TCA: What to Expect From Dexter's Fifth Season

As hard as the critics tried to glean a single spoiler about Dexter's life as a single parent and widower during this morning's TCA panel for the Showtime hit, the cast and executive producers remained tight-lipped. (In fact, as soon as the panel wrapped, the actors were immediately whisked offstage, as opposed to giving critics the traditional fifteen minutes for one-on-one interviews.) Still, despite their hesitation to discuss the show's fifth go-around, Movieline did manage to compile some clues.

· The fifth season starts immediately where the fourth left off: with Dexter discovering Rita dead in the bathtub. Executive producer Sara Colleton said "To cheat that would be to cheat our audience."

· Jennifer Carpenter revealed that her character would be more confident this season: "I think I look at the other cops in the bullpen and I'm one of them now. They all had this sort of wretched experience they walk around with and she's sort of playing the game. It's a new strength, but it's also compartmentalizing in a way she hasn't before."

· The L Word star Katherine Moennig will join Dexter for a one-episode appearance as a tattoo artist. Vince will take Deb to see her after she finds a tattoo-related clue to a case she is investigating for the Miami Metro.

· Executive producer Chip Johannessen revealed that writers had originally envisioned this season's guest star Peter Weller as a regular character named Weller during the show's first season. Weller will guest as "an ex-cop, a cocaine cowboy-era guy who gets into some trouble with the corruption thing and ends up posing a problem for Dexter."

· As far as the other guest stars go this season (Jonny Lee Miller, Julia Stiles, Shawn Hatosy, Maria Doyle Kennedy), the crew would only say that each of those characters would help Dexter "along the way in different capacities."

· After a few seasons where Dexter pursued one primary adversary, producers are giving him smaller baddies to deal with this season, partially because they think that Dexter's experience with the Trinity Killer was extraordinarily traumatic for him.

· Dexter's relationship with his father Harry will become less adversarial.

· Although Julie Benz will be appearing this season, she will absolutely not appear in the same way that Dexter's father Harry appears (that is, as a ghost-like presence who speaks to Dexter from the dead).

· The panel did not deny that Deb would discover that Dexter is a serial killer in season five.