Showtime Lets Dead Things Lie: Dexter: New Blood Season 2 Canceled

Definitely its finale was contentious and divisive. And Dexter: New Blood, its sequel, happened to be even more so, even if complaints were somewhat different this time.

But still, it had very good viewership, despite mixed opinions of the critics and the fans (the most frequent criticisms included throwing established character traits out of the window for the sake of sloppily tacking on an ending different from that of Season 8).

Good enough that while New Blood was initially planned as a mini-series, Showtime considered moving forward with Season 2. The crew hoped for New Blood's continuation as well.

For example, after New Blood's finale had aired, its showrunner Clyde Phillips told TVLine:

"If they were to call me and say, 'We want to do [a second season], we want you to figure it out,' I'm pretty busy, but I would drop everything I'm doing and jump right into it. I would love to do it, but it's really up to Showtime."

But ending of the New Blood raised the question (spoiler ahead): can a "Dexter" series proceed without Dexter (and without Michael C. Hall as the lead), since Dexter got shot and killed by his own son in the final episode, becoming a full spin-off?

Showtime had clearly answered "no", since plans for Season 2 currently appear to be abandoned.

Instead, there are rumors that "according to insiders" Showtime is considering several new iterations of Dexter, and that a prequel series, which is supposed to cover Dexter's early years, is among them. There is no official information about that from Showtime (which is about to merge with Paramount+) so far, and no comments on these rumors.

So, take this information about the future of Dexter franchise with a grain of salt. For now we can only wait for more news and official announcements. Given that, as far as we know, no work on any potential spin-off had started so far, a new Dexter series is very unlikely to appear on the screens before 2024.