The decision to mine Dexter for reboot potential has paid off in a huge way, with bloodthirsty viewers positioning the show as one of the best of 2025.
TV fans are heaping acclaim upon Dexter: Resurrection, which is a direct follow-up to 2021 miniseries New Blood, and have seen the series achieve record-breaking scores on review aggregate sites.
Michael C Hall’s murderous character Dexter Morgan, created by novelist Jeff Lindsay, died in the finale of New Blood, which relocated him from Miami to upstate New York, but when the series became Showtime’s most-watched of all time, bosses rethought plans.
Resurrection sees a resuscitated Dexter move to New York after learning his teenage son Harrison (Jack Alcott) has been caught up in a killing – and while there, he rubs shoulders with a variety of other serial killers, brought together by billionaire venture capitalist Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage).
Fans are in agreement that Dexter: Resurrection is as good as the best of Dexter, which peaked with its second and fourth seasons. It’s one of the rare 2000s reboots to match the acclaim created by its original, with Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls among other shows to be mined for revival potential.
The series has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94 per cent, with an overall score of 9.2/10, which places it as the 25th greatest TV show of all time. The highest-rated episode, number seven, has a 9.7 score, with the lowest, episode two, sitting at an admirable 8.7.
In fact, episodes four to seven all have scores sitting higher than nine – the first time since the show’s fourth season, centred on John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer, aired 16 years ago.
Producers will be grateful to learn they’ve rewritten the show’s legacy considering that the finale of the original series, which ended in its eighth season, is considered one of the worst in TV history.
Dexter: Resurrection follows another prequel, Dexter: Original Sin, which sees Patrick Gibson playing a young version of the blood spatter expert as he first hones his taste for murder into a code created by his police office father, Harry (James Remar). With Harry’s assistance, Dexter kills other murderers.
Original Sin will return for a second season, which is narrated by Hall, while Dexter: Resurrection is set to return for two more seasons. A spin-off focused on Lithgow’s Trinity will also be released in 2026. Much like Hall provides voicework for Original Sin, Lithgow will narrate the younger Trinity’s story.
The shows are available to stream on Paramount+. Dexter: Resurrection’s ensemble includes Uma Thurman, Krysten Ritter, David Dastmalchian and Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet
