BY DAY: Dexter works as a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department.
You heard it here first: serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) is actually a people person.
Executive producer Sara Colleton says that Dexter’s appeal lies in his ability to shine a bright spotlight on what it means to be a person.
“The irony of Dexter is that in his quest to try to act human, he is the most human of us all,” says Colleton.
“In his struggle to fake it, he becomes more human than us — he’s a better father, a better son, a better brother than most of us have. He doesn’t know that, but the audience recognizes that.”
Colleton says that after reading best-selling Jeff Lindsay’s “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” on which the series is based, she envisioned a show that “was never about a vigilante killer or serial killer or any killing. It was about a fascinating way to look at human nature.’ ”
“As long as we focus on that and put Dexter in situations where he has to figure out how to navigate human behavior, it forms a kind of bond that is fascinating to the audience,” Colleton says.
Because of that, audiences are able to connect with Dexter, an emotionless killer who Saran Wraps his naked victims to a table before hacking (bludgeoning, electric drilling, stabbing, chain-sawing etc.) to death people he believes deserve the punishment.
“He’s a theatrical conceit,” Colleton says. “No one believes he’s a real [person]. In the classic anti-hero mold, he lives outside the system and has a code that he lives by.
“In some ways, he holds up a mirror of ourselves that’s closer to how we think of ourselves than someone who is perfect.”
Colleton believes that everyone has a Dark Passenger, Dexter’s name for the invisible entity that drives him to kill, which he must hide from others. Although the average person’s Dark Passenger might not involve murder, whatever it is, it’s undoubtedly an aspect of ourselves that we want to keep secret.
“That notion of someone that’s constantly trying to deal with that Dark Passenger is very relatable to human beings,” Colleton says.
Although Dexter’s internal monologues — composed of “very droll observations about people” — aren’t meant to make him relatable, the byproduct is that they do help smooth over the fact that he’s a stone cold killer.
“People might just find it amusing to see how Dexter, with all of his handicaps, is very prescient about human nature,” Colleton says.
When planning out each season — writers have not read the other books in Lindsay’s series to avoid being influenced by them — Colleton says they seek out a new area of human behavior that Dexter can explore before crafting the plotline.
Last season saw him atoning for the actions that led to his wife Rita’s (Julie Benz) murder and creating a mentor-like relationship with Lumen (Julia Stiles), who suffered from her own murderous Dark Passenger.
This season he’s pretty much gotten over all of that and is back to being bloody old Dexter.
“He’s processed those [events] and he feels confident about things in his own life,” says Colleton. “He’s a healed Dexter who’s at the top of his game.”
By fast-forwarding a year in the “Dexter” timeline for Season 6, writers could “deal with a fresh theme,” Colleton says.
This year, Dexter delves into religion and spirituality while trying to figure out what he wants to pass on to Harrison, his son with Rita.
“Dexter sets out on a very meandering quest to figure out the nature of faith, which is, by its very definition, undefinable,” Colleton says. “We came up with a very large, complicated and fun plot that will allow him many detours to explore the various forms of spirituality.”
The forks in the road will lead Dexter to interact with anthropology expert Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks), religious studies professor James Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and Brother Sam (Mos), an ex-con turned man of God.
While this season’s theme “all sounds very serious,” Colleton says, “it’s done through the ‘Dexter’ prism, so it’s a great deal of fun.”
Fun, like when a bewildered Dexter — attending a high school class reunion of all things — finds himself on the dance floor doing the “Hammer Dance” and discovers he’s now the big man on campus because he’s packed on muscles and has an exciting job as a blood-spatter analyst.
“I love that fact that he’s popular and that totally throws him off his game, he cannot handle that,” Colleton says. “That’s very human — how many of us felt in high school that we didn’t exist?”
Method to his madness: Dexter’s body count and bloody history
He likes the knife. He also likes the hammer and the cleaver. In his five seasons on the air, Dexter has murdered the Ice Truck Killer (Christian Camargo), motivational speaker Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller) and the Trinity Killer, Arthur Mitchell (John Lithgow). Among many others.
— Robert Rorke
40 total murders
Dexter started killing as a child. He always begins a murder by sedating his victims.
22 by stabbing
Dexter has used a knife most often — 22 times — to administer twisted justice.
272 Deaths avenged
Dexter knows what a wicked world we live in and has an impressive record of revenge.
1 The big kill
At six-feet-six, Little Chino (Matthew Willig) was Dexter’s biggest corpse. Exhausting.