Dexter: Original Sin has officially concluded its first season and fans are eager to dissect every piece of it. The new prequel series takes fans back to the 90s and lets us see Dexter’s origin story from how his mom got killed to his first time going up against a proper villains. It’s a show filled with revelations, Easter eggs, and cameos from the larger Dexter universe. It’s the kind of show that is clearly made for the fans and is made to excite those who have paid careful attention to every detail within the show for the last 20 years or so.
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As of right now, Dexter: Original Sin has not been officially greenlit for a second season, but it seems likely that it will happen given its success. ComicBook.com had the opportunity to sit down with Dexter seasons 1 – 4, New Blood, and Original Sin showrunner Clyde Phillips to break down the show, talk about hopes and wishes for future seasons, and much more.
Phillips spoke with us from the New York production offices of the upcoming sequel series Dexter: Resurrection, a show that is being kept under a notable veil of secrecy. You can read our interview below and also check out our interview with Dexter: Original Sin actor Patrick Gibson about the season finale and much more.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Spoilers for Dexter: Original Sin follow below.
Original Sin feels almost a little bit more graphic than other seasons. Particularly seeing Dexter’s mom kind of chopped up was very disturbing. Obviously, the Ice Truck Killer chopped up all these women, but his mom feels almost more impactful. Has the level of violence changed over the years?
Yes, but unintentionally. I just think that we’re all kind of understanding or learning what the boundaries are. I think without violence, there’s no art. Come up with somebody more violent than Shakespeare or Homer, you know. So, I think people’s tastes have matured. I think you’re reacting to the shipping container scene. The rest of the series is really not all that violent. In fact, people think it’s violent and then I asked them to tell me what’s a violent scene, and it wasn’t really in there. It’s like, when you talk about Reservoir Dogs, I ask ‘What’s the most violent image you take from that?’ And everybody says, they cut off the cop’s ear. They don’t show it.
Same thing with Seven. David Fincher tells a story about the head in the box. We don’t know that the head is actually in the box, but we all imagine it.
Yes, you’re right! Oh, I wish we had more time because I have a great story about that.
I kind of want to connect that back to Dexter: New Blood too, because there’s a moment when we see Dexter cutting up Kurt’s body and we see it from Harrison’s POV. And for the entire time, throughout the entire Dexter show, we always see it through Dexter’s POV. We rarely see the actual process of him hacking someone’s limbs off You just see him putting things in a bag or whatever, it’s implied or in a montage. That feels like the moment where Harrison steps back and doesn’t want to be a part of this.
Yes, if you remember, Harrison went up above and threw up. He was traumatized.
It makes me feel like Dexter, in a sense, is almost like an unreliable narrator to the audience. He’s edited that part out when he’s telling his story to the audience.
Dexter is an unreliable narrator. And because he’s learning himself and he’s trying to blend in and find his own truth throughout from Dexter: Original Sin up to what we’re shooting now and in New Blood, the unreliable narrator is a great phrase to describe him.
Original Sin focuses a lot on kids with Nicky, Harry’s son, Dexter, and Brian. I’ve always been interested in how Dexter interacts with kids like Cody and Harrison and Nicky in the show. He almost seems a bit more authentic to them. I don’t know if there’s like a stunted growth from when he was a kid in a way.
I was going to give a different answer, but that’s an interesting answer. To me, he doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to blend in. Kids take him for who he is and he takes them for who they are and they can have a conversation. But you’re talking about an adult talking to a five-year-old. With Cody and Aster, they were young kids and also he was trying to be natural with them as he was with Rita. The reason he was with Rita is because she was the all-American girl. She’s this beautiful blonde, all-American girl, which is a perfect way to blend in when you don’t know how to do it.
I was very surprised as a big fan of Dexter that the show is as much of an origin for Brian as it is for Dexter. Obviously, we know the shipping container stuff and what happened to his mom, but after that, we didn’t know how he came to be Rudy. We just know he was gone and now we’re learning he’s been watching this entire time. He has a tragic backstory. It’s really sad.
He was abandoned, as they said. I wrote that episode. As he says to Harry, ‘You made a choice and you took Dexter from me and I was put into the system. I had this really awful, lonely, violent existence and now I’m getting my retribution for it.’ That’s why he takes out all those people that he takes off through the series. Those victims are all his victims.
I don’t know if you pay much attention to what people say online, but people were very quick to point out in episode two that they noticed Brian before he was officially revealed.
I did see that online and they were right, but that thread kind of got lost because he doesn’t appear again until episode nine or 10.
Yeah, and that’s why I was like it probably wasn’t him because you just leave it alone for so long and you don’t linger on it. The objective of that scene is showing Dexter has friends now.
Yes, you’re exactly right. Dexter has friends and the people he’s saving the seat for, it’s a very specific shot when he points, I’m saving it for friends, but they have guns and badges and stuff, so Brian’s not hanging around. It’s so cool that you caught that. I have seen it online a bit and then again, it fell away because we wanted it to fall away.
Why was it important for you to bring back Brian and kind of explore this story with him?
It’s so much a part of Dexter’s story because the show takes place in two time periods. Believe me, in the writing room, we’re always saying, ‘Wait a minute, where are we?’ Plus, when you’re writing two shows, you go, wait, wait. [laughs] And there’s actually a third time period in the show you just watched, which was two years earlier when Harry’s son drowned.
But it’s such a huge part of Dexter’s story and we’re building his world. And Brian/Rudy became such a big part of his world. It’s a natural part of his backstory and is part of Harry’s backstory with Harry and his wife making that choice, ‘We can’t adopt both of them. We have to separate them.’ That further traumatizes Brian and further explains why he became who he is and those scenes are heartbreaking.
It’s hard not to feel bad for him and have an understanding of why he becomes the way he does, he is someone who’s been traumatized and he hasn’t been taken care of efficiently. And then when he does kind of get put into the system, he’s being given these meds, but the meds are taken from him.
Meds are taken from him, people are taking food from him. The system didn’t help him at all. He was doomed. My favorite four letter F word is fate. And he was fated to be this way. You know, Dexter is a psychopath and trying to act normal, doing the best he can to act normal. But he’s got these undeniable urges – it might even be called a calling – and he can’t ignore them.
It seems like the end of the show is possibly setting up for Brian to return in this show. Obviously, we know he will come back in the first season of the original show. Do you want his story to continue in Original Sin?
Yes. He’s such a powerful presence and so important to Dexter’s life. You know, he becomes the Ice Truck Killer. I don’t know if you caught the Easter eggs, the whole show is an Easter egg hunt. We have so much fun. You know, sometimes we’ll have the whole scene written and then we’ll think of, well, wait a minute, let’s paint [Laura Moser’s] fingernails. There’s another one that’s even more hidden that’s very subtle. When Brian’s playing bingo with Barb, he’s got his daubers, those marker things, are all lined up like Laura’s fingernails.
Do you have a favorite Easter egg?
I think my favorite Easter egg was the Miami Chills ice truck going by. I do follow what people say online and it was so subtle. We didn’t punch in on it. There was no car honk or anything, truck honk or anything like that and everybody picked up on it, that’s wonderful. We do the show for the fans and the fans are so involved. They’re rewatching the old show, which we had hoped would happen and is happening. The premiere of Original Sin was the most streamed premiere in Showtime’s history.
Where do you want to see Dexter go from here in Original Sin? What is the journey from here to the pilot of the original show?
It will become the biggest Easter egg in the world. We need to see him grow in several ways. You’ll have to learn how to blend better. He will have to learn how to kill better and more efficiently. So, next season, does he get his boat? Does he get his apartment? Does he start wearing the Henley? Does he start doing the red string thing? Those are things that we’re going to explore, it’ll be like coming home for the audience with the music, Michael [C. Hall]’s voice, which is crucial to the show.
Original Sin takes place during the beginning of Dexter’s serial killer career and season eight establishes that there was someone else that Harry was consulting with Dr. Vogel, but she is not here. I know that you weren’t part of Dexter during season eight, so I’m curious if that’s not part of your vision of Dexter.
It actually never came up When we sit in the writing room, particularly when you’re doing a thriller, you need to know what the ending is. You put that on the wall and put your nose against it and you walk backward. Let’s say you’re in a hotel hallway and you walk backward and each room you’re passing is an episode until you get over here. Then we also have something which we call NPO, no particular order, scenes we want to see. We write them up on a board and about 35 or 40 percent of them get in like that ice truck going by, but we don’t know what episode it’s going in. We work in the ones that fit into the story, but story is king and character is king. So, Dr. Vogel isn’t even in my consciousness, honestly.
Is it challenging to create new villains this many seasons in?
No, it’s storytelling. Whether you’re writing a poem or a play or a movie or a TV show, it’s all storytelling. It’s all the same process. I’ve got 10 great writers sitting in a room with me and they’re very well and carefully chosen. We bounce around ideas all day long and we will say, ‘How can we make this villain more detestable, more of a challenge to Dexter and somebody that the audience is going to want to see get taken out?’ And that’s important. Because we’re doing a show like, you know, why is the show about a serial killer successful? In large part, it’s the relatability to the characters and Michael C. Hall’s narration. Because his narration makes him more vulnerable and tells us his relatability, his vulnerability. Who’s ever heard of a vulnerable serial killer?
A “moral” one.
Yeah! A moral one with a code, not a conscience. We just keep trying to push the envelope and as times have changed, we’re in 2025, and the envelope is more pushable. The audience has grown to expect and accept a greater level of graphicness or humor. I mean, Dexter, it’s not just a serial killer show. Original Sin is a father-son show. It’s a family show. The family dynamic is very important to what we’re doing. We try to keep that active and understandable and relatable all the time. Molly Brown as Deb is amazing. And Christian Slater, my God, I mean, the cast we got is just, I still can’t believe it.
Speaking of Harry, he is possibly the most complicated character on this show, I would argue. He has a lot of secrets and weight. Tell me about adding those layers and exploring that.
Well, I added a very significant layer to him with the loss of his son, for which he was responsible. He’s drinking beers and smoking cigarettes and watching the Miami Dolphins [instead of watching his son]. That’s a lot to carry. And that was new, obviously, that’s new to the entire oeuvre of Dexter, but it helps to explain Harry’s character and motivation. So, he loses his son, his wife is angry with him, obviously.
You lose a son, marriages usually don’t last and this marriage does last, but it also sends Harry a little bit off the deep end and he starts having an affair. That affair ends up with him and his wife adopting Dexter. There’s an irony to it, as well. I mean, his wife, who lost her baby boy, has now adopted the little boy of a woman that Harry’s sleeping with. It’s a wonderful complication. It’s a lot of fun to write and it’s a lot of fun for the actors to do.
It seemed like the scene with Brian smothering baby Deb was foreshadowing what we see in the first season of the original show.
That wasn’t intentional. Well, I wish it were.
You can go ahead and say it is.
[laughs] I’m going to take credit for it! It was really to show why Brian had to be separated from Dexter and thrown out of the house.
I have a theory about why Dexter has blown up over the last year or so. This is a whole new generation that is now old enough to watch the show and they grew up on superhero media like Batman and Daredevil and stuff like that. I’m wondering if you see any overlap there with people wanting something darker and edgier while pulling from those types of stories.
Well, I have a 28-year-old daughter and she had never really seen the show. Then she and her friends started watching Original Sin because of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Patrick Dempsey who were in the shows that they grew up with like Buffy and Grey’s Anatomy. And then they liked the show so much that they went back and watched the old show all the way through New Blood. I think it’s an intended consequence and just brilliant on the part of Paramount and Showtime to have put the show on Netflix. It was in the top 10 this year for Netflix and that’s after five Taylor Sheridan shows!
