‘Dexter: New Blood’: Michael C. Hall Discusses That Surprise Feature on the Show
Michael C. Hall is known around the world for his role as Dexter Morgan, the serial killer-killing serial killer at the center of Showtime’s Dexter. But not a lot of people realize that he’s more than an actor. Hall is also part of the band Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, featured in an episode of the revival series Dexter: New Blood.
Michael C. Hall’s band was featured in an episode of ‘Dexter: New Blood’
Released in November of 2021, Dexter: New Blood was a limited series focusing on Dexter’s life after the events in the original series finale. The show found him in Upstate New York, where he’d settled into a normal life as firearms dealer Jim Lindsay. But a series of events caused everything to fall apart.
The song “Ketamine” by Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum was featured in Dexter: New Blood Episode 5, as Dexter works to prevent police from discovering his role in a murder. Hall, who leads the band with Peter Yanowitz and Matt Katz-Bohen, told PopCulture about how the song made it on to the show.
“Honestly, I left it up to the music supervisor and other people to decide when and if they thought a song of ours would fit into the season,” said Hall. “I got an email saying that they wanted to play ‘Ketamine’ on the end credits of the fifth episode. I think in a way it’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Dexter in this new season, he didn’t — it’s not what he used back in the day. But in this new season to knock out his victims, he was using ketamine that he’d stolen from a veterinarian’s office.”
“And um, that was by no means in my mind when I wrote the song,” Hall continued, laughing. “But there was that resonance. And there was also just something sonically at that moment in the season as that episode ended that just felt right to the people that were making those decisions. And I agreed.”
The ketamine plot hole prompted much discussion among fans
Many fans enjoyed getting to hear their music, but they were confused by the inconsistencies between Dexter’s use of Ketamine and M99 on the two shows. Weighing in on the debate, executive producer and director Marcos Siega explained that they thought fans might’ve found it too “convenient” if Dexter came across M99 in New Blood.
But also, “If you google ‘M99’ and ‘Ketamine’ in real life there’s a word that ends in ‘-ine’ (Etorphine) like Ketamine ends in ‘-ine.’ In toxicology reports they’re the two most misdiagnosed drugs,” he told BingetownTV.
“When you google something and you put in two words like ‘Miami homicide’ and ‘Ketamine’, it’s going to give you all the things where those two words show up,” he continued. “In one of the BHB stories — and I think that we went out of our way to say it — what [Angela Bishop] looks at is the equivalent of a fan site. It’s people who are sleuthing and trying to figure out what [the drugs] are. It was a big mystery.”
“What [Angela] sees in the Google search is that there are people who thought it could have been Ketamine in their system. It wasn’t inclusive,” Siega noted. “Conclusive evidence for her is going to be Batista.”
“Could we have called it M99? Sure,” he added. “I think that would have been just a little eye-rolling. I don’t mind the debate. There’s a reason for everything and we did think about everything.”
The future of ‘Dexter: New Blood’
Angela eventually got the evidence needed to arrest Dexter, but he died before she could bring him to justice. After learning he’d murdered his wrestling coach Officer Logan, Harrison Morgan shot and killed Dexter. He then fled town after Angela agreed to call it in as an officer-involved shooting.
While some viewers have expressed interest in a spinoff, Showtime has yet to make a definitive decision.
“Right now, we are still enjoying the closure of Dexter,” network executive Gary Levine told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not uninteresting [to continue it] but you have to be judicious about going on with existing IP vs. creating new IP. We don’t do it a whole lot and when we do it, we do it carefully. At this point, I can’t say definitively either way about it.”
We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, viewers can find the show streaming now on Showtime.
