A few days ago, I finished watching the new iteration of the Dexter series, The Resurrection. It goes without saying that I absolutely loved it because Michael C. Hall simply cannot do anything wrong. I absolutely love his portrayal of Dexter and the way his acting shapes the story.
The Resurrection is a sequel to Dexter and Dexter: New Blood, both of which I watched.
In Dexter, we meet Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who kills criminals who escaped the justice system. He acts according to the Code his father, a detective in Miami PD, has taught him, and only kills when he is convinced that the person has indeed committed gruesome crimes and has escaped justice. When corpses get discovered, he gets a nickname, the Bay Harbor Butcher, but never gets caught. In Dexter: New Blood, we see Dexter’s new life away from Miami, following the last episode of the original series, where he drove his boat into a hurricane, and everyone thinks he is dead, so he takes that as a hint to start a new life in the state of New York. His son Harrison finds him after Dexter failed to join him in Latin America following an escape organized towards the end of the original series. Dexter, who did not kill for years, ends up subscribing to his urges and kills again, and gets initially caught by his girlfriend, also a police officer. Towards the end, Harrison shoots him, and it looks as if Dexter is dead.
The story in the Resurrection picks up from there, and we see Dexter in Iron Lake getting resuscitated and surviving. He also gets cleared of all charges and suspicion and is ready to start a new life elsewhere. He goes to New York to look for Harrison because he sees a story in the newspapers about a murder that looks a lot like the one he used to commit in Miami. In New York, he starts a new life hunting down serial killers. What is different in this series is the fact that Dexter does not just hunt randomly, unlike a taxi driver serial killer. He gets serial killers served on a plate by being invited to join a secret society of serial killers. He takes the identity of the taxi driver serial killer, goes to meetings, and then starts killing serial killers. What is also different is that this time, he does not keep all the killers for himself; he also feeds some to the NYPD detective. Harrison also decides to become a police officer, and throughout the series, we navigate Dexter’s kills, the weird secret society of serial killers, and Dexter’s relationship with Harrison.
Another great series exploring childhood influences and how they shape us. In this series, the authors also went further and moved towards an exploration of early childhood influences. While both Dexter and Harrison were born in blood, it becomes clear that Harrison was not taught any codes or nudged towards having and satisfying urges, like Dexter arguably was by his father, who assumed he would be a killer and taught him a Code. This shows the impact of early socialization and the values we learn as children, along with the environments in which we grew up. In Dexter’s case, it was an environment where he was pre-conditioned to be a killer, even though, unlike his older brother Brian, he did not show signs of that as early as a child. Harrison experienced a more nurturing environment with Hannah, who was also a killer, albeit not a serial one, and clearly did not teach Harrison to become one. I wonder whether future seasons will go into explorations of psychopathy as a neurological and brain issue, which is common in research on psychopathy conducted by psychologists (in sociology, the focus is on sociopathy, or anti-social personality disorder, as it is formally called, which is an environmental condition that may or may not be linked to anything genetic or neurological).
Anyway, an outstanding series that always inspires me to rethink my behavioural research.
Thank you for reading!