Dexter: Resurrection Already Has a Big Plot Issue

Dexter: Resurrection is finally here and it’s pretty great, but it does have a pretty glaring plot hole. Dexter: Resurrection made its debut with a special two episode premiere which offers all kinds of new thrills. Perhaps most notably, it gets straight to the point when tying up loose ends from Dexter: New Blood. After awakening from his ten week coma, Dexter is informed by his doctor that he survived his near-fatal gunshot wound due to the cold temps in the forest. The cold weather and snow slowed his heart and blood loss, allowing doctors to get him to the ER and save him. Had it been a summer day, he would’ve definitely died.

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That’s fairly easy and I think audiences would’ve bought most explanations for Dexter’s survival. It’s a necessary thing for the show to exist, so long as he didn’t get blown apart or get shot in the head. However, the bigger obstacle for the writers was always going to be how do the clean up the mess of New Blood‘s finale. In that single episode, Dexter kills a cop, his girlfriend suspects him of being the Bay Harbor Butcher, and Harrison shoots him. Unfortunately, I don’t think the show does a good job of tying some of this up.

Spoilers for Dexter: Resurrection Episode 1 follow below.

Dexter: Resurrection Struggles to Explain Away Officer Logan’s Death

Let me be clear before I go any further, I really love Dexter: Resurrection. I gave it a 4 out of 5 in my review and think it’s tremendous. One of the only complaints I have based on the four episodes I have seen is how they handle the lingering threads from New Blood. With that said, Officer Teddy Reed arrives in Dexter’s hospital room with an envelope from Angela. Teddy explains that after everything went down, she took her daughter and left town. Inside the envelope, Dexter finds a picture of Angela and her best friend, Iris, who was revealed to have been killed by Kurt Caldwell in the New Blood finale. On the back, Angela left a note: “We’re even. Now get the hell out of Iron Lake.”

Teddy explains that Angela regretted arresting Dexter for the murder for the murder of Matt Caldwell and pinned the blame on Kurt instead after finding his underground bunker. She also took responsibility for shooting Dexter, something that seemed likely after she covered Harrison’s tracks in the finale. Teddy goes to say that the bullet in Dexter’s cell is proof that Logan tried to attack him and Dexter was just defending himself, clearing Dexter of any wrong doing.

This is, of course, pretty absurd. Why would a cop just randomly attack Dexter, who is under suspicion of being a serial killer? Why is there no investigation done here? Surely some kind of forensics would paint a better picture of what happened. Are there no cameras pointed at the jail cell or outside of the station pointed at the cop car that he stole? At the end of Dexter: New Blood, we even see a convoy of black SUVs, potentially FBI or some other notable agency, driving toward Iron Lake as Harrison is leaving. It doesn’t seem like something that Angela herself can handwave away to her small town cops as there’s probably other authorities asking questions.

Not only that, but it’s also a bit hard to swallow that Angela just left Dexter alone. I understand the idea is Angela is letting Dexter off the hook because he gave her closure on her missing best friend, but he also killed her other friend and co-worker. We’ve seen how gung-ho she is about getting justice and how much she dislikes being beaten or manipulated. It really feels like she should be making more of an effort to take Dexter down. It’s possible could return in a future season of Dexter: Resurrection, as the creators are committed to doing more unlike New Blood. Even if she doesn’t want to be involved any longer, it would’ve been nice to see her assist Batista more.

I get all of this has to happen in order for Dexter: Resurrection to exist. It’s the cost of admission for something like this without doing the much worse strategy of it all being a dream or something. Without it, Dexter would wake up strapped to his hospital bed and almost certainly be unable to get his way out of that jam. At the very least, it would create a show where he’s on the run, which may limit its ability to go on for multiple seasons.

I appreciate that the writers tried to give some kind of explanation for it, but it does also come at the cost of hurting other characters. It’s a logical leap that we just have to accept and it really doesn’t matter past the first episode, but it is a bit of a plot hole nonetheless. At the very least, Dexter isn’t fully off the hook with Batista still investigating him. Only time will tell where all of that leads, but it likely will culminate in something dramatic and explosive.