The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood's fourth episode, "H is for Hero," which aired on Showtime on Nov. 28.
Dexter: New Blood slid into a slight decline after its premiere, having dipped its toe back into familiar territory. The frosty landscape and new characters helped carry a textbook "Dexter scrambles to hide a murder" scenario (plus a borderline intolerable teen), but only so much. Last week's "Smoke Signals" ticked things upward by leaning more into Harrison's darkness and nicely unspooling a potentially violent character with an all-but unknown past.
"H is for Hero" showed us Harrison as a truly damaged young man, someone who definitely had more reasons to worry about himself than just what Dexter wrote in his letter to Hannah (and do we even believe the Hannah "cancer" story now?). Harrison is feeling some very dark things and it goes far beyond not liking bullies because this week Harrison tried to kill Ethan, the boy who was being picked on. Harrison sliced the boy's leg artery and then staged an attack on himself, playing both sides of the bully equation by painting Ethan out as a school shooter.
Now, was Harrison wrong about that? Probably not. Ethan, by this show's design, was going to do something someday. Was Harrison dabbling in Pre-Crime a bit, by targeting someone he knew would hurt others? Or did he actually just use Ethan's easily built-in narrative so that he could play Trinity Killer? If it's the former, then you also have to wonder what Harrison knows about his dad. Does he actually know about the Bay Harbor Butcher? Once we see him listening to Molly's podcast about Trinity killing his mom, one can assume he's already done his research. So what does he remember about Miami (besides falling off that treadmill)? What did Hannah already tell him? What did he find out, or figure out, on his own? And was this the first time he tried to kill someone? The questions this episode raised are great, so let's hope they get addressed in a timely way, nd the right way.
"H is for Hero" turned Harrison into a much more layered character. At this point we don't know which way the wind will blow with him and that's a fun element for New Blood since, for years, Dexter kind of ran on a lather/rinse/repeat model. Harrison's M.O. had shades of his dad, since he sort of stumbled into taking out someone who could have been a threat to others, but when you look at what the end result was it's more fascinating. Harrison's a glory hound. He seeks "attaboys" and adulation. He shrugs off praise with false modesty. This takes a really good "performer," which is something Dexter was only ever half-good at.
Dexter having to use his old forensic expertise to figure out what Harrison had done was an excellent use of old paint. It gave Ghost Deb something new to do this week too, as she became his partner in snooping. Plus, we got a cool callback to the end of Season 1 and how Dexter always wanted to be a hero (remember the dream parade?) Now we just have to wait for Dexter to recognize the significance of the wound itself so that he can glean what Harrison might know about him and his serial killer past. Was that the first episode of Molly's podcast Harrison listened too? If not, then what did he think of Merry F***ing Kill's take on the Bay Harbor Butcher?
Dexter, as a series, is never not on-the-nose in some regard, and this new season is really hammering home the idea of Dexter deciding to be a dad and what that means and how he might screw up -- and Kurt, thus far, is sort of a funhouse mirror for Dexter in that way (like most Dexter adversaries are) while also being the lead suspect for the Sniper Killer. Seriously, New Blood is either really bad at hiding it or the writers are just being too obvious with Kurt as the Red Herring.
This week, they even gave him a situation where he tried to help a runaway but -- and this is odd -- if he is the killer, he doesn't offer his victims his basement until he gives them money and/or offers them a job first. We didn't get to hear what Kurt's final offer to the girl was and feels like a trick. Because assume bad things are happening when we're not shown them, right? For example, we knew Harrison was lying because his "confrontation" with Ethan happened off-screen. That signals instant guilt. But it would be weird for them to do that with Kurt in the same episode, right?
Anyhow, billionaire Edward Olsen is still in the running. And he even comes with a built-in potential victim, in Angela's daughter, Audrey. Speaking of potential victims, Jamie Chung's Molly seems like a top prize too, since this week she shuffled her investigation over to Angela's missing girls board. But, even given all that, we still don't really know why Kurt lied about Matt FaceTiming him. Kurt may have a dangerous role to play still, even if it's not as the Sniper Killer.
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