On October 14th, Showtime announced that Showtime’s Miami-set crime drama Dexter will continue by way of ten-part limited series scheduled to air in 2021, according to a network press release. The show’s official Twitter account confirmed the announcement with a brief video and a caption referencing a memetic catchphrase spoken by Sergeant James Doakes, played by Erik King (Oz, National Treasure).
Dexter‘s season eight finale aired back in 2013. The original broadcast was allegedly watched by 2.8 million viewers, a record total for an individual episode of a Showtime original series at the time, as reported by New York Daily News.
The revival has already secured the participation of the showrunner from Dexter’s first four seasons, Clyde Phillips (Feed the Beast, Nurse Jackie), and Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under, Netflix’s Safe), who portrayed the eponymous forensic analyst-cum-serial killer and currently sings in the indie pop trio Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, as reported by Deadline. Both Phillips and Hall will occupy executive producer roles, per Showtime’s official press release.
Dexter is based on a crime novel series by Jeff Lindsay, formerly playwright Jeffry P. Freundlich (The Cave, Just Watch Me). Lindsay’s eighth and final novel in the series, Dexter is Dead, was published in 2015, two years after the Season 8 finale. Lindsay explained why he had to move on from the character in an interview with Crime Reads: “It was very durable, very comfortable relationship and that was part of the problem. Comfort is the enemy of quality.” He told Crime Reads that he felt like he finished Dexter’s story before he got tired of it: “I always promised my readers I would quit if I just started to phone it in. So I quit before that happened.”
Showtime has pulled off revivals of shows even less likely to return than Dexter in the past. The L Word: Generation Q, sequel series to The L Word, one of the network’s most groundbreaking programs from the 2000’s, was renewed for a second season in January, as reported by Deadline. Furthermore, in 2017, the eighteen-part limited series Twin Peaks: The Return improbably brought viewers back to the uncanny world of the postmodern primetime soap Twin Peaks, which had originally aired on ABC in the early 1990’s.
The first eight seasons of Dexter are available to stream through Netflix. They are also accessible via Showtime’s own streaming service, available through select television providers and priced at $10.99 a month.