DARK PASSENGERS! 'DEXTER' SEASON SEVEN

Behind the veil. The true calling of DEXTER (Michael C. Hall)  is finally, shockingly discovered by sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) in the show's seventh and penultimate season. Images: SHOWTIME.

Stumbling plotting and a series of all too-conveneient happenstances may have hampered the overall effectiveness of our serial killing hero DEXTER's previous sixth season for SHOWTIME, but they did at least deliver one of the best cliffhanger season endings yet for the titular hero, always played with a recognisable and enjoyable twinkle of heart and murderous, but heroic, serial killing dedication by Michael C. Hall, what with the blood splatter expert's wayward sister, potty mouthed detective Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) finally and shockingly discovering the truth about her adoptive brothers weird foibles, unexpected disappearances and occasional unnerving manner during their last case against the cruel, blood soaked rein of Doomsday Killer Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks), literally walking in on Dexter in his abandoned church lair as he finally sunk the knife into the end of the world predicting looney!

Emotionally unstable and uniquely vulnerable since the death of her lover, world weary Detective Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) and then betrayed by her current sex-mad beau, Joey Quinn (Desmond Harington), Deborah, almost paralleling her adoptive brother's mindset, has been travelling on a dark and lonely path, despite what should have been one of the best times of her life: her promotion to detective and department boss creating a tense situation of mistrust from her friends and work colleagues whom she's now superior to, and feeling reined in by her former boss Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Velez), who's always butting in unhelpfully and cashing in politically with the top floor management on her rookie commander's occasional successes. And now, during all this, she finds out that her number one family bed rock, despite his weird moments, is a serial killer! Oh, how Jeremy Kyle would become a serial killer himself to get this duo on his show...

Dexter Season 7 Trailer (HD) - YouTube

New villains in Miami: Ray Stevenson as Isaak Sirko and Jason Gedrick as George Novikov.

Behind the scenes, the shows always enthusiastic writing team have been carefully building up Debra's mind-fucked love for her brother in the weirdest kind of way possible that hasn't been seen since Luke Skywalker uncomfortably (and regrettably with the passing of time and the eventual family revelation) kissed his sister-to-be Princess Leia in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK! Adding new layers to Jennifer Carpenter's always quirky performance and character, it's going to be interesting to see whether she'll continue to care and protect him after what's been discovered. Will this be the final crack in her psyche? And just what will such an emotional confrontation do to Dexter, both as a man, a father (to little baby Harrison and his adopted children) and his career in the police force? Hopefully giving the series an adrenaline kick, it's going to be a blast seeing how this particular and fan popular family dynamic, so crucial to the series in the past, will be affected.

A shoulder to bleed on. Dexter seeks solace with girlfriend Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski)

Guest starring ROME star Ray Stevenson as a psychopathic Ukranian gangster adding his own brand of chaos to the mix, Jason Gedrick as the manager of an elite gentleman's nightclub where a major murder takes place, and Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay, Dexter's new love interest, possibly with as dark a heart as her new beau, plus the return of Josh Cooke as Dexter's simmering new enemy, jealous wannabe crime profiler and computer expert Louis Greene, this new season, specifically designed to tie into the eighth and final run of the series next year, looks set to send viewers once more down an interesting but no less compellingly macabre, and often darkly funny, new direction.

Season Seven of DEXTER arrives on the UK's FOX channel in 2013.

Check out the DEXTER: EARLY CUTS webisode series: New Episode of Dexter Early Cuts Webseries | Daily Dead