I Watched Dexter: New Blood Before Resurrection, And There's A Pattern In The Spinoffs That's Giving Me Breaking Bad Vibes
Warning! The following contains spoilers for Dexter: Resurrection. Stream episodes now with a Paramount+ subscription, and read at your own risk!
Dexter Morgan's story is continuing with Dexter: Resurrection not long after it seemed New Blood was the endgame. The story picks up where the last one left off, but with everyone's favorite serial killer-killer settling up in New York City to help clean up the latest deadly mess made by his son Harrison. I'm loving the episodes we've seen so far, especially with the continuation giving me major Breaking Bad vibes the longer we get into it.
For all the nostalgia and love I have for the classic series (I also love that James Remar is back), I think the original Dexter did the series a disservice that the revival is fixing. It feels like Dexter is in his "Heisenberg" era in these new episodes, and if that's confusing, allow me to break it down.
Both Dexter And Walter White Are Easy To Root For, Despite Their Crimes
Breaking Bad and Dexter do a great job at taking unsavory individuals (a drug dealer and serial killer) and making them sympathetic. Both are similar in how they execute it as well, giving them noble intentions behind the despicable things they do. For Walter, this was raising as much money as he could to ensure his family was taken care of after he died of cancer. Of course, for Dexter, it's killing violent criminals who have either evaded the law or are operating completely under the radar.
In real life, I think many of us could confidently say we won't root for these types of people in any scenario. Of course, Breaking Bad and Dexter both try to paint their heroes in the most favorable light possible, to the point that the fandom is tricked into villainizing more rational characters like Skyler White or Maria LaGuerta.
These two characters in particular I like to compare, because both shows used illicit affairs to paint them in an unfavorable light. No one likes a cheater, and I applaud both for using that to make the audience more in the corner of the clear bad guys of the show, just because they were shown something unsavory about a character they might otherwise empathize with.
Part Of What Made Breaking Bad Incredible Was How It Reshaped Walter White
Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest shows of all time for many reasons, but for me, what sends it over the top is how it reshapes how the viewer feels about Walter White. Throughout the entire series, we see him evolve from a man who is clearly out of his depth to the mythical figure we come to know as "Heisenberg." A lowly school teacher turns into a drug kingpin throughout the length of the series, and ultimately becomes a terrible person in the process.
What starts out as a quest to financially support his family after his death soon becomes a quest to gain as much money and power as possible. He seems to get a great sense of pride that he was manufacturing the best meth in the southwestern United States. It becomes all-consuming, and the deeper he gets, the more willing he is to do despicable things to maintain the status quo. There are plenty of mind-blowing moments where you simply can't believe the person he's become, from allowing Jesse Pinkman's girlfriend Jane to die, to poisoning a child.
Dexter also has its share of mind-blowing moments, but the series lacked the kind of gut-punch that made you feel guilty for rooting for Dexter. Even when he let Doakes die, I didn't really feel too bad for the sergeant, despite having plenty of reason to. Doakes is essentially a villain because he's a good cop who had a suspicion that his colleague was up to some shady stuff, and it turns out he was 100% spot on. At the end of Dexter, Morgan ends up getting away with it all and living in the woods. Not the sort of justice he ultimately deserved as a serial killer, which is ultimately delivered in the novels.
Dexter New Blood And Resurrection Have Leaned Into Reminding Us That He Is Not A Good Person, Despite His Own Opinion
Dexter: New Blood and Resurrection have done a good job thus far of bringing the thing that made Breaking Bad great into its latest stories. Via Harrison, his former girlfriend Angela Bishop, and now his old colleague Angel Batista, we're slowly being shown again that, at the end of the day, Dexter Morgan is a serial killer. Sure, he often tries to kill others who committed heinous crimes and act by his code, but he still only does this because he struggles to resist an urge to kill.
Harry's code or not, he's not a good person, and even his own son recognized that. Even recently in Resurrection, when Dexter went on a manhunt for a serial killer that was using his moniker as "The Dark Passenger," it was more about his pride and the thrill of a kill than it ever really was about a moral code.
What's also true is that Dexter is a survivalist first and foremost. He went and killed the innocent Sergeant Logan under the guise that it was necessary to save Harrison. In reality, he doesn't really want to face any retribution for his various crimes despite the noble intentions he claims to have for his hundreds of murders.
If he did, he wouldn't have fled the city when Angel Batista went to visit him at the start of Resurrection, and I'll be curious to see how he responds should his former friend and colleague get a little too close to the truth later in the series. It really feels like the revival is finally showing us the plot lines that prove Dexter is not the hero the original series portrayed him as, and I'm all here for it, assuming they stick the landing.
Catch new episodes of Dexter: Resurrection on Fridays with a Paramount+ subscription, or on Showtime on Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET. I'm very excited to see how the rest of this season goes, and if Dexter is going to reunite with his son after they parted ways at the end of New Blood.
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