Dexter's New Prequel Is Making Debra Morgan Much More Sympathetic Than The Original Show Ever Did

By Sean Morrison

Published Dec 18, 2024

Followed

Thread 2

Custom image by Sean Morrison

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Dexter: Original Sin episode 1.The Dexter prequel show best characters in Dexter, but a lot of what made her so interesting actually made her less sympathetic. The biggest example is her rude sense of humor, which is endearing to viewers and fans, but certainly doesn't make Deb come across as a nice person.

Almost all of Debra's jokes in Dexter consisted of her combining a long string of expletives into an inventive exclamation or simply insulting the other characters in the show. One of her favorite people to berate was Dexter, and Deb could often come across as rude or outright mean to her older adoptive brother. Luckily, Original Sin is changing that part of Debra's character, and it's even retroactively making the original show better in the process. Even just in the premiere of Original Sin, Debra has become a much more sympathetic character.

Original Sin Proves Dexter Was A Really Strange Person Before Working At Miami Metro

Dexter Didn't Learn How To Fit In With Others Until Well After College

The premiere of Dexter: Original Sin did quite a bit to prove that Debra's complaints about Dexter weren't as unfounded as they seemed. When he was in college, Dexter was a really weird person. In just the first episode of Original Sin, Dexter gazed longingly at a cadaver, had several awkward encounters and nearly killed someone at a frat party, and just generally came across as a creep. It's wrong, but it's not very surprising that he wasn't a popular person and that his classmates liked to bully him.

Aside from certain characters like James Doakes and Joey Quinn, very few people in the original Dexter ever realized he was a weird person, and he was actually viewed as very sociable.

Dexter's social awkwardness is one thing that the original Dexter show never quite got right. There were certainly moments where Dexter would say the wrong thing or be completely socially oblivious, but he never seemed like a weirdo. For the most part, Michael C. Hall's take on Dexter seemed like a confident, attractive man who happened to say stupid things from time to time, at least to other characters. Patrick Gibson's take on the character, however, has really emphasized just how much of a social outcast Dexter was as a young adult, which is a side of the character audiences haven't really seen before.

Dexter’s Weirdness In Original Sin Makes Deb Much Easier To Sympathize With

Deb May Not Be Right To Dislike Dexter, But Her Embarrassment Is Much Easier To Understand

Knowing how weird Dexter was in the early 1990s, which is when Dexter: Original Sin takes place in the timeline, helps make Deb easier to sympathize with. Original Sin proved that Dexter really was very strange and awkward, while Deb was a social butterfly. It may not be right of her to be embarrassed of her brother, but it certainly makes sense that they would clash and Deb would think of Dexter as weird. In the original series, Deb very rarely saw Dexter being truly unnerving, so her insults and jabs didn't seem nearly as sympathetic.

A composite image of Dexter looking on in front of Dexter standing with this father in Dexter: Original Sin

Dexter: Original Sin Season 2 - Confirmation & Everything We Know

Showtime's Original Sin explores the life of Dexter Morgan in the early 1990s, and now the prequel series has scored a season 2 renewal.

Posts 2

Original Sin isn't just making Deb more sympathetic, however, it's also making her relationship with Dexter more compelling. Deb and Dexter were always extremely close in the original series, and it seemed like they were always somewhat inseparable in their childhood. Original Sin, however, shows that they actually didn't like each other very much, and their close relationship only happened because they both set aside their differences and embraced the parts of their sibling that they didn't originally like. Dexter: Original Sin shows that Deb and Dexter chose to be as close as they were, which only makes them both more sympathetic.