'Dexter: Original Sin' is the prequel to the 8 season series that's already had a sequel. It is as brilliant and blood thirsty as you'd expect.
Sometimes a franchise becomes flaccid, boring and uninteresting with so much of the same that it’s better to click through to another show.
Well, almost any other show, just as long as it’s not a Housewives franchise or the intellectually stimulating, not, Love Island shows. But Dexter: Original Sin is a killer series, in every possible sense of the word.
The prequel to the eight-season original show and its sequel, Dexter: New Blood, which took place ten years after the end of the original franchise and introduced us to Harrison, Dexter’s son, and the nurture of his blood lust.
Dexter: Original Sin rewinds everything and takes us back to the when, what, why, where, and when of Dexter, and how he became, well, the serial killer forensics’ cop we love.
In the new show Dexter’s life story is told, narrated by adult Dexter Morgan aka Michael C Hall. It happens after Harrisson shot Dexter in New Blood, as his life flashes past him while in the emergency room.
It’s a ten-part series and new episodes are available on DSTV channel 101 and Showmax every week.
The show puts audiences right back in the passenger seat of Dexter’s life, and it’s another wild ride.
It’s a wild ride
When making shows that demand younger versions of the characters, as this one does, it can become a hash up with miscasting, creating characters that are not believable despite storylines trying really hard to draw us in.
Not this show, because the talent is superb. Christian Slater plays Harry Morgan, Dexter’s foster dad, who taught him the ‘code’.
Patrick Gibson does an incredible job as the young serial killer. He’s a menace, he’s pretend-sweet and the duality between living an everyday normal life coupled with blood lust, well, executed superbly. It’s believable, and when the show switches between Hall and Gibson on some episodes, seamless.
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Molly Brown plays a young Debra Morgan, and she does it well. Jennifer Carpenter also returns as her character, also shown earlier in her career when she was a beat cop with the occasional stint in vice.
The only real overplay is the younger version of Masuka, clumsily played by Alex Shimizu. But at least it’s a bit part and doesn’t negate the balance of exceptional performances. Patrick Dempsey and Sarah Michelle Gellar are also in the cast. James Martinez is an excellent younger version of Angel Batista.
Dexter’s first kill
It’s a journey and a half, and Original Sin takes us through every step of Dexter’s early life.
The hunting trips with dad, where Harry tried to isolate and focus Dexter’s desire to kill on something other than humans.
Dexter’s first kill, his second. How he started collecting platelets of blood as souvenirs instead of other keepsakes to remember his kills by.
How Harry taught him the code, how Dexter evaluated his early victims before slaying them, and how he changed from dumping bodies in the crocodile-infested Miami marshes to the deep sea.
What’s interesting is, a couple of episodes in, how Dexter used Harry’s code to start justifying his kills. The soliloquy before the butcher, so to speak. A self-argument that probably answered all his future questions about the morality of what he does, did and is doing.
After all, by his hand, many evil doers have faltered, people that may not always be caught by traditional investigation. Dexter metes out real Old Testament justice. An eye for an eye.
The evergreen popularity of true crime on social media, television and print will fuel interest in the show, even though it’s fiction.
Part of the appeal of Dexter has always been his internal struggle, his humanness despite the brutality. His sense of justice, loyalty and perhaps even love, when he is supposed to be a cold-blooded serial killer. It’s his psychology, coupled with excellent storytelling, that makes the show and for that matter, the entire franchise, so compelling.
The good news is that on Showmax, you can binge every other season of Dexter ever made. So, if you have not seen it yet, get into it, quickly. Beauty is that you can start anywhere, because it’s easy to pick up threads no matter which season or which prequel or sequel you might genesis Dexter at.
Dexter: Original Sin is a six star show in a five star matrix.
