Michael C. Hall Explains Why He Returned for Another ‘Dexter’ Revival

Much like the main character of the series, the Dexter franchise just refuses to die.

Dexter ended once in 2013, then again in 2022 after reboot series New Blood, then prequel series Dexter: Original Sin premiered in 2024, and finally Dexter Morgan returned to the screen a fourth time with Dexter: Resurrection.

Last Friday, Deadline published a new interview with Michael C. Hall where he explains why he keeps returning to play the Bay Harbor Butcher over and over again.

“Like, Al Pacino and the mafia. It just keeps pulling me back in, I think… when we finished the series proper and Dexter put himself into self-imposed exile, I knew we may well be revisiting him at some point to find out what the hell happened to him. When New Blood ended, I had a more definitive sense that it was the end, and I think the character did too. He thought that was a fatal gunshot,” he said, referencing the end of New Blood where Dexter Morgan’s son Harrison shot him dead.

“But some time passed, and I casually injected in conversations with show creatives, like, ‘What if he didn’t die?’ I mean, he didn’t get shot in the head. It’s possible he could have survived that,” Hall continued. “And if he did, what would that look like? What storytelling possibilities would that afford us? The more I thought about it, and the more we talked about it, the more I was compelled.”

He discussed what a second chance at life would look like for Dexter Morgan, and if he would be able to “put down the burden of his penance.”

“And what would that mean? Would he be able to do what I think he does in this season, reclaim himself, and that just became increasingly interesting,” he said. “Then writers came up with an idea of this gathering that he might come upon, and plausibly so, given that he’s in New York City. It was too tempting to resist. I was like, ‘All right, let’s roll the dice and bring him back to life. Let’s do it.’”

The first two episodes of Dexter: Resurrection are streaming now on Paramount+.