Dexter tells the story of Dexter Morgan, a blood-spatter analyst who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer, hunting murderers who have escaped the justice system.
The central conflict has always been his “Dark Passenger,” an urge he channels through a strict moral code taught to him by his father.
In this new chapter, Dexter: Resurrection, he survives being shot by his son, Harrison, only to discover Harrison has followed him to New York and made his first kill, seemingly upholding the family’s twisted code.
Recap of Dexter: Resurrection Episode 1
Ten weeks after taking a bullet from his own son, Dexter Morgan is still breathing. We open on him in a coma at the Seneca Nation Clinic, where his mind has become a reunion for the ghosts of his past.
First up is Arthur Mitchell, the Trinity Killer. He leans in close, telling a comatose Dexter that trying to have it all, the family and the Dark Passenger, was his real mistake.
“Sometimes we have to go through hell to achieve resurrection,” Trinity rasps, a grim reminder of how Harrison’s own darkness was born in a pool of his mother’s blood.
The next visitor is Miguel Prado, the former ADA, who appears in a graveyard. He tells Dexter that his actions were noble, but people only got hurt when he tried to be normal.
Then, a more familiar face appears. It’s Harry, his adoptive father, looking on with that classic disappointment. Dexter’s inner voice wonders if he would have been better off left to die in that shipping container.
Harry cuts through the self-pity, reminding him that his son needs him now more than ever. The final guest arrives with a familiar shout: “Surprise, motherfucker.”
Sergeant Doakes is here, not with anger, but with a strange sort of encouragement. He tells Dexter there’s a kernel of good in him, and he needs to hold onto it for Harrison.
Cut to New York City. We find Harrison Morgan, now a concierge at the luxe Empire Hotel. He’s putting on a good show, charming guests and flirting with a coworker, Elsa. He’s even passed his GED. But the facade is thin.
In an elevator, the walls seem to turn to ice, and he sees a phantom trail of blood. The trauma is right there, just under the surface. He helps a young woman named Shauna, who’s lost on her way to a conference. She tells him New York is great because you can be anyone you want. The look on Harrison’s face says he knows that all too well.
Later that night, Harrison sees a drunken Shauna being led into an elevator by a man named Ryan. Harrison knows something is off; he’d met Shauna earlier, and this guy wasn’t with her. Ryan claims to be her husband, but Harrison confronts him.
The man admits they just met at the bar. Harrison helps them to the room, his mind flashing back to Kurt Caldwell’s trophy case of dead women. He tries to walk away, telling himself it’s not his problem. But then he hears Shauna cry “no.”
That’s all it takes. Harrison bursts into the room and a fight breaks out. He gets the upper hand, but Ryan is smug.
“There’s plenty more where she came from,” he sneers. That line seals his fate. Harrison snaps. He grabs the heavy porcelain lid of the toilet tank and brings it down on Ryan’s head, again and again.
Staring at the body, Harrison’s training kicks in. He gets the barely conscious Shauna back to her own room, then returns to the scene. We see flashes of his father’s lessons as he meticulously cleans every surface.
He wraps the body in a shower curtain, loads it onto a service cart, and takes it down to the basement kitchen. There, he puts on headphones, turns up the music, and begins the grim work of dismembering the body into nine pieces.
He uses a special knot to tie the garbage bags, just like his father taught him, and gets them to the curb just in time for the morning trash pickup. He’s almost clean, but not quite. A single drop of blood has spattered onto a ceiling tile. A small mistake.
Back in Iron Lake, Dexter wakes up. The doctor explains that the cold and snow slowed his heart rate, saving his life. The new sheriff stops by with a letter from Angela Bishop. She’s left town with her daughter, taken the blame for the shooting, and pinned Kurt Caldwell with all the recent murders. Dexter Morgan is a free man.
But his freedom is immediately complicated by the arrival of Angel Batista. The reunion is tense. Batista hugs him but gets straight to the point. He asks why Dexter faked his death and what happened to Deb.
Dexter spins a story about grief and a capsized boat. Batista seems to accept it, but then he brings up Maria LaGuerta. He mentions how she, just like Angela, was convinced Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher.
Batista tells Dexter he’s had his death certificate rescinded. He’s legally alive again. The unspoken threat hangs in the air. You can’t prosecute a dead man.
In New York, a sanitation worker finds one of Harrison’s bags has split open, revealing a human leg. Homicide detectives Claudette Wallace and Melvin Oliva are on the scene.
Wallace, we’re told, is the kind of detective who sees things others miss. She quickly notices the unique knots on the garbage bags and finds the rest of the body parts.
At the clinic, a nurse tells Dexter about the dismembered body found in New York. Dexter does a quick search on the victim, Ryan, and discovers he was a repeat sexual offender who always slipped through the cracks. He fits the Code.
Harry’s voice in his head confirms it, “Your son needs you.” As Batista arrives for another visit, Dexter steals the car keys from a recently deceased patient and slips out of the clinic.
We get a final sequence. A mysterious woman, played by Uma Thurman, uses sophisticated gadgets to break into a high-end apartment.
She scans for cameras and bugs before finding what she’s looking for hidden in the ceiling, a box of driver’s licenses, each with a bloody X over the photo.
A serial killer’s trophies. She places an envelope inside the box with the trophies and leaves. On her way out, she makes a call. “The invitation has been delivered,” she says.
The episode ends with Dexter pulling up to the Empire Hotel. He spots Harrison outside, working. His son, following in his footsteps, in the biggest city in the world.
And he’s already in trouble.
