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Showtime wasted no time greenlighting Dexter: Original Sin after New Blood’s record-breaking finale. While fans were shocked by Dexter’s end, the network acted quickly, opting for a prequel instead of a direct sequel. How’s that for timing?
Showrunner Clyde Phillips was all set to dive into a sequel. “We wrote all 10 episodes of the sequel,” Phillips revealed, adding that things got a little wild when MTV Entertainment’s Chris McCarthy came on board. McCarthy, fresh off the success of Yellowstone’s prequels, wasn’t into sequels. He wanted Original Sin. He told Phillips, “I’m not in the sequel business; I’m in the prequel business,” just like that, a Dexter prequel was born. Phillips quickly pitched it, and McCarthy’s four-word response sealed the deal: “Phenomenal. I love it.”
And bam, production kicked off.
But there’s more. The Original Sin premiere didn’t just pick up where New Blood left off—it flipped the script. Remember that gut-wrenching shot of Dexter, seemingly fatally wounded by his son Harrison? Well, Original Sin rewound that story. It turns out that Dexter wasn’t so dead after all. The prequel opens with Dexter: Original Sin being saved in the woods, turning that shocking cliffhanger into a “we’re not done yet” moment. This wasn’t a mistake for the writers; Phillips confirmed he originally wrote Dexter’s death as final. But then, New Blood happened. And the world went crazy. “The way New Blood worked is, and what I wanted to say to social media [was]… They went crazy when Dexter was shot, which showed me how much they loved the character and the show,” Phillips said about the intense fan reactions to Dexter’s fate. It was clear: Dexter was far from finished.
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