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Dexter is a loaded name for millennials. The 2000s were a time that can only be described as a pop culture renaissance for Dexters. Between Dexter's Laboratory on Cartoon Network (okay, that show started in 1995 but it ran in the 2000s still) and SHOWTIME's Dexter starring Michael C. Hall, Dexters were in the spotlight like never before. Now, with Dexter: Resurrection hitting Paramount+ Premium later this month, it's time we take a look back on why the murderous 2000s Dexter has managed to stick around for so long. 

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Clyde Phillips, the showrunner on the original Dexter show, opened up about why audiences have been so willing to open their screens for Dexter all these years. “Why would an audience invite a serial killer to their home every Sunday night? He kills for good, he has a code, he does all of that — but it’s Michael [C. Hall]," Phillips says. "His voiceover brings a relatability, a vulnerability, and shows a whole other side to the process that we absorb and honor and believe — and, I think, we’re hungry for more."

Indeed, I remember being a teenager when the original Dexter show was on, and my friend telling me that she loved watching the show precisely because Dexter had a code that he stuck to. "He's a serial killer, but he only kills bad people," she said. And I think that because we get access into his interiority through Hall's voiceover narration, the character comes off as less threatening to us viewers. Because the more we understand and relate to something, the less threatened we are by it, by and large.

Dexter's not a Michael Myers from Halloween, a silent Shape moving with unstoppable force as he unleashes carnage across Haddonfield. Instead, he's a guy working out what the best way to respond to a situation would be as it happens in front of him, just like the rest of us. 

Dexter: Resurrection begins streaming on Paramount+ Premium on July 11. 

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