Don’t you just hate a viral hoax? Well, join the crowd. This latest hoax generated by Euforia Studios on its Facebook page shows the “Dexter Season 9” title in the middle of a poster with Dexter’s head emerging from the water. But fact checking revealed that the principal actors from the series, Michael C. Hall and Yvonne Strahovski are currently tied up with other projects and unavailable. If Euforia Studios was doing this for publicity it got it — all bad from fans and followers of Dexter.
But enough about loser Facebook companies. There are more than a few people who would like to see Dexter return before too much time has passed by and most everyone has moved on to other things. There is a report that mentions Michael C. Hall discussing an eventual return of Dexter to cable, likely Showtime, but based on the current direction of the main actor’s careers, that is more likely to happen later than sooner. If ever. This is beginning to sound a lot like the return of Seinfeld or Jon Stewart to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. They will mention it once or twice a year during interviews but the real possibility of it ever happening is very remote.
There are two basic problems with any return to Dexter beyond gathering the main characters back together. The first is that the TV version took a wild turn away from the book series on which it was based, alienating some of its fan base who wanted the TV version to stay closer to the book. So if the writers decide to start a reboot, then do they try to reclaim the lost audience members by returning to the book or do they move forward and find a way to resurrect almost everyone from the last season.
The second problem is time. Hall has been quoted as saying that he is interested but the timing is not right. That opens up the envelope with the question, when is the right time? He’s not saying, and it seems no one else really knows. Given what we know about the availability of the actors, any project would have to start production by the end of 2018 if there is any hope of a 2019 showing. That doesn’t appear likely to happen, so now we are realistically looking at 2020 at the earliest. And that is if everything goes according to schedule — which it usually never does.
As for the cable network Showtime’s interest and willingness to take on a new season of Dexter, at this point they would be very happy to do it. Their Showtime and Showtime 2 offerings are lame at best. “Shameless” is starting to wear on viewers, “Homeland” is getting repetitious, and they have retreated to pulling out average movies from the 1990’s to fill the gaps in programming. When you have professional athletes (Shaquille O’Neal and Rob Gronkowski) doing comedy routines, you know anything remotely worth watching is welcome.
The fact that the Dexter poster hoax went viral is a measure of the interest that is still out there. But nobody who is actually involved in putting it all together, including the actors, seems to be very excited about the possibility. That may be all that needs to be said about the future of the Dexter series.
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