written by Elissaveta M. Brandon, Fast Company
Dexter Morgan is back on our screens, and so is his ketchup-splattered breakfast.
Dexter: Original Sin premieres today. The prequel is set about 15 years before the original, and follows Dexter as he transitions from student life to a forensics intern at Miami Metro (and, of course, an avenging serial killer). The story promises to be just as blood-spattered—with a title sequence to match.
Most fans of the cult TV show will agree that Dexter’s morning routine, as illustrated in the original show’s opening credits, was nothing short of iconic. (The story was dreamed up by creative studio Digital Kitchen and went on to win the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design.) The prequel’s title sequence is a tribute to the original, except it is set in the ’90s, and young Dexter (played by Patrick Gibson) doesn’t live alone just yet. He shares a house with his father, Harry (Christian Slater), and his sister, Deb (Molly Brown), then a high-school senior. His morning routine, then, becomes their morning routine.
THE MORGAN MORNING ROUTINE
The intro opens as you’d expect: Young Dexter is lying in bed while a mosquito is crawling on his arm. Just like in the original intro, Dexter swats the mosquito, except unlike in the original, he misses. “He hasn’t learned yet,” says Clyde Phillips, who oversaw the first four seasons of Dexter, plus the show’s sequel, New Blood, and now, Original Sin. (He’s also behind the forthcoming Dexter: Resurrection sequel, which is scheduled to premiere next summer and, you guessed it, bring Dexter back from the dead.)
After young Dexter fails to murder that mosquito and sleepily rolls over, the camera follows someone shaving in the bathroom, but instead of Dexter, it’s his father, Harry, who fittingly, cuts himself like Dexter would, a drop of blood splashing in the sink. The rest of the sequence zooms in on various characters in the house: Deb makes a mixtape, aptly named “Killer Tape: Summer 91” then paints her toes a crimson shade of red. A perturbed Harry takes a sip from his coffee. Dexter slathers on a fluorescent red toothpaste that ends up foaming in his mouth.
The sequence suggests that, while the show is indubitably focused on Dexter, his family will play an even more important role in the prequel than it did in the original. “Family is a very big theme in the show, particularly the evolution of father and son,” says Philips.
A ’90S BREAKFAST
Most title sequences are developed by film studios like Digital Kitchen, but in this case, Phillips and his team developed the intro in-house. The showrunner says his team had been exploring the possibility for a brand-new concept, then the Paramount+ marketing team came on set to shoot some promo materials with the actors. (Showtime, where Dexter originally aired, rebranded as Paramount+ in January 2024.) As Phillips watched the team riffing on shots from the original sequence, it dawned on him: this was a title sequence in the making.
The new intro is an homage to the original, but it is also what Philips calls “a period piece.” The story is riddled with ’90s relics, from the cassette tape to the gel toothpaste (a ’90s classic) to the corded telephone that Deb absentmindedly coils in her palm while hugging the receiver. The blade Harry brushes against his stubble is an old-fashioned double-edge razor. The coffee machine is a regular coffee maker, and not the “chichi French press,” as Philips puts it, that Dexter uses in the original show.
But no matter the era, the mood remains the same: This is a seemingly innocuous morning routine that is speckled with violence. Teeth bite into meat, hands tear into dry cleaning bags. And just like with the original, the further we get into the intro, the lighter the mood becomes. The blood references make way to more mundane shots, like tying shoelaces (a little too tight), clipping a hair claw (which digs into skin but doesn’t break it), and, finally, turning a key in the door while Dexter walks out into the world, lips stretching into an ever-so-slight smirk.
However nuanced, this transition from dark to light encapsulates the duality that lives inside the show’s protagonist. He is one person on the inside, and another person on the outside. Or as Phillips puts it: “Dexter is trying to live in the light with darkness that he has inside him, his whole thing is about blending in.”
Featuring cinematography from Florian Stadler
