It took about ten years after the conclusion of Dexter for Showtime to give fans a reboot. But you may be surprised to find out that the network actually considered going with a different story.
Dexter: New Blood gave fans exactly what they have been waiting for. It was the return of Dexter Morgan, everyone’s favorite serial killer. However, not many people know that Dexter executive producer Scott Buck actually had plans for a different spinoff. He explained as much in a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting.
It’s true that fans were pretty upset by the way the original series ended. In the end, Buck says it was ended that way on purpose so that Dexter Morgan could make a comeback. But a comeback as what exactly? Well, the initial idea was for him to become a doctor.
“It was actually the network who pitched to me that Dexter should be a doctor,” he explained. “I was intrigued by that, but it seemed a little farfetched that, in just a few short years, he could jump through all the hoops and become a doctor.”
‘Dexter: New Blood’ — What if Dexter Was a Paramedic?
Okay, so maybe going from serial killer to doctor isn’t very believable. How about if Dexter became a paramedic? That’s what Scott Buck had in mind.
“There was also something interesting about him faking his credentials, but there’s also something a little unsatisfying about that,” Buck said. “So, I pitched the idea that he’d be a paramedic. In a lot of ways, it seemed to make sense, because he’s still working on some level with human bodies as a scientist.”
If you were thinking that Dexter would be put into the healthcare industry to help others, you would be mistaken. It would just be a way to help manage his “dark passenger” as he so often refers to it in the series.
“It was never that he wanted to help people, that he wanted to atone,” Buck said. “But rather…if killing was his heroin, then holding lives in the balance [as a paramedic] would sort of be his methadone. And it’s not that we would draw a whole lot of work-related stories. It was just the background to sort of place him in.”
Buck said that he did, indeed, write that script fow Showtime. But the actor who plays Dexter, Michael C. Hall, never responded.
“I guess Michael just didn’t respond to it. He got the script, and I never heard back from him. Not that he owed it to me in any way, but it all came down through the channels that he just wasn’t interested in doing it. This was like five years ago. I think, at that point, he was still pretty exhausted of Dexter. And that was the end of it. As far as I know, there were never any other potential spinoffs until Clyde [Phillips] did New Blood.”
