Dexter: Resurrection Season 2 First Look Proves This Comeback Is Just Getting Started

Dexter Morgan has survived two bad endings, a gunshot through the chest and enough questionable creative decisions to fill one of his own garbage bags. At this point, I’m done doubting him.

Paramount+ has released the first images from Season 2 of Dexter: Resurrection, giving us another look at Michael C. Hall back in New York alongside Harrison, Harry, Charley, Blessing and the returning Joey Quinn. The pics don’t reveal too much about the actual story, but they make one thing clear: the show isn’t backing away from the world it created last season.

I thought the first season of Resurrection was on par with some of the better seasons of the original show. That isn’t something I expected to say after Dexter: New Blood, which started with promise but never completely justified bringing Dexter back just to hand him another ending that didn’t work.

Resurrection felt like a genuine return to form, even though it stripped away almost everything that originally defined the series. There was no Miami Metro, no tropical heat, no blood-spatter job and none of the carefully constructed suburban life Dexter had spent years trying to maintain.

Dexter needed to lose all of that.

The original series had reached a point where it was constantly trying to recreate its own greatest hits. Dexter would find another dangerous killer, attempt to balance murder with family life and then spend half the season avoiding questions everyone around him probably should’ve asked years earlier.

Moving him to New York gave the series a chance to rebuild Dexter instead of surrounding him with replacements for characters we already loved. The result still felt like Dexter, but it didn’t feel trapped inside the old show.

A huge part of that new world was Peter Dinklage as Leon Prater. I’m going to miss the Dink because the Dink makes everything better, and he gave the first season a completely different kind of villain. I just hope some of last season’s magic wasn’t tied entirely to what he brought to it.

Season 2 now has to prove the comeback wasn’t dependent on Prater or his serial-killer dinner club. The good news is that the show appears ready to keep pushing forward instead of repeating the exact same setup.

Michael C. Hall returns as Dexter, with Jack Alcott back as Harrison and James Remar continuing as Harry Morgan. Uma Thurman also returns as Charley, Desmond Harrington is officially back as Joey Quinn, and wrestling legend Chris Jericho has joined the season in an undisclosed role.

Krysten Ritter is also returning as Mia, better known as Lady Vengeance, after surviving the first season. Kane Hodder has joined the cast in an undisclosed role too, which feels like the sort of casting announcement that immediately makes you wonder how long it’ll take before someone gets introduced to the wrong end of a very large knife.

The new killers may be the biggest attraction. Brian Cox joins the series as the New York Ripper, a serial killer who terrorized the city years earlier and continues tormenting the survivors of his crimes. Dan Stevens will play Owen Stark, better known as the Five Borough Killer, while Gabriel Luna appears as Ray Ballard, the Sleepy-Eyed Stranger.

That’s a hell of a collection of people for Dexter to investigate, avoid or eventually wrap in plastic.

The new photos also suggest that Dexter’s life in New York is becoming considerably more complicated. He’s shown preparing another kill room, meeting with Blessing and sitting across from Charley, while Harrison appears to be moving even deeper into the NYPD.

That last part could create an especially interesting problem. Dexter spent most of his life hiding in plain sight inside law enforcement, and now his son may be attempting something dangerously similar.

Joey’s return should also keep Dexter’s old life hanging over everything he’s trying to build. Joey knew Dexter before New York, before Harrison shot him and before Dexter supposedly died for the second time. He may not know exactly what Dexter is, but he’s been standing close enough to the truth for a very long time.

The police side of the story looks like it’ll have a much larger presence this season, with Detectives Wallace and Oliva returning alongside Captain Mixon. That gives the show several different ways to start tightening the net without simply recreating Miami Metro.

That balance is important. As much as Resurrection benefited from leaving the original show behind, it never acted embarrassed by where Dexter came from. It found ways to bring familiar characters and history back without allowing nostalgia to take over the entire series.

That was the balance New Blood struggled to find. It wanted to move Dexter somewhere new, but it never completely figured out what it wanted to do with him once he got there. Resurrection finally gave the franchise a reason to continue beyond Michael C. Hall still being great in the role.

Seeing Dexter and Harry together again immediately feels right. James Remar remains one of the strongest connections to the original show, and using Harry as Dexter’s internal voice lets the series carry some of that history without dragging the entire old cast into every episode.

I’m fully back onboard now. Season 1 earned that confidence by taking a franchise that had already disappointed us twice and finding a version of Dexter that still had somewhere to go.

I’ll miss the Dink, and Season 2 has some work to do before I’m convinced it can recapture the same magic without him. After what Resurrection accomplished last season, though, I’m no longer going into this expecting it to fail.

Dexter Morgan is back, and for the first time in a long time, Dexter appears to know exactly what it wants to be.