Dexter revival gets new trailer as Michael C. Hall confirms fan reactions inspired upcoming season

The Dexter revival has a new trailer, which premiered during the show's panel at Comic-Con@Home, and it was also revealed that the new season will start airing on November 7.

Michael C. Hall will reprise his role as Dexter Morgan – forensic technician by day, avenging serial killer by night  – in a 10-episode limited series for Showtime. The series revival, titled Dexter: New Blood, will take place a decade after the events of season 8. 

Showrunner Clyde Phillips said Hall in particular advocated for the time jump. "One of the things that we all agreed on, and Michael really insisted on it – he was completely right – is that this not be Dexter season 9; that we acknowledge that this is not the next moment after the lumberjack moment; that we acknowledge the truth, that time has passed – almost 10 years have passed – and we pick up [with] Dexter in another place, in another world, actually, as far away from Miami as possible."

The original series ran for eight seasons, ending in 2013. The series finale, however, was a topic of controversy, with viewers disappointed with the ending and a drop-off in quality compared to earlier seasons. 

Now, 10 years later, Dexter is based in a small town in New York state and goes by the name Jim Lindsay. The revival cast will also include Clancy Brown, Julia Jones, Alano Miller, and Johnny Sequoyah, and potentially some other familiar faces. "I will say that there will be some returning cast members from the original series that will make some people's brains explode," Phillips said. 

Hall admitted during the panel that the fan response to the original series finale was a big factor in the revival being made. "It was a huge part of it. I think the ending was mystifying at best to people, confounding, exasperating, frustrating, on down the line of negative adjectives," he said. "I think this is a show that's very important to all of us and the chance to revisit it and maybe in the process, redefine the sense of the show's ending and the sense of the show's legacy more broadly was certainly a part of our motivation. No doubt."

While we wait for the Dexter revival to arrive on the small screen, fill out your watch list with our picks of the best TV shows of 2020.

Entertainment Writer

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.