Long before he became our favourite serial killer, Dexter Morgan was facing a crisis.
All his life he’d fought against the homicidal urges in his heart, wanting to lash out and kill those he was so sure deserved it, but knowing that if he did, he’d be caught and sent to jail fast.
But what if there was another way, he wonders? What if he targets only those who really deserve to be punished and who wouldn’t be missed if he did?
Dexter: Original Sin begins the story of one of the most conflicting TV characters ever: the charming, funny and often even quite moral serial killer originally played by Michael C. Hall (who narrates this prequel) and brought to terrifying life here by Patrick Gibson.
Even at 20, Dexter is clearly a monster, someone who should be behind bars. But as we see here – and as he acknowledges – it might not all be his fault.
“I am a killer,” the young Dexter says in the opening moments, “but I wasn’t born this way. I was made. By my history, by the people around me. They say it takes a village to raise a killer.”
And it’s that village we explore here, watching as his manipulative police detective dad Harry (Christian Slater) helps his son build the twisted “code” that allows him to murder – but only those they decide the world can live without.
Also helping – whether they know it or not – are Dexter’s sister Debra (Molly Brown) who can’t see anything but a hero when she looks at her brother; cop Aaron Spencer (Patrick Dempsey), whose thorough investigation techniques show the young killer exactly what not to do if he wants to remain free; and Tanya Martin (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the head of the Miami CSI department who decides to give the young man the job that will become his perfect alibi.
As Dexter edges closer to his first kill, this is once again very conflicting viewing – could the deadly young vigilante possibly have a point aside from the one on the blade he loves to use? And it just might answer the question fans have asked since the character first arrived on our screens in 2006: was Dexter inevitable?
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