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‘Dexter’ Season 8 Showrunner Speaks on ‘Doctor Dexter’ Idea That Never Came to Be

Though we now have Dexter: New Blood, that wasn’t the first concept tossed around for a reboot or sequel. In fact, a Dexter season 8 showrunner recently talked about the “Doctor Dexter” idea that never came to be.

Season 8 showrunner Scott Buck recently spoke to Bloody Disgusting about Dexter. One of the hottest topics about the show is the controversial ending. With it, we saw him start his life anew as a lumberjack in Oregon. Many expressed dissatisfaction with it, but it did leave his storyline open for the future. Buck revealed he had an idea on that front, and it involved bringing Dexter back as a doctor. However, it ultimately didn’t work out.

“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,” Buck explained. “There was also something interesting about him faking his credentials, but there’s also something a little unsatisfying about that. 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.”

Going further, he explains it wasn’t necessarily he wanted to help people or redeem himself. It was being in control of human life that would have helped keep him in check. “And it was never that he wanted to help people, that he wanted to atone, but rather … if killing was his heroin, then holding lives in the balance [as a paramedic] would sort of be his methadone.”

It’s an interesting concept and it does make one curious as to how Dexter would balance killing people and saving them.

‘Dexter’ Showruner Also Explained Why the Show Ended the Way it Did

Though it was previously explained showrunners wanted Dexter’s fate to leave room for the future, there is more to it than that. In the same Bloody Disgusting interview, Scott Buck revealed the details.

According to Buck, they explicitly could not kill Dexter since Showtime wanted to keep him alive, but Buck also didn’t want him to get captured. “The one thing I was told I could not do is kill Dexter,” Buck disclosed. “Because [Showtime] wanted to bring him back. So that meant, at least to me, that I also couldn’t have Dexter get captured.”

Going further, he said if authorities did capture him, he’d be infamous and easily recognizable. “Because if he is, that makes him the most notorious serial killer in the world. And you can’t really do any more future episodes because he’s going to walk down the street and everyone is going to recognize him. So that’s what sort of led to the way the show ended.”