Season 5 will pick up right where season 4 left off.
“We have spent the last month sitting around, talking and really debating how best to deal with the aftermath of [Rita's death]. We uniformly decided that we don’t want to jump ahead. We need to see Dexter go through the process that we’d all have to go through if such a horrible thing had happened to us. We need to see him doing everything from the big emotional things like grieving the loss, to the mundane things like arranging a funeral, getting the kids dressed, and all the other things that are usually done for men because their wives or mothers do them. They have no idea how to handle all of these things. As we saw, Rita was really the caretaker of their baby. It would be cheating the audience of their catharsis to not see Dexter go through that mourning period and see how it affects him or to not see him dealing with the blowback of what he essentially caused. So we will not jump to Harrison as a 5 year old yet.”
Season 5 may not feature a Trinity-esque villain.
“John Lithgow is a tough act to follow. If there was ever a year that we could take a step back from the Big Bad formula and go deeper into Dexter and his psychology, this would be that year. That said, Dexter has a dark passenger that won’t go away no matter how much he yearns to be normal. That rears up and needs to be dealt with. He may even dive deeper after this traumatic loss of Rita. We are working on a way that feels original and fresh and unique to what he has just gone through. It cannot be the way it has been before. In [Season 1], he was terrified of any kind of intimacy because intimacy equaled being discovered. Then he slowly realized he had a need to be known and he set up a family and tried the best he could to balance it all. And now, he sees what being known brings him and he had it ripped out from underneath him suddenly and that will have some affect on him.”
Dexter will remain single… for now.
“Anything is possible, but I don’t think Dexter will be in the mood for dating or love anytime soon. That’s not even on our radar right now. He very much loved Rita and they were in a good place right before she was killed so that wound will take quite some time to heal.”
Michael C. Hall kicked cancer’s ass.
“Michael’s in full remission. I just had a three-hour breakfast with him this morning. He’s in great shape and is getting his energy back. We are all very excited to get back to work. The guy is incredibly courageous and worked hard all through last season despite being sick. He’s an amazing human being and actor. It was scary, but the show will go on. We start shooting in late April or May, which is usual. We will not have to stall production.”
