'Dexter: Original Sin' Is Over. Here's How It Ended

Not to be overly harsh, but Dexter: Original Sin is an entirely unnecessary prequel. Once the initial novelty of seeing Christian Slater as Harry Morgan, Molly Brown as Debra, and Patrick Gibson as Dexter wore off, the series settled into a fairly unremarkable groove. It’s the exact opposite of Better Call Saul in that we learned almost nothing new about these characters, there were no mind-blowing revelations, and the story unfolded almost exactly as expected.

The timeline is Miami around the year 1990, where a young Dexter (Patrick Gibson) is about to graduate college and begin medical school. He’s the top pre-med student in his class but also a loner with urges only his father, Harry (Christian Slater), understands. Harry, a cop, works in a department led by Captain Spencer (a mustachioed Patrick Dempsey) and blood-spatter expert Tanya Martin (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who are investigating a string of connected, grisly murders.

It turns out there are a ridiculous number of serial killers in Miami, and as has always been the case on this show, no one seems to care once they go missing. Dexter — abiding by his father’s code (which is never really explained or expounded upon) — gets his first kill early on and continues to murder bad guys who otherwise escape consequences throughout the season. (One such person escapes prison because Harry gives poor testimony on the stand.)

The season ultimately leads to its big bad: a serial killer targeting kids, including the child of Patrick Dempsey’s Captain Spencer. Unsurprisingly, we learn Captain Spencer himself is the killer; he abducted his own child because he hated his ex-wife and suspected that his son wasn’t biologically his. A real trite, uninspired motive, to be honest. At one point, Dexter sacrifices the opportunity to kill Captain Spencer to save the boy, which Harry proudly interprets as Dexter being able to “control his urges.” But Dexter ultimately kills Captain Spencer and dumps his body into the ocean, so it’s not like those urges were quelled for long.

Meanwhile, we also get the full backstory on Dexter and his brother Brian (the Ice Truck Killer). Their mom was an informant for Harry. She was caught and dismembered with a chainsaw inside a storage container in front of her two sons. Because Harry had been having an affair with her, he took the two kids in. However, Brian proved too psychopathic to keep, so he bounced around foster homes until he was old enough to start murdering those responsible for separating him from Dexter. At one point, Brian gets the jump on Harry but opts against killing him after Harry successfully argues that, though Brian may hate him, Harry has been very good for Dexter. After having killed several people, Brian disappears, at least until the first season of Dexter, when he reemerges as the Ice Truck Killer.

Seeing all of this unfold, Debra — who has mostly been a profane waste this season —- decides against going to Florida State University and instead opts to become a cop. Young versions of Det. Angel Batista, Masuka, and LaGuerta are given remarkably little to do, and we learn nothing new about them. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character —- Dexter’s mentor —- is completely wasted, though there’s a slim chance she was being prepped for a second-season arc. I hope we never see it because either the prequel ends here and/or Sarah Michelle Gellar is too busy working on the Buffy revival.

Dexter: Resurrection, a continuation of the original series with Michael C. Hall, Uma Thurman, and Peter Dinklage is expected to begin airing this summer. I expect better things, although those expectations are not particularly high.