Dexter‘s sixth season finished on a cliff-hanger that saw Deborah running to Dexter to confess her love for him only to find him in the middle of killing the Doomsday Killer. They exchange a look of mutual horror – and then it ends…

With a further two seasons commissioned (Season 7 begins in the US next month), it looks as if the creators of Dexter have given themselves plenty to chew on.

As fans of the show will know, Dexter usually has a question obsessing him in each season, which he inadvertently finds the answer to through pitting himself against a killer. In Season 4 Dexter’s question was whether you can be a sociopathic killer and also a good family man, in Season 5 it was about whether you should try and forgive those who wronged you or take the revenge option, and in Season 6 the question on Dexter’s mind was if a sociopath can work with his dark passenger in order to live a relatively good life or if he’s condemned either to give in to it or fight a (losing) battle with it.

With the news that in Season 7 Dexter’s opposite number will be the leader of a Russian-organised crime syndicate (Ray Stevenson) who comes to Miami to investigate the murder of an associate, perhaps the ‘theme’ of the season will be ethics and tribal loyalty. Namely, can you be true to your values and beliefs while protecting someone you love or feel deeply loyal to?

This is likely to be a major issue for Deborah (Jennifer Carpenter), who’ll be in the position of having to decide which matters more to her: her career – and more than that, her ethics – or her feelings for Dexter.

It will be a re-run of the position her father Harry (James Remar) found himself in, except that in Harry’s case Dexter wasn’t yet a serial killer and things were winding down for him on the professional front. Deborah’s position could end up compromising her even more than Harry’s did.

As for Dexter, he’s never been put in a situation where he’s had to choose between someone he loves and his own freedom. It’s impossible to envision him killing Deborah, one of the few people he loves, just to shut her up, but he’s going to have to do some pretty fast talking if he’s going to win her round to his cause.

Yvonne Strahovski will play Yvonne McKay, a consultant to Miami Metro with a past she’s trying to forget whom Dexter begins to wonder about. As we saw in Season 5 with Lumen (Julia Stiles), Dexter is drawn to the idea of a woman like himself – a woman with a dark passenger of her own, but one that doesn’t run her like Lila’s (Jaime Murray) did.

Will his curiosity about Hannah turn into something more? And if so will that draw Deborah into a conflict with a love rival who could provide the additional challenge of making her look at her own complicity with destructiveness?

Oh yes and lets not forget Debs’ jilted lover and all-round wild card Joey Quinn (Desmond Harrington), never Dexter’s biggest fan, whose detective instincts sometimes get misdirected into snooping on people he doesn’t like the look of. If he senses Deb’s feelings for Dexter he won’t be able to stop himself digging deeper.

Something similar goes for enigmatic opportunist La Guerta (Lauren Velez). Her relationship with Deborah has never been straightforward. If she senses that her potential career rival is hiding something she isn’t exactly going to let that one go…

The web of secrecy just gets thicker and thicker.

What are your hopes for Season 7? Let us know below…

> Buy Season 6 on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the Season 7 trailer…