Does Dexter Morgan have a favorite Taylor Swift song? This is the question I found myself asking at the start of the latest installment of Dexter: Resurrection, when I realized that the lush locale Prater and his serial-killer club had spirited away to was the famous Oheka Castle, where the “Blank Space” music video was filmed. To be clear, this has nothing to do with the episode itself — curiously, the connection never comes up, even though I’d pinned Al as a Swiftie — but it’s a fun little detail in a season that continues to delight me. I’m having such a good time, in fact, that I’m actually feeling a little bummed at how quickly Dexter is offing his fellow dinner-party guests. What’s the rush?
But while I would love to spend more time with Prater and his serial killer pals, I can acknowledge that the show’s breakneck pacing is one of the biggest points in its favor, particularly given the wheel-spinning of the first few episodes. We again pick up right where we left off, with the impromptu helicopter ride that closed the last episode, depositing Dexter at the castle, along with Prater, Charley, Al, and the surprise second Gareth. (Presumably one of the Gemini twins has a different name, but we never learn it.) With Mia dead by “suicide,” Prater has decided to gather his guests for a toast to Lady Vengeance, another fabulous food spread (Dexter finally drops the veganism bit), and a little show-and-tell. “This is a much easier way to vet my victims,” Dex’s voice-over notes. “Time to hear the tale of Rapunzel.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, that tale turns out to be even more unpleasant than the Brothers Grimm original. Al shows the others a video of him strangling a ponytailed jogger while giggling, eventually telling her corpse, “Pop-Pop says it’s time for a haircut.” Dexter is so disgusted that you might forget he’s a murderer himself. All of these people need to die, but for that to happen, he’s going to have to stay alive — and that means giving his own presentation.
Harry tries to talk Dexter out of pretending to be Red — Ronald Schmidt was an amoral animal, and that’s not who Dex is. I get the distinction, but I do feel like we’re splitting hairs a bit here. Nevertheless, Harry’s words have an impact. For show-and-tell, Dexter decides not to give a demonstration on sawing off ride-share drivers’ heads, instead delivering a speech about the double lives he and his compatriots are forced to lead. “This Red Schmidt you’re looking at is the mask I put on,” Dex shares. “Only a select group of people get to see the Dark Passenger, and once they see him, they die.” Honestly, I found the whole thing a little dull (sorry!), but Gareth and Al can relate to the message. Prater, who was expecting gory details, is a little harder to read, though his face twitching doesn’t seem like a great sign. Later, Gareth notes that “Red” refusing to divulge his methods is unusual and not what Prater wants from show-and-tell. While Gareth doesn’t seem to know that “Red” is really the Bay Harbor Butcher, he’s the first to acknowledge the Dexter-shaped elephant in the room. “It’s funny how everything keeps going off the rails this year,” he muses. “I keep asking myself, what is different?” Dexter will need to take care of Gemini before his suspicions deepen. In the meantime, though, their benefactor wants to have a chat.
After keeping Dexter in suspense with a well-placed pause, Prater confides that he found the detail-free share … spectacular. “Never seen anyone allow himself to be so vulnerable, so relatable,” he gushes. Dex’s unprecedented honesty inspires Prater to confess his own convoluted origin story. After Prater lost his parents in a car accident, he began writing letters to Cooper Morris, the drunk driver who killed them. When they finally met face-to-face, Cooper admitted that it wasn’t an accident — he deliberately drove his truck into Prater’s parents’ car. Prater pressed for the details and, in subsequent conversations, formed a bond with Cooper. “We were both prisoners of the world’s morality,” he tells Dexter, and as is the case with most billionaires who love the sound of their own voice, I have no idea what this freak is talking about. Eventually, Cooper revealed himself to be a serial killer, thus beginning Prater’s fascination with murderers. “I felt so connected to him, more so than my own parents,” he says. There’s some vague explanation about how collecting serial killers and their trophies gave Prater a sense of control, but the real takeaway for me is how good Peter Dinklage is at selling absolute nonsense. Noting that the share reminded Prater of his foundational relationship with Cooper, he tells Dexter, “The truth is never boring. You never know what it may spark in someone.”
Thankfully, that doesn’t inspire Dexter to unmask himself to Prater, which I suspect would end poorly. Instead, he decides to have an honest conversation with Gareth, first confronting him with the knowledge that he’s a twin. It’s an electric scene with exceptional performances from Michael C. Hall and David Dastmalchian — really can’t say enough good things about this cast — as Dexter appeals to Gareth’s ego before making his move. He wonders aloud if twins really sense each other’s pain. “Did you feel a sting in your chest last night around 8:20?” he asks Gareth. “That’s when I stabbed your brother in the chest.” Dexter knows exactly what he’s doing when he reveals himself to be a killer of killers — it’s an invitation for Gemini to attack. With Prater, Charley, and Al watching from a distance, Gareth breaks his wineglass and advances on Dexter, slashing his arm. It looks like self-defense, then, when Dex gets control of the glass and fatally plunges it into Gareth’s neck. In the aftermath, Dexter claims that Gareth was bragging about taking out the other serial killers as the “ultimate share.” Now the Bay Harbor Butcher has gotten rid of both twins and solved the problem of the missing Lowell by implying that Gemini is responsible. “Three birds, one stone,” Dexter’s voice-over says smugly, and I’d advise him not to get too cocky here. While Prater buys his new favorite killer’s version of events, Charley isn’t shy about her own suspicions.
But Dexter is too busy focusing on his son to worry about Prater’s right-hand woman. “Welcome to the life of a serial-killer dad,” his voice-over says as the helicopter lands back in the city. “Kill a pair of twins, then rush to a college tour with your son.” Harrison’s pursuit of doing good has led him to the Collings College of Criminology, which is mostly just an excuse to introduce a new love interest (Emily Kimball’s Gigi) and tell us a little more about the New York Ripper. When Dexter arrives late — given the day he’s had, who can blame him? — Harrison is already sitting in on a forensic psychology class, where none other than Detective Wallace is giving a lecture on her serial-killer white whale. Along with some shockingly gruesome slides (lots of intestines and Jack the Ripper–style organ removal), Wallace shares that the New York Ripper is still traumatizing the relatives of his victims by leaving voice-mails taunting them about his brutal crimes. Dexter, who once again can only process information in relation to his son, is troubled by the detective’s assessment that “psychopaths are not capable of empathy or love. They are emotionally deficient individuals who behave only in service to themselves.” It’s very “is this fucking play about us?” coded.
After the lecture, Dexter clarifies to Harrison that while he doesn’t experience love the way others do, he feels differently about his son than anyone else. (It’s pretty clear to me that Dex does feel love, but the show has always been inconsistent about the depths of his psychopathy.) Wallace is surprised to see Harrison at Collings, though she’s grateful for the opportunity to meet his father, especially since Batista has been spinning tales about the true identity of the Bay Harbor Butcher. Dexter does a fairly unconvincing job of painting his former Miami Metro colleague as an unreliable narrator, telling Wallace, “He was a good guy, kind of spiraled when he found out his partner was the Bay Harbor Butcher.” When he starts talking about how the blood-spatter evidence in the New York Ripper crime-scene photos doesn’t match Wallace’s theory that the killer used a crowbar — aided by the fact that Dexter has seen the real hook-style weapon the Ripper used in Prater’s collection — it’s clear that our anti-hero is showing off. He’s feeling dangerously untouchable, which is later underlined by his dismissal of Harrison’s concerns that Batista could be a problem for them. At least one Morgan isn’t underestimating the threat.
When Dexter arrives home, however, he gets a rude awakening in the form of Batista giving salsa lessons to Blessing and his family upstairs. “Surprise, hermano,” Angel says, a kinder variation on Doakes’s “surprise, motherfucker,” but with the same underlying message. Dexter offers his old friend a ride back to where he’s staying, and there’s enough subtextual menace that it briefly seems like he might be about to do something very reckless. But Dex decides to use his words instead of a knife. In the car, he drops all pretense of camaraderie. “I’m only gonna say this once,” he warns. “Stay away from me, from my house, my family, and especially my son.” This is, to my memory, the most naked animosity we’ve seen between Dexter and Batista over the course of the franchise, and it’s thrilling to watch. For his part, Batista refuses to back down, telling Dexter he won’t let him get away with what he did to María, Doakes, and Deb. Here, Hall leans fully into his character’s dark side as he growls back, “If I really am who you think I am, this can’t possibly end well for you.” Batista doesn’t scare easily, though, and frankly, he doesn’t seem to have much else to live for at this point. He gets out of Dexter’s car when prompted — but not before leaving his AirPods in the side pocket as a makeshift tracking device. As the ELO song playing over the final scene promises, “There’s gonna be a showdown.”
Blood-Spatter Analysis
• Batista aside, Dexter really needs to keep an eye on Charley. She’s vaguely threatening when she’s patching him up after his fight with Gareth, telling Dexter how close he came to bleeding out from a wound to his radial artery. “I’ve seen it happen,” she notes. “I’ve made it happen.”
• It does look like Charley and Prater may end up on opposite sides in the coming weeks. The tension between them keeps ratcheting up. When she points out that the exposure at the castle is less than ideal, Prater snaps back, “Do what I fucking tell you to do.”
• I’m very curious to see how the New York Ripper ties into the season. Is he going to score a last-minute invite to Prater’s final dinner party — and could it be someone we already know?
• Given her age, I’ll rule out Gigi as a Ripper suspect, but I’d take that over her being another love interest for Harrison, given that Elsa has already been filling that thankless role. Kudos to Gigi for her bold flirtation technique, though. She implies that her arm injury has kept her from masturbating, which prompts Harrison to ask for her number. Good for her!
• Harrison’s thinking that he could do good by joining the NYPD is laughable, but also appropriate for this series. Harrison will be following a proud family tradition! The Morgans love being cops almost as much as they love using their positions to murder or cover up murders.
• Was anyone else irked by the fact that it was fully dark out when Dexter landed back in New York at 4:35 p.m.? Perhaps there was a total solar eclipse that the show forgot to mention.