Dexter revival: Jennifer Carpenter returns as Deb Morgan

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Last month, it was announced that John Lithgow will be reprising the role of Arthur Mitchell, a.k.a. the Trinity Killer, in Showtime's upcoming revival season of the series Dexter, despite the fact that his character died at the end of Dexter season 4. Now another returning dead character has been announced: Jennifer Carpenter is back as Deb Morgan, who died in the Dexter season 8 finale (which was also the series finale before this revival came along) in 2013.

Carpenter had requested that her character be killed, and after the finale aired she told The Hollywood Reporter she would return to the role if there was 

an extraordinary script many, many, many years from now. I don’t know if that’s possible because people don’t come back from the dead."

I guess eight years counts as "many, many, many" and there must be an extraordinary script in place, because Deb is back.

As for Lithgow, he told Deadline that this 10 episode revival is 

completely different from [the original series]. Kind of like Perry Mason, it’s a reimagination. They don’t take it into a different era, but it’s in a different part of the world, a different part of the country, and a whole new cast of characters. … There are all sorts of wonderful surprises and callbacks from the first few seasons."

Lithgow filmed his appearance in just one afternoon. He said, 

As all Dexter fans know, we saw the end of the Trinity Killer, so that by definition means it’s a flashback. It was just wonderful to rejoin that gang — including Michael and Jennifer Carpenter and (showrunner) Clyde Phillips."

The revival season has the following synopsis: 

Set 10 years after Dexter Morgan went missing in the eye of Hurricane Laura, the revival sees the character now living under an assumed name in a world away from Miami.

In addition to Michael C. Hall as Dexter, Carpenter as Deb, and Lithgow as the Trinity Killer, the cast includes Clancy Brown as Kurt Caldwell, the primary villain and "the unofficial mayor of the small town of Iron Lake, New York". Caldwell's a former truck driver who now owns several trucks and the local truck stop; Jamie Chung as Molly, "a famous true-crime podcaster from Los Angeles"; Julia Jones as Angela Bishop, "the first Native American Chief of Police in her town in upstate New York"; Johnny Sequoyah as Audrey, "Bishop's brash and opinionated teenage daughter"; Alano Miller as Logan, "a sergeant for the Iron Lake Police Department and the assistant wrestling coach for the local high school"; Michael Cyril Creighton as Fred Jr., "the congenial owner of Fred's Fish & Game"; Oscar Wahlberg, as Zach, "the captain of the Iron Lake High School wrestling team"; and Jack Alcott as Randall, "with whom Dexter has a meaningful encounter".

Hall is executive producing this new batch of Dexter episodes alongside Phillips, John Goldwyn, Sara Colleton, Bill Carraro, Scott Reynolds, and Marcos Siega, who will be directing six of the episodes. Siega previously directed nine episodes of Dexter over the course of its second, third, and fourth seasons.

Clyde Phillips served as Dexter's showrunner for the first four seasons of the original run.