Dexter: New Blood is a new adventure for everyone's favorite serial killer, Dexter Morgan. Played by Michael C. Hall, the show was a hit among fans and now this new series takes us to the fictional town of Iron Lake, N.Y., where Dexter seems to have settled down after faking his own death. But with Dexter's past always haunting him, he's seeing his sister Deb in a new way — as the Dark Passenger in his mind, a role that used to be held by Harry Morgan (James Remar).
Showrunner Clyde Phillips and actress Jennifer Carpenter explained the manner in which Deb returns to Dexter in the new series at the Television Critics Association's press tour panel this week. After Debra's death in the finale of the original run, it seemed likely we wouldn't see the character again, but it's nice to know she still holds a spot in Dexter's life.
On the original series run, Harry dedicated his time with his son Dexter to channeling the boy he found in blood to make him a serial killer who tracked down evil in order to rid the world of it. He may have been a murderer, but Harry used Dexter's lust for blood in an attempt to do good. The problem is that it wasn't a healthy decision made with Dexter himself in mind.
As Phillips said during the panel:
“Deb’s character says later in a later episode, basically what Harry did could be considered child abuse. To take your son who you’ve rescued from being born in blood and who’s out killing dogs in the neighborhood and then channeling him to use his force for good and go out and kill bad people is not the healthiest psychiatric situation to be in. And I think Deb… represents a corner of Dexter’s mind that we all have in our own heads that says, ‘Well, wait a minute. If you do this, then here are the consequences and then you decide whether or not to do it, whether or not to pursue it.'”
Carpenter views this version of Debra that she is playing as an “echo or an inconvenient truth for Dexter," which is what attracted her to come back to the show for New Blood:
“I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go back and fix a broken score. I feel like Deb had a different ending than the show. So, I decided that my work was to go to the bottom of the ocean and collect her and see if she wanted to be a witness to watch an unmedicated, decoded, unpunished, unchecked serial killer experience himself.”
“I wanted to massage her scar tissue,” Carpenter continued, also noting that she found it “cosmically profound” to have a chance to return to her character via this particular avenue. Dexter: New Blood will premiere November 7 on Showtime at 9 P.M.