Dexter: New Blood spoilers ahead
Dexter: New Blood star Clancy Brown has opened up about the latest twist involving his character Kurt Caldwell in the ninth episode of the Showtime series.
The seasoned serial killer was finally unmasked by Dexter (Michael C Hall) and his son Harrison (Jack Alcott) after they decided to work together to take Kurt down once and for all.
This eventually led to the father-and-son duo exploring Kurt's cabin and discovering his gruesome version of a kill room, complete with all the bodies of his female victims on display – including Molly.
Deciding that Kurt needed to die, Dexter and Harrison eventually incapacitated Kurt with a syringe, before the killer-of-killers then put an end to Kurt's reign of terror for good – but did Brown always know his character wouldn't survive the limited series' run?
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"Oh, well, yeah, I mean, it's Dexter," the actor told Collider. "He's not going to survive. We know he's not going to survive. We don't know how, but we know he's not going to make it."
He continued to add that he has no idea what happens next, explaining: "The last episode, I don't know what happens in it. That's been completely redacted from me [...] I think it started to get redacted right after I got killed. It gives me a reason to tune in."
Brown is well-known for playing villains on-screen – see Highlander's The Kurgan and Captain Byron Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption – and he also went on to discuss how he was able to understand his latest character's motivations.
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"Back in the day when behavioural science units and stuff were really sexy and everybody was doing that work, I did a couple of shows where I was either supposed to be a bad guy or a good guy trying to find the bad guy or whatever it was, but the way they approached those kind of sociopathic and psychopathic roles... we know about them now. They're part of the culture now," he explained.
"We kind of know these little markers that you have to hit, that there's always some kind of abuse as a child, and there's always some kind of a reason, which is a good thing. That the culture knows there's a reason these people are the way they are."
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The 62-year-old continued: "But we also are pretty familiar now with narcissists and sociopaths and how that can even evolve into psychopathy and all the rest of that. So as long as those things were in the script, then that becomes very easy then. You don't have to find those moments and sneak them in. They're all there.
"We got Kurt's reason for being the way he was. And we got his ritual. We understood his ritual. It starts to fall off the rails, of course, when Dexter discovers who he is, and it falls off the rails when his son is killed. So there's all those things that send him over the edge that make him not a good serial killer anymore. Because there are good serial killers.
"That's what the show is about."
Dexter: New Blood airs on Showtime in the US and on Sky Atlantic in the UK. All episodes of Dexter are also available on NOW.
Reporter, Digital Spy
Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
