Our Father (Dexter)

"Our Father" is the third season premiere and twenty-fifth overall episode of the American television drama series Dexter, which first aired on September 28, 2008, on Showtime in the United States.^[1] The episode was written by Clyde Phillips and directed by Keith Gordon. In the episode, which takes place several months after the second-season finale, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) mistakenly kills an innocent man but forms a friendship with the man's brother, well-known assistant district attorney Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits). Dexter's sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), meanwhile, has turned over a new leaf in her life and is determined to become a detective.

To carry the remainder of the third season, Dexter's writers introduced Miguel as a new character so that his relationship with Dexter could serve as a "central arc". In order to allow them to explore Dexter's psychological and emotional reactions, the writers revealed Dexter's girlfriend Rita Bennett (Julie Benz) to be pregnant. They also had Dexter kill an innocent person to develop the ongoing theme of rebellion despite initially rejecting the idea of Dexter killing "somebody who doesn't deserve it". Filming of the episode began in early June in Los Angeles, California at Sunset Gower Studios, though a small crew flew to Miami, Florida, where the show is set, to film short pieces of Dexter, which were integrated into "Our Father" and other episodes. The episode brought in 1.22 million viewers, an improvement from second season's premiere and finale, and attracted mixed reviews from critics.