A Dexter spinoff series could be in the works, according to Showtime entertainment president David Nevins.
Nevins recently spoke to Deadline about plans for the eighth season of the popular crime-drama, and said there were “all sorts of possibilities” of where to go after the final episode airs later this year, adding that “all kinds of ideas have been discussed but there is nothing happening right now.”
Unfortunately, Nevins would not elaborate on which character offered the best Dexter spinoff material. He noted, however, that none of the cast members had deals that went beyond the next arc.
Furthermore, the eighth and final season of Showtime’s cash cow, which scored a series-high 2.8 million viewers with last season’s finale, will not be used as a setup for any Dexter spinoff, so don’t even bother playing the guessing game.
“This season is about this season playing out the trajectory of the Dexter character,” Nevins said.
Yesterday, the cable network finally broke its silence over one of the worst-kept secrets on television — that the eighth season would bring to a close the story of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a serial killer of criminals working for the Miami Police Department as a blood-spatter analyst.
We say “worst-kept” because in March, Showtime parent company CBS’s CEO Les Moonves accidentally spilled the beans at a Q&A session . This came about a year after the series co-producer Sara Cottleton admitted that the eight season would probably be the last.
Along with yesterday’s confirmation, the network also released an extended trailer for the final season:
On Friday, Nivens said that the endgame mapped out for Dexter Morgan prior to the seventh season has “remained pretty much intact.”
Responding to a question about the show’s violent nature and how some of that had been scaled back since the first few years, Nivens assured fans that recent acts of real-world violence — Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombing — would have no effect on the eighth season.
Nivens said the network was “not putting new limitations on the show.”
As for Michael C. Hall’s feelings on the decision to end Dexter after the eighth season, the actor told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month that he was pleased .
“I’ve been an advocate for having a dialog with the writers and getting a sense of how to best bring this story home — not wrap everything up with a tidy bow, but find some sort of conclusion,” Hall said. “There has to be an end game. Once Deb found out, it felt like we were moving toward a place where the world as Dexter knew it would end.”
The eighth season of Dexter will premiere on June 30. What do you think of a Dexter spinoff? If it happens, which character(s) would you place in the driver’s seat?