Photo: Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

The show that stuck in my mind the most while watching Dexter: Original Sin – apart from of course Dexterthe quintessential Showtime series that ran from 2006 to 2013 – was Muppet Babies. Here in the new prequel are all the characters we know and love, except the younger ones. There’s Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson), who is graduating from medical school and struggling to keep his Dark Passenger under control. There’s his well-meaning (and still alive!) police officer father Harry (Christian Slater) and his foul-mouthed high school sister Debra (Molly Brown). There are junior versions of our old friends from the Miami Metro Police Department, Angel Batista (James Martinez) and Vince Masuka (Alex Shimizu). We can never go back to 2006 – or 1991 original sin is taking place – but close your eyes and believe, and you can be anywhere.

As shameless brand extensions go, this series feels mostly innocuous, and its start is so promising that we can overlook how desperately Showtime is determined to squeeze life out of this franchise. (Another spin-off, Dexter: ResurrectionPremiering next year.) In a time of endless intellectual property, Dexter: Original Sin is at least entertaining, and that’s more than can be said for countless other current cash heists. But before we get to the fun stuff, we need to re-conceptualize the 2022 finale Dexter: New Bloodin which our favorite serial killer was shot and killed by his adult son Harrison (Jack Alcott). Or was it him? original sin The adult Dexter (Michael C. Hall) begins by somehow clinging to life while treating his wounds, which also provides a helpful framing narrative to justify a return to the ’90s. “It really is as they say,” Hall’s well-known tale tells us. “Your life flashes before your eyes.”

Cut to the opening title, a clever twist on the original Dexter Credits, this time with Gibson as the title character and Harry and Deb included. When we meet young Dex, he’s finishing his career as a doctor, and probably just in time: his classmates have already identified him as an emotionless freak. When he’s asked to smile for his graduation photo, he imagines something that makes him happy: that of Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho. (Dexter will one day use Patrick Bateman as a pseudonym.) Dexter’s narration in these scenes – it’s always Hall doing it, presumably from the future where he bleeds to death – is just as silly as it was in the original series. It’s not clear how intentionally funny it is, but when he describes a body as “heartless like the Tin Man and maybe… like me,” it’s safe to say there’s a deliberate camp going on here.

The Morgan house is probably as peaceful as it could be under the circumstances (overworked single father, psychopathic son). Harry does his best to stop Dexter from killing people, although Dex admits that cutting up corpses and going on hunting trips aren’t really enough to suppress his urges. We know a lot of these backstories DexterThe original series of The Movie was a predominantly flashback-heavy show, but Gibson and Slater do a good job of keeping the father-son dynamic fresh, even if Gibson does an eerily accurate Michael C. Hall impersonation most of the time. Luckily, we’re spared the horrible flashback wigs that were a hallmark of the OG series. Debra is a harder character to relate to, which is pretty consistent throughout the franchise. Brown does her best, but there’s a lot of cursing and whining in the series premiere. Her central conflict here is that she wants to be a normal teenager and is held back by her strange brother. Case in point: Harry lets her go to a college party if she takes Dexter with him.

Meanwhile, Harry has concerns that aren’t related to his potential serial killer back home – there is one active Serial killer who commits house burglaries and murders families. 1991’s Miami Metro brings us some new characters, including Harry’s partner and best friend Bobby Watt (Reno Wilson) and no-nonsense police captain Aaron Spencer (Patrick Dempsey). Dempsey has proven adept at over-the-top acting in recent years, be it Ridley Scott Ferrari or Eli Roth’s thanksgivingand be original sin Chewing the scenery is a boon to this show. It helps that he gets lines like, “I’m not a proud mom, boys; I’m a menopausal pissed bitch.” (It’s the ’90s!) We also meet Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Tanya Martin, introduced by Masuka as “the head of forensics.” Given the close relationship she’ll form with Dexter and the fact that SMG is listed as a “special guest star,” I fear she won’t be around much longer for this world.

Dexter and Debra go to the college party where we meet Deb’s best friend Sofia (Raquel Justice). Otherwise, it’s the expected collection of drunk and rowdy young adults, including a frat boy named Andy with a vile charisma who takes a particular interest in Debra. Dexter is repulsed by the whole scene, and who can really blame him? One can somewhat understand why Harry thought this would be good for him, but it’s hard to imagine how he could ever fit in here, murderous tendencies or not. However, it’s a stroke of luck that Dexter is there because he comes to Deb’s aid when Andy tries to sexually assault her in an upstairs bedroom. Dex beats him up, a useful outlet for his violent desires, but he almost takes it too far when he spots a knife nearby. Luckily, Debra stops him, and after yelling at him for ruining the night, she admits that he saved her from a terrible situation.

On their next hunting trip, Dexter tells Harry how close he came to throwing everything away by killing Andy. Harry insists that once he’s done the deed, he can’t undo it – but before he can finish teaching this lesson, he suddenly suffers a heart attack. Dexter picks up his father and carries him in his arms, and you have to appreciate the way original sin tends towards melodrama. At this point we move from prequel to remake: the story of Harry’s hospitalization and Dexter’s first murder was dramatized in “Popping Cherry,” the third installment of Dexterso this is familiar territory. Some lines of dialogue are taken almost verbatim from the original series. But after seeing “And in the Beginning…” and re-watching the now 18-year-old (!) “Popping Cherry,” I was impressed by the selection original sin does the retelling of the story, which also reveals a lot about the tone of the latest iteration Dexter starts.

At the hospital, Harry appears to be recovering from his heart attack until his condition worsens. No one can explain why his condition isn’t improving, but Dexter begins to see some clues, namely that Sister Mary is clipping obituaries from the newspaper. He immediately realizes that she is also a serial killer, an angel of death who deliberately murders her patients – or, as she sees it, eases their pain. The whole thing plays out mostly as in the original series, although Dexter is given a bit more agency here, doing his own research to find out what Mary is injecting Harry with (potassium nitrate) and explaining the situation to his father. Harry also discovers the Dark Passenger in his nurse and gives Dexter the green light to stop her before she kills again.

We get a repeat of another key scene from the original Dexterwhen Dex ambushes Sister Mary in her home and straps her to his first-ever killing table. There is humor in both versions of the scene, however original sin really have fun with it. “You can never forget the first time,” Dexter remembers. “Mine was with an older woman.” The song “Nothin’ But a Good Time” begins playing as we cut back and forth between Dex’s clumsy attempts to do the deed and Debra’s volleyball game. The pounding of Mary’s heartbeat becomes the pounding feet of the high school crowd. As Deb scores, the game’s announcer shouts, “It’s Morgan for the kill!” and we return to Dexter stabbing the nurse. That’s what I want from every version of DexterPast or present, a serial killer who only kills other serial killers is one of the silliest fantasies imaginable, and the less seriously we take it, the better.

Of course, Debra is very upset about Dexter missing her game, but her bad mood quickly improves when Harry comes home from the hospital. He challenges Dexter about whether there were any witnesses to the murder and how he disposed of Sister Mary’s body (good old Alligator Alley). Harry seems satisfied with the answers, but as Dex leaves the room he bursts into tears. Fans of the original series will remember that the weight of his son’s actions weighs heavily on Harry until he reaches a breaking point. At least for now, he’ll be able to keep a close eye on things. Dexter’s discovery of a connection between two crime scene photos at a career fair impressed Masuka so much that he approached the boss. Martin offers him a paid internship in forensics – and while Harry doesn’t approve of his son joining Miami Metro, Dexter is eager to start his new life.

• As Dexter Fan and victim (everyone who made it to the Lumberjack finale should be entitled to compensation), I’m looking forward to being back in this world and reviewing the season here. For those who haven’t recently caught up on the original series, I’ll try to avoid too many “spoilers” when it comes to things we learned from the original series about Dexter’s early ’90s.

• Speaking of which, there’s quite a bit of canon when it comes to Dexter’s first kills. I loved revisiting Sister Mary, but personally I’m all for more rewatches if it keeps the series surprising.

• So far the music selection is good. In addition to “Nothin’ But a Good Time” we hear the classic “Ice Ice Baby” from 1990. That’s refreshing original sin is treated like the period piece it is.

• Dexter hiding newspaper clippings of serial killers in dirty magazines is a fun detail. The future Bay Harbor Butcher name checks the Night Stalker and BTK before wondering if he will ever have a nickname of his own.

• It looks like we’ll be getting flashbacks within flashbacks, including to events where Dexter wasn’t present. Here we learn that Harry had a biological son named Harry Jr. who drowned in the pool while Harry was watching a football game.

• Dexter casually eating a full-size Butterfinger in the hospital waiting room is more disturbing than anything else he does in this episode.