Most TV comebacks attempt to capitalize on everything that made shows memorable to begin with, from the setting to the tone to the characters. Going against that small-screen grain is the Dexter revival, whose return to fans' lives on Showtime will be radically different from the series' initial run. Though Michael C. Hall's killer-of-killers Dexter Morgan will obviously be fronting things, former co-star James Remar threw doubt on the idea of other returning cast members, saying Showtime opted not to bring anyone else back for the New York-set season. But it sounds like new star Jamie Chung has now indirectly refuted that claim.
After serving as an excellent and extremely disturbing standout in HBO's Lovecraft Country, Jamie Chung is keeping things dark and dirty with the Dexter revival, where she will play a famous true-crime podcaster and L.A. resident named Molly. Speaking with People, Chung said the new episodes are definitely a departure from the sun-soaked thrills of the first eight seasons, but then seemingly teased that not everything around Michael C. Hall will be a brand new element. In her words:
The original series happened over 10 years ago. So there's certainly a different vibe of the way the actual show is shot in terms of the aesthetic. I do think it's a little darker. It takes place in upstate New York and as we know from the last season, Dexter's hiding. So it certainly carries on and you have a lot of fresh faces, but a lot of familiar ones.
It's clearly Jamie Chung's last sentiment that has us scratching our collective heads. At this point, the only people that are confirmed to be returning from Dexter's initial run for the revival season are its aforementioned star Michael C. Hall and its original showrunner Clyde Phillips, while all of the announced cast members other than Hall are new to the series. And considering Phillips isn't enough of a household name for his face to be instantly familiar to fans, I am extremely curious to learn what whose faces Chung was talking about.
Because by all means, as disappointing as it was to hear James Remar's claim that the majority of the original cast was left by the wayside for Dexter's new episodes, it still made a certain amount of sense. If Dexter is living his life in hiding more than 1,200 miles north of Miami, without having alerted any of his family or colleagues about his current whereabouts, then it wouldn't exactly make perfect sense for every single former co-star to suddenly be in and around that same New York area. So while the creative team could certainly find ways to explain and justify the reappearances of Julia Stiles Lumen, Jennifer Carpenter's Deb, David Zayas' Batista and others, it might be a stretch if it happened even once.
Honestly, while I usually like diving into unfounded and bordering-on-ridiculous speculation in cases like this, I'm a bit unsure how to take Jamie Chung's claims. Maybe Dexter keeps a big cork board in his apartment/cabin/renovated school bus and has pictures of all the show's main characters tacked to it, with those being the "familiar" faces. Or maybe he went back and killed everyone and is keeping all their heads in jars. I'm not gonna die on that particular hill, but I'll certainly roll around it for a bit while waiting to hear more info about the new season.
Jamie Chung and Michael C. Hall will be joined in Dexter's revival by Clancy Brown as the charming new big bad, as well as Michael Cyril Creighton, Oscar Wahlberg, Julia Jones, Jack Alcott and Johnny Sequoyah. As the episodes are currently filming in secret, Showtime has not yet revealed a release window for the new season, but there are more than enough big 2021 Summer TV shows coming soon that will make the wait more tolerable.
