It was one of the most frustrating series finales in memory, full of kitchen-sink excess and narrative evasions that felt punishing to people, like myself, who had stuck with the show even through its wobbly latter seasons.
We figured Dexter was done for good, a once richly compelling series that briefly skirted the edges of greatness but always seemed out of step with, or a few steps behind, the quality boom of TV’s golden, prestige age.
Not cold in the sense of his barely in-check sociopathy, but actually cold—he’s in small-town upstate New York, awash in snowy white and living in a humble cabin.
Dexter, now called Jim, works at a sporting goods store and satiates his appetite for murder by going on physically intense solo hunts in the woods behind his home.
Dexter has also rid himself of his ghost dad therapist, replaced with vigor by Jennifer Carpenter’s Deb, whose death was such a sour note in the original series finale.
Gradually over the four episodes made available to critics, the familiar Dexter clutter starts to creep in, a tangle of plot threads over-complicating what was briefly trim and efficient.
There is also a new political consciousness, seen in the show’s tentative exploration of Native identity and in a menacing industrialist character whose poisoning of the environment is probably not the only bad thing he’s doing.
How will it all come together? By the end of the fourth episode, I found myself desperately eager to find out.
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