I don't see why this is a thing, from any creative standpoint. The interesting thing about Dexter in the first show was watching him develop and become humanized. The general details of how he got to his original state in the beginning of the show was dealt with extensively in flashbacks, some of which were very immersion-breaking, thanks to not bothering to cast a younger actor and just putting Michael C Hall in a wig.

So there is really not much to show, except the day-to-day of Dexter at a less interesting phase of his life, before he's really developed any emotional skills or gotten good at the things he does that make the show interesting to watch. And there is always the issue of disrupting his established history.

Speaking of the established backstory of Dexter, it's pretty clear this is aimed at Dexter fans, and not so much at a new audience. And Dexter fans are OLD now, that show started 18 years ago. How badly do we want to see Dexter starting out as an adult, and Deb's college life? On the other hand, we've also already seen his career as a killer of killers. How are they going to interest us with the slayer of the Trinity Killer, the Barrel Girl murderers, and the Brain Surgeon, now merely dabbling his toes in the waters of homicide? Can they resist coming up with more dangerous enemies or weirder cases, that Dexter will inexplicably have forgotten by the time he's in his thirties, or seem silly for thinking they are existential threats, next to the killer he stalked and caught when he was 22.

And of course, a lot of the suspense from the first show, teasing that he might get caught, or how his career is going to ruin his life or his facade of a life is going to interfere with his career, and what is going to change, but we know it's all smooth sailing for Dexter from here on out.

Now as to the show itself, with one episode up, is not bad so far. The actors playing younger versions of the characters do a REALLY good job (characters so far include Dexter, Deb, Harry [Christian Slater], Angel Batista, Vince Matsuka, and Maria Laguerta has been cast). The first episode covers the previously-flashbacked story of Dexter's first official kill, which seems like they hewed closely to the original story, though I have not done a comparison rewatch or anything. The guy playing Dexter doesn't look too much like Hall, but he has the mannerisms down, and the actress playing Deb nails her speech patterns. Slater is a little cartoony playing Harry, but there is already a tidbit that adds a new dimension to his character, though it's too early to say for good or for ill. New characters are Patrick Dempsey playing a very broad archetypal head of homicide and Sarah Michelle Gellar as the head of forensics and has not been properly introduced to the audiences yet. One thing that seems like a warning flag is how they are characterizing Deb. My recollection is that she was basically a wall-flower, desperate for her father's attention and affection and feeling left out as he gave all his attention to Dexter, trying to help control his homicidal urges. Which, I think, calls for a bit of a sidebar.

They seem to be going with the Dark Passenger concept and even veer close to the books where it is not just a metaphor for Dexter's murder drive, but is seemingly a real entity which has a slight paranormal aspect, allowing those with a Dark Passenger to recognize it in one another. As Dexter does in this first episode. All well and good, but IIRC, the ultimate verdict of the show as that the DP was not real, and there really was nothing compelling Dexter, allowing him to give up the serial killing. The sequel series, New Blood, more or less carried on with that, jumping ahead more than ten years, and Dexter shows no sign of homicidal urges, and any inclination to kill is rooted in much more normal and explicable motives, to get rid of the person in question. So it might be that they are not just doing a prequel, but something of a reboot & rewrite. And that brings me back to the point I was meandering towards with Deb.

Anyway, in flashbacks, Deb seemed kind of introverted and mousy. Adult Deb is much more outgoing, pushy and famously foul-mouthed, which seems like a persona she developed in fighting her way into the fraternity of police officers. But the Deb we meet in this show, still in high school is basically adult Deb. While I got the impression she had always wanted to be included, now she curses like a sailor even at the family dinner table and complains about having to take her anti-social big brother with her to a party, where she slams back tequila and goes after guys. She's also doing the bit where she complains about Dexter not being there for her, and doing his own thing when she expects him to show up for normal activities, but also always forgives him and shows up for him. So this also kind of means there is really nowhere for her to go, character-wise, just follow the steps to her police career, while retaining the exact same personality. In the early seasons as well, Dexter often mentored her in her investigations, until she established herself in the bureau, and I am getting a strong feeling we're not going to get any of that toxic nonsense about a woman needing a man's advice. It's not great if they have simply decided to transplant the Deb we know and some of us love from the first show for member-berries, it's going to be a Problem if they rewrite her character and relationship with Dexter to fit current fads. Even the idea of Deb being Dexter's humanity coach doesn't really work, because on the first show, she is no such thing and seems to regard the bits of his antisocial reality that poke out as just part of Dexter's oddities that she is so used to that she never questions. At least until Season 7. And of course, any efforts to make Dexter normal on this show are, or should be, doomed to failure. In about ten years or so, Dexter is going to be completely anti-social with the facade of a harmless, normal, friendly, unassuming regular guy. I have to wonder what the plan is for having Angel & Matsuka here. Are they going to become friends with Dexter? Because they are not his friends in ten + years (Dexter's birthdate is established as 1971, meaning this is more or less in 1993, thirteen years before the first show started airing). They THINK they are, but there is no relationship on Dexter's part, and only gradually does he come to appreciate Angel, at least, as having worthy qualities that Dexter decides he values. So are they going to bring these characters close together on this show, with no explanation for Dexter's secret withdrawal down the road?

Given that Gellar is the biggest name of the actors, after Dempsey & Slater, I would expect that she is going to be the member of the police department, aside from Harry, of course, with whom Dexter interacts the most and she is going to be something of a mentor to him. That could be good, especially if there is more to her than meets the eye. I have to say there isn't anything specifically bad per se, it's just that I have become way too familiar with how screenwriters operate. I am morally certain that there is going to be an episode where Dexter is struggling with his reputation and persona among the rest of the police and trying to figure out a role to play in the office, and the episode is going to end with him triumphantly bringing a box of doughnuts into work and being celebrated as Doughnut Guy. So we'll see. Like I said, they do a bang-up job with matching new actors to the characters from the older show. I am just really worried about the fact that they have so many of them. Like, Vince is senior to Dexter? He was working in homicide forensics when Dexter was still in college? I never got that impression from the first show. It feels like they could easily go down the path of Solo: A Star Wars Story, where they needed to show how every prop associated with Han Solo was acquired and why he can bang on a panel to make the ship start up.

We'll see.