Additionally, his sister Debra (
Jennifer Carpenter) plays heavily in the new season, despite her dying in the original series finale. Instead of Dexter talking to his adoptive father Harry (James Remar) in his mind, it is Deb he internally manifests and who, in turn, acts as a moral compass and stand-in for some of the audience.
“Deb’s character says later in a later episode, basically what Harry did could be considered child abuse,” Phillips said. “To take your son who you’ve rescued from being born in blood and who’s out killing dogs in the neighborhood and then channeling him to use his force for good and go out and kill bad people is not the healthiest psychiatric situation to be in. And I think Deb…represents a corner of Dexter’s mind that we all have in our own heads that says, ‘Well, wait a minute. If you do this, then here are the consequences and then you decide whether or not to do it whether or not to pursue it.'”
Carpenter sees this version of Debra that she is playing as an “echo or and inconvenient truth for Dexter.” That new take was what attracted her to come back to the show.
“I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go back and fix a broken score,” Carpenter said. “I feel like Deb had a different ending than the show. So, I decided that my work was to go to the bottom of the ocean and collect her and see if she wanted to be a witness to watch an unmedicated, decoded, unpunished, unchecked serial killer experience himself.