Michael C. Hall returns as Dexter: Did everyone forget how infamously terrible the ending was?

They don’t have killer instincts. 

For some reason, the serial killer show “Dexter” from the early 2000s has gotten an expanded universe that’s nearly akin to Marvel. 

During San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, Showtime announced that “Dexter” star Michael C. Hall, 53, will join the cast of “Dexter: Original Sin.” And that’s not all, he’ll also star in another series called “Dexter: Resurrection.” 

For those who are keeping count, this brings the tally up to four “Dexter” shows: the original “Dexter” (which aired on Showtime from 2006-2013), the 2021 sequel series “Dexter: New Blood,” and now, the two upcoming shows “Dexter: Original Sin” and “Dexter: Resurrection.” 

This is three “Dexter” series too many. And, it’s bizarre that these shows all exist. 

The original “Dexter” was a narrow, focused story about one man. It followed the titular character (Hall), a serial killer who targeted other killers.

To add extra intrigue, he also worked on his local police force, so there were times when his own colleagues nearly caught him. 

At best, “Dexter” was slick, addictively watchable, and delivered vigilante justice in a morally gray, R-rated way. It scratched a similar itch to the superhero genre but felt more adult, edgy, and dangerous.

It was a good show for its first four seasons, and then it went off the rails, culminating in a notoriously terrible ending.

There were a number of ways in which “Dexter” could have wrapped up. Dexter could have ended up behind bars. He could have gotten bested by one of the fellow killers that he targeted and met his own demise. He could have gotten away with it all. Instead of opting for any of those plausible plots, “Dexter” took a baffling swerve, and the whole thing concluded with Dexter…becoming a lumberjack. 

Absolutely nothing in the show led up to that. It came out of nowhere and made no sense. 

Now, it’s true that “Game of Thrones” also had an infamously lousy ending and has the popular spinoff “House of the Dragon” with more coming  – so, it’s not unprecedented for a series with a stinker of an ending to get an extended universe. 

But there’s a big difference between “Game of Thrones” and “Dexter.” 

The former is a fantasy show with a rich world and hundreds of years of history. The spinoff is set in a different era than the original show and has different characters. So, for “Game of Thrones” fans who were angry about Jon Snow (Kit Harington) killing Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) in the series finale, we don’t have to see their faces in the spinoff to get worked up again about that lousy finish. 

That’s not true for “Dexter.” Michael C. Hall was the face of the lumberjack debacle and continues to be the face of “Dexter.” 

They can’t brush it off or make fans forget by throwing new characters at us. Dexter has colleagues, but the show is called “Dexter,” and he’s the center of this story.

And unlike the “Game of Thrones” franchise, they can’t dip 200 years into the past in spinoff shows because “Dexter” is a smaller-scale story. (Unless they decide that his great-grandfather was also a serial killer and should get his own show — stop, don’t give them any ideas!)

It’s also outrageous for “Dexter” to get an extended universe because there’s only so much you can say about a serial killer. The original show was eight seasons long and covered a lot of ground. It’s not as if “Dexter” was cut short or didn’t dive into his past or plumb his psychological depths. The original show extensively explored all that stuff.

“Dexter: Original Sin” admittedly has a great cast: Patrick Gibson (“The OA”), Christian Slater, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Dempsey. 

It almost makes it more of an indignity that they’re tethered to this show, which has no reason to exist, in this franchise with no business being an expanded universe. 

“Dexter” was good in the early 2000s, and then it became bad. Leave it dead and buried.