‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Showrunner Clyde Phillips Reveals the Vision Behind Season 2

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Dexter: Rescurrection Season 1.

The first season of Dexter: Resurrection saw Dexter follow his son to New York City, taking him off the solitary path he’s typically chosen and forcing him to figure out where he and Harrison fit into each other’s lives. While a son shooting a father in the chest and leaving him in a 10-week coma might be a deal-breaker for some families, it’s something of a bonding experience for these two. Managing to evade capture by everyone from a billionaire (Peter Dinklage) with a disturbing fascination for serial killers, an unpredictable former Special Ops head of security (Uma Thurman), a sharp and persistent New York police detective (Kadia Saraf), and a former Miami colleague (David Zayas), Dexter will head into Season 2, facing new and familiar foes, and navigating his darker urges along with deepening emotional connections.

Showrunner Clyde Phillips took time from the Season 2 set to sit down with me for a conversation that dug into the importance of continuing to evolve over four TV series – Dexter, Dexter: New Blood, Dexter: Original Sin, and Dexter: Resurrection – and teased what’s next for this father-son duo. He also discussed why he originally found himself wanting to tell Dexter’s story, the ongoing collaboration with Hall, finding the show’s tonal balance, what it’s like for the serial killer to be affected by age and emotional connection, the sigh of recognition with that final season finale shot of Dexter alone on a boat, and whether he’s thought about a possible Season 3 yet.

While There Were Many Appealing Aspects, It Was Michael C. Hall That Got Showrunner Phillips To Sign On for the Original Series

“It’s humor, relationships, adventure, danger, and the intimacy of the voice-over.”

Image via Paramount+

COLLIDER: I’ve been watching Dexter for a very long time now.

CLYDE PHILLIPS: I’ve been making it for a very long time.

You’ve had a particularly interesting journey with Dexter. It’s not something that you created from an original idea. It was originally based on a novel developed for TV, and you signed on as showrunner. What was it about the character of Dexter in the earliest days that made you want to come in and steer his ship?

PHILLIPS: What happened is that they had made a pilot, and then offered it to me. I had changes that I wanted to make in the pilot, and they agreed with them, and we reshot parts of the pilot. What attracted me to the show was Michael Hall. I just left the set to come do this, and he’s just the greatest guy, the greatest actor, the smartest person I know. The show had a sense of twisted integrity that really grabbed me and made me want to be part of it. Also, at the time, there was nothing like it on television. We’re watching and loving a show about a man who kills other people, but he kills them for good. One of the things that my writers and I have brought to it, because of the voice-over, is a great chance to do comedic things. Very often, when I’m editing, I’ll think of a line. I’ll pick up my phone and record the line, because I can do Michael’s voice. I record the line, send it to an assistant editor in St. Louis who cuts it into the show and sends it to Michael, and if he likes the line, he records it, and it’s in the show the next morning. It’s humor, relationships, adventure, danger, and the intimacy of the voice-over.

Are you inspired by the same aspects of the character now that originally inspired you, or are there things about him that excite you and inspire you that weren’t even present in your original run, because you’re just so much further down the road with the character now?

PHILLIPS: As the character has matured and as Michael Hall has matured and as I’ve matured, the storytelling matures, and Michael is willing to play that. His son is now grown. Father-son issues are very big in my personal life, and being able to put them on screen is really therapeutic for me. Michael and Jack Alcott, who plays his son Harrison, who is Harry’s son, embrace that and are willing to try intimate things. This show is a serial killer show. The show is a family show, believe it or not. Because of the voice-over, it’s vulnerable. We get inside a serial killer’s head, and it’s a serial killer we like because he’s taking out other people. Every time he kills somebody, he’s saving countless lives of the people that the person he’s taking out would have killed further down the line.

Showrunner Phillips Lets His Favorite Four-Letter F-Word Guide ‘Dexter: Resurrection’

“Dexter was fated to become who he became.”

Image via Paramount+

Nearly 20 years after the original premiere, Resurrection feels less interested in nostalgia and more interested in reexamining Dexter through age, grief, and fatherhood. You are exploring those things that he would be exploring if he were a real person. What interested you about that aspect of it, from an emotional vantage point, instead of just following the formula?

PHILLIPS: I’m a big believer, and I’ve used it a lot in the show, in my favorite four-letter F-word, which is fate. Dexter was fated to become who he became. Perhaps we all are, if you believe in that stuff. I do. You may not. He’s fulfilling his destiny, and that’s attractive to me. And it’s a TV show. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. It’s a legacy show. It’s a privilege to do it.

Michael C. Hall plays Dexter with real physical and emotional fatigue this season. You can really feel everything weighing on him. How did you and Michael think about Dexter, as someone whose body, age, and history are finally starting to catch up with him?

PHILLIPS: It’s no secret, Michael’s 55 years old. It’s catching up, as it’s catching up with me. We would talk about that and write to it, always trying to be careful not to overwrite because that’s not the story. That’s just the relatability of a person his age. If he’s chasing some 30-year-old up the stairs, chances are he’s not going to catch him, and he knows that, so he’ll do something else to outsmart whoever he’s chasing. One of the other things is that he needs, no pun intended, to be quicker on his feet, intellectually. That’s fun to write. It’s fun to write smart words for a smart person.

Is that something that you want to continue to dig into, or does he feel more invigorated and more driven now, after the events of Season 1?

PHILLIPS: We’re going to play to it, but not have it be a centerpiece, by any means. But we will continue to address it.

‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Shed the Sparseness of ‘New Blood’ and Got Back to the Show’s Roots

“We wanted to give the audience what we believed they wanted.”

Image via Paramount+

This show has always balanced horror, absurdity, procedural tension, and pitch-black comedy, but you also have that father-son drama on top of it all. What is the hardest tonal needle to thread in this series, especially now? What are the biggest challenges in finding that perfect balance?

PHILLIPS: We were coming off of New Blood. I think that New Blood was too sparse. It was the hardest shoot I’ve ever done. It was 118 days during Covid in the snow in Massachusetts, where I’m from, and I had never heard of half the towns that we were shooting in. So, coming off of how sparse New Blood was, we wanted to give the audience what we believed and what we’re learning from the internet – we pay attention to the internet – they wanted. We went back to the earlier rhythms of the show. Our lead director, Marcos Siega, has been with the show since year two. He’s one of our executive producers and our main director, and he’s got a great relationship with Michael. They can talk about anything. If there’s something that we really need to get, Marcos and I will talk about it, and then Marcos will go to Michael and explain it to him and make it happen.

Dexter admitting that he needs people feels like one of the most dangerous emotional shifts that he’s ever had because intimacy has always been where he causes the most damage. How did you approach that change for Resurrection without softening him too much?

PHILLIPS: Part of it is that the theme of Dexter is a serial killer that’s blending into society. He tried marriage. He had a kid. He thought Trinity, the John Lithgow character back in the old days, could do it. Now, in Resurrection, he’s blending in as somebody else. He’s blending into the Murder Club or the Boogeyman Club, as Red Schmidt or the Dark Passenger, which is a name that used to be Dexter’s. To blend in and get away with it, you need to be smarter than everybody else. That makes it entertaining, to see how Dexter allows himself to get into jams, knowing he can get out of the jams.

It’s interesting to see him open up in a way emotionally that hasn’t really felt like something that he’s wanted to do or even really could do before. Does part of that have to do with the fact that he’s dealing with his past and future at the same time, with his father and his son?

PHILLIPS: There’s that great shot when he’s teaching Harrison how to tie a tie, and they’re lined up looking in the mirror, and Harry’s there too. It’s three generations, just before they go upstairs for the wake. I don’t want to diminish it, but it’s all storytelling. I have an amazing writing staff, led by Scott Reynolds, my number two on the show, who’s also an executive producer. He used to be my assistant 20 years ago. He came on the show as an assistant, and now he’s my number two and an executive producer. We had two shows going at the same time – we also had Original Sin – so I had two writing rooms. They picked up Original Sin, and then they canceled Original Sin. Aside from the hard part of having to call the actors twice, I had two writers’ rooms to harvest from to make one writers’ room. Those people are my dear friends. It used to be that I would bring the writers out to New York, but we’ve been going for so long that now the writers have families and mortgages, and all of that, so I can’t move 12 writers.

I go west for six months a year, and we’re at the studio writers’ rooms for half a year before we come back to New York. Toward the end of that half-year, we started prepping from afar with Marcos, and we have the same crew. This is my fourth or fifth show with our director of photography. This is my fourth or fifth show, maybe more, with our production designer. It’s like slipping on comfortable shoes. We want the audience to feel that way, too. We want the audience to be comfortable while leaning forward. Storytelling has to be compulsive. I always want the audience to lean forward, but to also feel safe and scared. Obviously, we’re not going to kill Dexter in the third episode. He’s always going to get away with it. We get Dexter into as much trouble as we can, so that he can figure out a way to get out of it. That’s the fun of writing for him. He’s part of that process, too. We run everything by Michael. We do a show Bible and run it by him and the network. We run the outline and scripts by Michael, as well. And we run post by him. He has his input. He’s a very big part of the whole process.

There’s an irony to the finale’s last image of Dexter alone on a yacht with the city behind him. Even though he’s admitted he needs human connection, we find him alone again. What interested you about that contradiction? Was it intentional to get him alone again at the end of the season?

PHILLIPS: Actually, it wasn’t. What we were going for was Dexter back on a boat – it’s a beautiful yacht – and it was a gorgeous shot of him in front of the Statue of Liberty, which the Peter Dinklage character, Leon Prater, had a thing for. He had the original mold of the Statue of Liberty in his atrium, so there was some irony to that. It hadn’t crossed my mind until you said it, but the main point was not for Dexter to be alone, but for him to be on a boat and be his old self again. We had him throwing body bags in furnaces and disposing of things. It brings the audience back to a sigh of recognition.

Dexter Is Really Just a Serial Killer With a Great Sense of Humor, Leaning How To Blend In

“All he’s doing is living his life.”

Image via Paramount+

One of the most interesting things about the finale is that he also no longer seems committed to isolation in the way that he once was. From a storytelling standpoint, how does that fundamentally change what becomes dangerous for him now, especially now that he understands what it means for a parent to be willing to sacrifice themselves for a child?

PHILLIPS: That’s a huge moment between the two of them. Also, if you think about where Dexter lives, he lives in a basement apartment, in darkness, in hell. Up above him is a man named Blessing, who is the happiest man in the world. He had his own issues when he was younger. He was a child soldier. That character was based on an uncle of mine, who was in the Holocaust and who was the happiest, most optimistic man I’ve ever met. He said, “The war ended on my birthday. How great is that?” We based Blessing off of my Uncle Ben. We need to keep making changes to keep the show interesting. All he’s doing is living his life, but he’s living his life as a serial killer with a great sense of humor and continuing to learn how to blend in. And then, there’s the father-son situation, plus his own father in his head, played by James Remar. It’s a joy to do that. We have so much fun putting these stories together.

There’s something so interesting about watching Harrison spend the season resisting becoming his father but also understanding him more deeply than ever. Dramatically, what becomes most interesting once those two things coexist? As we get to see more of how they’re similar and how they’re different, and it seems like they actually make a good team, how do you figure out that struggle?

PHILLIPS: Struggle is a good word. Another word is boundaries. Each of them is fighting for his own boundary, and that’s a challenge. What I’ve done in all the shows that I’ve run, which is a lot, is that at the beginning of the season, after we have the Bible, you put your nose up against the ending and then you walk backward. When you’re doing a mystery, you need to know what the ending is. That doesn’t mean things don’t change, but you put your nose up against it, and you walk back through the writing. As you’re walking back, it’s like you’re in a hotel hallway and each door is an episode. And then, we do what’s called an NPO board, which means “no particular order.” That’s things we think we’d like to see, like a subway crash, or Dexter falling in love. I’d say about a third of those actually make it into the show or make us think of something else. The first couple of weeks, if you were observing the writers’ room, it would look like nothing is getting done, but really, we’re NPO-ing. We already have the Bible of what the show is, and we have to figure out how to make each episode, or hotel room, work in that hotel.

Batista’s death feels like the season’s moral wound. He dies with this idea of who Dexter is. Why was it important that Dexter not receive forgiveness in that moment?

PHILLIPS: It’s all in the interest of following your emotions and being honest. How else could you have seen that going? That’s the thing. We talk about various other ways. What’s going to happen? Is it going to be Batista and Dexter against Uma Thurman and Peter Dinklage? You don’t want to see that. Difficult things happen so that the story stays interesting. You don’t want to read a book and just be smiling for 250 pages, if it’s a mystery. You want to be intrigued, you want to be looking forward, you want to question my wisdom, and ultimately come back next year.

Showrunner Phillips Is Already Thinking Ahead to ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Season 3

“We don’t have it all figured out.”

Image via Paramount+

And hopefully the year after that. Do you already have a sense of Season 3?

PHILLIPS: We do. We don’t have it all figured out, but we have the circle that goes around the Bible. We have to figure it out. When I start, I’m a dot and the project is a circle around me. As I stay with it longer and longer and longer, I become the circle and the project becomes the dot. I know everything that’s going to happen, and I understand why and what it can’t do and what I shouldn’t do and what the audience would like. Once I become part of that circle, then my heart rate goes down, and everything moves along smoothly.

It’s a cool experience, as a viewer, to have been watching Dexter since the very early days but feel that it’s still evolving in new and interesting ways.

PHILLIPS: Evolve is what we’re doing. If it’s the same every year, people are going to stop watching it. It’s a happy struggle. I’m so lucky to be able to do this for a living.

Dexter: Resurrection is available to stream on Paramount+.

Release Date

July 13, 2025

Network

Paramount+ with Showtime

Directors

Marcos Siega