Velez) has been promoted to Captain, leaving Angel (David Zayas) with the option for promotion and Vince (C.S. Lee) has a new crew of interns for the taking. As Dexter remarks, “everyone is moving forward. And I’m still here.” Although despite his self-doubts, Dexter has come along way too. He’s focusing on creating a good life for Harrison and looking for a pre-school to enroll him. He’s also back to his murderous self and has an agenda for the night: killing one of his high-school classmates. Seeing Dexter at his high school reunion is utterly hilarious and satisfying…he’s such a weirdo. When the Prom Queen shoves him into a room and unzips his pants we think, “See, but I told you he was damn sexy.”

Then there’s the hot new case: a religious killing the Miami Metro stumble upon. Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks) and Professor Gellar (Edward James Olmos), who are nameless in the first episode, attack a fruit-vendor on the highway and perform a strange ritualistic murder. They remove his intestines, replacing them with seven snakes and sewing up the wound with a strange Greek symbol. The Miami Metro team is perplexed and repulsed, while Dexter is fascinated. Sounds like a challenge. For us, it means a mysterious and undeniably demented killer to catch.          

There’s no doubt that the first episode delivered. There was the usual Dexter killing, saran wrap and all, an update on all of our beloved main characters, plenty of cute-baby-Harrison time and even a little romance (if you could call it that). But admittedly, it was all very familiar. The reason why Dexter has remained an extremely successful series is that the writers have found ways to continually surprise us with their complex characters. Even though the plot is always the same, the characters change. It seems as if the new religious undertones will give our key players difficult cases, personal and work-related, to confront.

As the advertising campaign has shown, Season 6 could be the most controversial yet, and serial-killing protagonist is about as controversial as it gets. Sarah Colleton says, “As we always try to do, we deal with things honestly. And the show causes people to reflect on their own thoughts. Some people might be upset but those are probably the same people who would always be upset at the idea of this show. We can’t think of that and we have to think of where we take Dexter that’s an interesting thematic world of human behavior that he’s never experienced.”

If the people behind Dexter continue fearlessly taking risks with their characters, Dexter will no doubt become one of the greatest shows of our generation. We’ve been granted with a legendary character, a anti-hero, who this season, looks like he’s being called “The Avenged Angel.”