Michael C. Hall’s Underrated Time Travel Movie Perfectly Flipped His Dexter Role

Michael C. Hall’s performance was arguably what made Dexter a success, as the task of making a character who enjoys killing people into a lovable antihero is not easy, and it’s interesting how a time travel movie from five years ago had him playing a very different character from Dexter. Dexter spanned eight seasons, a short spin-off, and an upcoming prequel and sequel to Dexter.Dexter‘s ending was controversial, so the desire to give the character a deserving send-off is understandable.

After seven years playing Dexter‘s title character, Dexter Morgan, Hall’s next roles ensured he would not be typecast as a sociopath, playing against his Dexter persona as a small-town father who accidentally shoots a burglar dead in Cold In July, President Kennedy in an episode of British monarchy drama The Crown, and voicing Batman in Justice League: Gods and Monsters. Though Hall returned to the serial killer genre in 2019 with the cyber-thriller movie In The Shadow Of The Moon, his role here is almost the opposite of Dexter’s.

Michael C. Hall Plays A Police Detective Investigating A Serial Killer In The Shadow Of The Moon

In The Shadow Of The Moon Premiered In 2019

Netlfix’s In The Shadow Of The Moon scored mixed reviews, with 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, and though it has been criticized for being a mix of genres, the movie had an interesting concept. Hall plays Detective Holt- a character firmly on the side of the law while investigating what appears to be a serial killer who strikes every nine years. Dexter works with the police as a blood spatter analyst but uses his job to cover his crimes, while Holt appears disturbed by the bloody crime scenes in a way that Dexter would not be.

Serial killer movies and TV shows appeared to be popular in 2019, with both Mindhunter season 2 and Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes arriving on Netflix in addition to In The Shadow Of The Moon and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood being released. There was more Ted Bundy in the biopic movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, which was Zac Efron’s most dramatic role change after being known as a Disney Channel star. Still, In The Shadow Of The Moon added a twist that is rarely combined with the serial killer genre: time travel.

In The Shadow Of The Moon Added A Time Travel Twist To The Serial Killer Movie Trope

The Killer In Shadow Of The Moon Was On A Specific Mission

In The Shadow Of The Moon‘s ending confirms that the killer is connected to the lead police officer, Lockhart, and she is trying to stop a catastrophic civil war by traveling back in time and killing the people responsible. Discovering he was right all along about his time travel theory, and, believing that her cause is just, Lockhart allows Rya to complete her mission, changing the future for humanity. The police character growing to sympathize with the lawbreaking character is another serial killer trope that appears in Dexter, which could affect its upcoming sequel.

Dexter: New Blood attempted to give Dexter Morgan a better ending. However, both Dexter endings were equally polarizing, with Dexter leaving to become an isolated lumberjack in Dexter, and dying in Dexter: New Blood. The upcoming series, Dexter: Resurrection appears to imply that Dexter faked his death, and the only likely way that he can pull this off is if he has help. Dexter had several police characters who knew about Dexter’s secret serial killing, and he probably won’t be able to completely avoid the police in Dexter: Resurrection, though whether they let him go is another matter.