Showtime's Original Plans for Dexter Reboot Revealed

Nearly a decade after the series finale of Dexter, Showtime's Dexter: New Blood revival gave fans a follow-up on Michael C. Hall's fan favorite serial killer, but the popular reboot wasn't the only continuation of Dexter's story considered by Showtime. A different spinoff of the series was initially pitched by Dexter executive producer Scott Buck before the original series ended, but sadly never made it to fruition. Now, however, Buck is opening up about what that spinoff would have looked like and the path it would have taken Dexter on. Buck got into the details about the proposed Dexter spinoff in a conversation with Bloody Disgusting, revealing that the spinoff would have seen Dexter getting into the field of medicine — and that planning for the spinoff began before the series ended.

"The feeling out there seems to be that people were so unhappy with the [original] ending, and that's why they had to come back all these years later and give it a new ending," Buck said. "But from my perspective, it was really the other way around. We ended the show specifically in a way that it could come back, because that had always been the intention. And it was actually the network who pitched to me that Dexter should be a doctor."

"I was intrigued by that, but it seemed a little farfetched that, in just a few short years, he could jump through all the hoops and become a doctor," Buck continued. "There was also something interesting about him faking his credentials, but there's also something a little unsatisfying about that. So, I pitched the idea that he'd be a paramedic. In a lot of ways, it seemed to make sense, because he's still working on some level with human bodies as a scientist."

Buck went on to explain that seeing Dexter working in healthcare was ultimately not about the killer seeking to atone or help others but was a way to manage his need to kill and that the profession would just be part of the character's background, not the center of his stories.

"And it was never that he wanted to help people, that he wanted to atone, but rather … if killing was his heroin, then holding lives in the balance [as a paramedic] would sort of be his methadone," Buck explained. "And it's not that we would draw a whole lot of work-related stories. It was just the background to sort of place him in."

Buck further detailed how that would work, with Dexter working as a paramedic in the Pacific Northwest when "some new Big Bad starts terrorizing the area" prompting Dexter to investigate things first out of curiosity and then eventually get pulled in to the point he has to act. He also said that the spinoff would have had a smaller ensemble cast and would have focused much more closely on Dexter than the original, but ultimately the spinoff didn't move forward. 

"I did write that script for showtime, and I guess Michael just didn't respond to it," Buck said. "He got the script, and I never heard back from him. Not that he owed it to me in any way, but it all came down through the channels that he just wasn't interested in doing it. This was like five years ago. I think, at that point, he was still pretty exhausted of Dexter. And that was the end of it. As far as I know, there were never any other potential spinoffs until Clyde [Phillips] did New Blood."

Dexter: New Blood is now streaming on Showtime.

What do you think about the proposed Dexter spinoff that never happened? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section!