Dexter is one of the most longstanding shows in modern television. From the original run, which aired from 2006-2013, to Dexter: New Blood, to Original Sin and Resurrection, this franchise has continued to grow ever since its release. Until recently, Dexter was about to grow even bigger in the form of planned spin-offs.

The first of these was the aforementioned Original Sin, which debuted on Showtime and Paramount+ in 2024. The next show in development in the world of Dexter was a prequel series centering on John Lithgow’s infamous Trinity Killer villain. Although it was eventually scrapped, the Trinity-led series was far along in development, with Lithgow already on board and scripts already written for each episode.

Who Was In It?

As stated, John Lithgow had agreed to reprise his role as Arthur Mitchell, aka the Trinity Killer, in this would-be series. He had previously played the character in season four of the show, with Trinity often regarded as one of the best villains in recent television history.

Clyde Phillips, who oversaw the first four seasons of Dexter before returning for this new era of the franchise, serving as show runner for New Blood, Original Sin, and Resurrection, revealed in an interview with Deadline that Lithgow agreed to return as the voice of the character in the show, just as Michael C. Hall did for the Dexter Morgan centered prequel story.

This confirms that Lithgow would be the storyteller of sorts as he narrates the proceedings, meaning that a new actor would have been cast in the role of Trinity. However, that doesn’t mean that Lithgow couldn’t return in the flesh, with Dexter frequently relying on ghosts and visions to bring back old characters.

This was seen most recently in the first episode of Dexter: Resurrection, in which James Doakes, Miguel Prado, and Arthur Mitchell himself all appeared in Dexter’s mind while he was in a coma. So although Lithgow’s primary role would have been as a voice, he still could have appeared in person in some capacity.

No other actors had been cast in the series before it was put on the back shelf, according to Phillips, but given what has been revealed of the story, it seems an actor in his mid-thirties would have been chosen to play Mitchell.

When Was It Set?

Scott Reynolds, who, like Phillips, has worked on the original run of Dexter as well as the new era of the franchise, revealed in a Portuguese-language interview while promoting Resurrection that the story would have taken place in the year 1982. This would make it 27 years before Mitchell met Dexter and eight years before the events of Original Sin.

The creators of Original Sin made it a point to embrace the show’s early 90s setting, opting to include famous music, clothing, and more that called back to that era. If the Trinity series followed that same pattern, then it would have similarly heavily highlighted the city of Miami in the early 1980s.

This would make the Trinity series one of the earliest stories in the Dexter timeline, only behind the flashbacks of Dexter’s mother that are shown in the first few seasons of Dexter and throughout the first season of Original Sin.

Trinity is a killer known to travel all around the country under the guise of his charity Four Walls, recreating the same sequence of murders in each city he visited. It’s possible, if not likely, then, that fans not only know when it was set, but where it would have been set, too.

With Trinity’s family located in Miami, this would have been the home base of the story, but it’s entirely possible that the show could have followed Mitchell on his other, out-of-state kill cycles as well.

What Was The Story?

Despite its cancellation, the story has still been kept under wraps. Still, some details are known, such as the general premise of the show — a young Arthur Mitchel navigating the early years of his killer urges and would have, at least in part, taken place in Miami.

Fans also know Trinity’s killing cycle, which remained the same throughout his decades of murderous activity, so the story would have leaned into this as well.

Trinity’s cycle is as follows: a young boy, typically always ten years old, goes missing and is buried alive by Arthur. Then, a young woman is found murdered with her wrists slit in her bathtub (this was Dexter’s late wife Rita’s role in Mitchell’s ritual). From there, a mother is made to jump to her death, followed by a father being bludgeoned to death outside a local bar.

As revealed in Dexter season four, this cycle mirrors the turbulent childhood of Arthur Mitchell. His sister passed away in a freak accident in the family’s bathtub, just as Lithgow’s villain kills a young woman in a tub and makes it appear to police like a suicide.

Arthur also suffered another major loss when his mother plunged to her death, ending her own life, which is recreated when he forces a mother to leap off a tall building.

Trinity then moves on to beating a middle-aged man to his death in an alleyway outside a bar, with the victim sporting similar physical features as his father. Unlike the other murders, Mitchell’s father didn’t actually die in this way, and his killing ritual is instead a way for Lithgow to symbolically take revenge against his dad.

The ritual ends (or, as Dexter and co. learn late on in their fight against Trinity, begins) with a ten-year-old boy being buried alive. This is another symbolic killing as the child mirrors Arthur himself as he’s trapped in his dysfunctional, death-ridden family with seemingly no way to escape. Trinity demonstrates this in season four when he insists on calling the boy he kidnapped Arthur, as opposed to his real name.

All of this was likely to be explored in even greater detail and depth in the story of the Trinity spin-off series. Clyde Phillips described the scripts for the ten-episode season as “beautifully written,” which may disappoint Dexter fans even more. Still, there’s plenty more intriguing Dexter stories on the way, with Resurrection teased to air for a minimum of three seasons.

Release Date

2006 – 2013-00-00

Showrunner

Clyde Phillips

Directors

John Dahl, Steve Shill, Keith Gordon, Marcos Siega, Michael Cuesta, Romeo Tirone, Ernest R. Dickerson, Tony Goldwyn, Nick Gomez, Rob Lieberman, Tim Hunter, Adam Davidson, Alik Sakharov, Brian Kirk, Holly Dale, Jeremy Podeswa, Michael Lehmann, Milan Cheylov, Seith Mann

Writers

Scott Reynolds, Jace Richdale, James Manos, Jr., Drew Z. Greenberg, Jim Leonard, Karen Campbell

Dexter is streaming now on Paramount+.