Twenty years later, Dexter Resurrection keeps the good and bad of the franchise

• Dexter Resurrection
• NEON
• New episodes every Saturday
• Created by Clyde Phillips. Starring Michael C. Hall, Jack Alcott & Kadia Saraf.
• Crime Thriller
• TV-MA

The Dexter franchise is officially twenty years old.

It’s survived two bad, attempted endings, one in 2013 and the other in 2022. Resurrection brought the character back again for third time and it mostly worked cleaning up the mess of New Blood, moving the character to New York and fixing his relationship with son, Harrison.

The premiere of season two can best be described as solid – preserving the good elements of season one, while not fixing the parts that don’t work. It deals with the dangling threads left by the Prater plot and sets up for our new killer plotline.

After last season Dexter has worked out the serial killer part of his life but not much beyond that.

Coupled with him being in his mid-fifties and accepting that he must change, brought on by his confrontation with someone who got away last season.

Meanwhile, Harrison is graduating from the police academy, still trying to fully workout his direction in life.

First the positives, Michael C. Hall is still a rock-solid lead. Years into playing the role he still clearly enjoys playing the part, giving his all too every one of his scenes. This makes keeping up with the franchise always interesting, even when it’s in bad spot.

Second best goes to Eric Stonestreet returning as Al Walker, the Rapunzel killer. Playing fantastically against type, continuing the trend of Dexter using its guest stars to perfect effect. The rest of the actors do a good job with the material that they had for this episode, the problem being that the writing outside of Dexters plot this week was mostly just set-up, and the characters aren’t interesting enough to carry the scenes.

This an issue that the franchise has had since the later seasons of the original show. Dexter is an interesting lead that keeps you engaged and the show ticking along. But most of the support cast add to Dexter himself and aren’t compelling enough by themselves.

Harrison and Detective Wallace are the easiest examples from Resurrection. Harrison arcs are only about his complicated relationship with his father. This episode puts him back from last season’s ending, where they seemed to find some ground, which makes his scenes less interesting because you know exactly what you’re in for.

Detective Wallace is similar, with her just filling the role of giving a face to the police side of the story.

As well as characters, the show has some parts that seem repetitive or less well-developed, for example, continuing the New York ripper killer plot from season one, setting up the new killer plot and re-introducing Joey Quinn from the original.

All to say I was hoping for the writers to fix this issue, as all it does right now is give me time to check out for parts of the show.

Dexter Resurrection’s season two premiere is a satisfying entry, and it doesn’t lose the elements that made last year’s return stand out. But it struggles to improve on the issues that dragged the series down.

Thankfully Dexter and his journey stays engaging, keeping me invested in the series and where the season is going.