How Michael C. Hall Really Feels About Dexter’s Polarizing Series Finale

Michael C. Hall knows the original series finale of “Dexter” was “pretty unsatisfying” for a lot of viewers — and even he’s ready to see where America’s Favorite Serial Killer is now, eight years later.

Showtime recently announced that a 10-episode revival series with Hall returning as Dexter Morgan will go into production in 2021, following the show’s initial 8-year run. The original show was criticized for its mess of an ending, which saw Dexter take his sister Deb off life support before throwing her into the ocean, faking his own death, abandoning his son and becoming a lumberjack.

Speaking briefly with The Daily Beast about the revival, he confirmed it took him a while to get on board bringing back the show and commented on its initial ending.

“It’s a conversation that’s been ongoing, and different possibilities have emerged over the years,” he explained. “I think in this case, the story that’s being told is worth telling in a way that other proposals didn’t, and I think enough time has passed where it’s become intriguing in a way that it wasn’t before.”

He then acknowledged some of the blowback to the finale.

“And let’s be real: people found the way that show left things pretty unsatisfying, and there’s always been a hope that a story would emerge that would be worth telling,” he added. “I include myself in the group of people that wondered, ‘What the hell happened to that guy?’ So I’m excited to step back into it. I’ve never had that experience of playing a character this many years on.”

Hall went on to call viewer criticism “warranted,” though he personally believed “it was justifiable for Dexter to do what he did” in the last episode. “I think some of the criticisms were about that, and some of the criticisms weren’t so much about the ‘what’ as they were about the ‘how,’ and those were valid too,” he added. “We certainly do live in an era where the bar is very high as far as the simultaneous surprise, satisfaction, and closure that should go along with a series finale.”

When reporter Marlow Stern noted that he helped set a high bar with “Six Feet Under,” a show whose last episode is often at or near the top of many Best Series Finales of All Time lists, Hall joked he’s “dabbled in the extremes of ‘extremely satisfying’ and ‘extremely dissatisfying'” endings.

The revival is working toward a tentative Fall 2021 debut.