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Dexte r revival gets premiere date, drops trailer during Comic-Con panel

Dexte r revival gets premiere date, drops trailer during Comic-Con panel

Showtime's Dexter revival is lurking just around the corner.

Dexter: New Blood will premiere Sunday, Nov. 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime, the network confirmed on Sunday, while also dropping a brand new teaser for the revival during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con.

Series star Michael C. Hall addressed why it was the right time to reboot the show while speaking at the panel, which also featured producers and Dexter newcomer Julia Jones (of Westworld). For Hall, it was wondering, "What the hell happened to this guy?"

"And I think enough time has passed, and the storytelling opportunities were a lot more interesting, I think, for having had some time between the end and now," he added.

Despite the eight-year gap between the end of the original series and its revival, Hall said that stepping back into the shoes of the serial killer felt oddly familiar. "It felt strange, but mostly because of how strange it didn't feel," Hall said with a laugh. "You know it's just like a sense of time compressing, starting to wonder if all the time has passed since we last did it to now actually was a dream. It's wild. It's wild to reactivate something that you thought was gone, though I guess they didn't suspect that it was totally gone."

When asked whether the negative reception to Dexter's 2013 finale played a role in the decision to revisit the series, Hall admitted, "It was a huge part of it," explaining, "Yeah, I think the ending was mystifying at best to people. Confounding, exasperating, frustrating, and on down the line of, you know, negative adjectives. And I think this is a show that is very important to all of us, and the chance to revisit it and maybe, in the process, redefine the sense of the show's ending, the sense of the show's legacy more broadly, was certainly a part of our motivation. No doubt."

Hall also attributed the show's return to a "sense of readiness" on his part and the opportunity to collaborate with the showrunner of the first four seasons of Dexter, Clyde Phillips, and executive producers Scott Reynolds and Marcos Siega, who is directing six of the 10 new episodes.

The revival will jump in almost a decade after the series 8 finale, something Phillips said Hall pushed for. "One of the things that we all agreed on, and Michael really insisted on it — he was completely right — is that this not be Dexter season 9; that we acknowledge that this is not the next moment after the lumberjack moment; that we acknowledge the truth, that time has passed — almost 10 years have passed — and we pick up [with] Dexter in another place, in another world, actually, as far away from Miami as possible."

With Dexter now living in a small town where everyone seems to know him, his serial killer urges sound like they're thawing out — maybe.

Michael C. Hall in 'Dexter'

"Going back to the way the show ended, I think we see Dexter having made a choice to go into a sort of self-imposed exile," Hall said. "And I think he's doing a very, very long, protracted penance for the people who've died who were close to him, and not intended to be victims, because of how he'd been living, how he was playing fast and loose with the code, etc., etc."

Jones is joining the series as Angela, the first female chief of police in Iron Lake, N.Y., the fictional town where the rival is set. She's also Dexter's girlfriend, though he is now going by Jim Lindsay (a nod to Dexter novels author Jeff Lindsay).

She has "a lot going on," Jones said of her character, adding that Angela has a "wonderful arc."

Phillips played coy on who from the original series will appear (though EW previously confirmed through a source that fan-favorite Jennifer Carpenter is returning).

"I will say that there will be some returning cast members from the original series that will make some people's brains explode," Phillips said, noting that everyone they called was ready to jump on board.

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