Review: Dexter: The Experience

This immersive pop-up experience gives guests the chance to become Dexter's Dark Passenger and relive key moments from his life.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

To coincide with the release of Dexter: Resurrection on Paramount+ this week, Dexter: The Experience has opened in London for a four-day run at 83 Rivington Street in Shoreditch. The promenade immersive experience invites visitors to become the physical manifestation of serial killer Dexter's Dark Passenger and step into the shoes of the TV series' titular character as they relive several key moments from Dexter's past. Tickets to the experience were available free of charge (though limited) through Fever, with a walk-up queue available outside the venue for those who missed out.

While Dexter: The Experience is by no means the first immersive pop-up experience to open in London alongside the debut of a new TV series, it stands alongside The Boys Get The V and IT Chapter 2 at The Vaults as one of the strongest examples of this kind of event that we've seen in recent years. Featuring faithful recreations of some of the show's most well-known moments and places, a tone that matches the source material perfectly, and some unexpected moments along the way, it's a hugely satisfying experience for fans of the show and massively exceeded our expectations for a free-to-attend experience.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

Dexter: The Experience begins in a small plastic-lined room with an introductory video recapping key events of the TV series, acting as both a refresher for long-time fans and some much-needed context for those who have never seen the show. With a voiceover from Michael C. Hall, which has been recorded especially for the experience, the disembodied voice of Dexter explains that guests are there to act as his 'Dark Passenger' and are coming along for a ride through his memories.

As the voiceover concludes, Dexter's foster father, Harry Morgan, enters the room dressed in a full police uniform. Speaking directly to the group with sustained eye contact and a serious expression, he refers to each audience member individually as 'Dexter' (a practice that occurs repeatedly throughout the experience).

In an extended monologue, Harry discusses the darkness he saw in Dexter as a child and recounts the code he created that would allow his adopted son's bloodthirsty urges to be satisfied without harming innocent people. Much like in the show, Michael C. Hall's voiceover occasionally interjects to provide a window into Dexter's mind, which by the end of the scene is focused less on Harry and more on locating Harrison (a plot point that'll be explored in the upcoming series).

Moving into a dimly lit, blood-splattered shipping container, guests then get to experience the defining moment of Dexter's childhood – when his mother was killed with a chainsaw in front of him and his brother Brian. It's a tense few minutes as the sound of screams and the chainsaw motor reverberate around the container's metal walls in near darkness before Harry bursts in to save the twins and escort people to safety.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

Jumping forward in time, guests then enter the Forensics Analysis office at Miami Metro Police Department and are greeted by CSI Chief Tanya Martin, who features in the 1990s-set prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin. The timelines of scenes featured in the experience get purposefully muddled here, as guests have entered a memory from the Season 2 episode 'There's Something About Harry', despite Tanya not being present in either that season or any of the other 90+ episodes in the original series. This is explained away by some tongue-in-cheek voiceover from Hall, who claims, 'That's how memory works, I guess. When your life flashes before your eyes, things get a bit...' before being cut off by Tanya.

Guests are told that earlier in the day, a wooden box containing fifty blood slides from The Bay Harbour Butcher was found in a Miami International Airport car park. While the blood slides belong to Dexter, his colleague, Sgt James Doakes, is being framed after recently figuring out the truth about Dexter, and the audience needs to cover their tracks and ensure Doakes is firmly tied to the recent discovery.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

In a race against the clock, the blood slides need to be inserted into an analyser to load the associated DNA match on a central computer. That information then needs to be transferred onto whiteboards around the room. There's frantic sprinting across the room while screams of blood types, health conditions and toxicology information are shared. While there doesn't appear to be a way to fail at these puzzles, those in our group gave it their all regardless, which may be down to Tanya encouraging both teams of 'rookies' to keep working as fast as possible.

While it's hard to take it in while sprinting around the room, there's an impressive attention to detail given to everything in the space. There's piles of Playboy magazines left by Masuka, an expired ID badge showing a younger, Original Sin-era Dexter, a blood centrifuge and an evidence board with red string linking multiple people and places, amongst other smaller details, such as a post-it note reminding Masuka to tell Batista 'the joke about the horse and the nun' on a computer monitor and other in-world notes from more of the series unseen characters.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

In the next space, the group is tasked with piecing together a mannequin on a mortuary table from two huge bins filled with dozens of body parts. This puzzle, which has been set by The Ice Truck Killer (Dexter's brother Brian), is set within the back of a refrigerated truck and requires more attention to detail than initially appears.

While all of the mannequin pieces would no doubt fit together, the challenge lies in successfully locating the body parts with numbered symbols engraved on them. There's a strong reveal at the end of this puzzle that ties it back to the events we experienced earlier in the shipping container, further cementing the fact that Dexter and Brian are two sides of the same coin, forever linked by their shared traumatic past.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

Of course, it wouldn't be a pop-up immersive experience without some photo opportunities. In Dexter: The Experience, they come in the way of a full-scale recreation of the blood-filled bathtub that Dexter's wife, Rita, is found in from Season 4 and the infamous plastic-lined kill rooms that Dexter sets up countless times throughout the series. Hidden amongst these scenes are numerous rewarding easter eggs for those who examine the spaces closely enough, including a phone that plays Rita's final voicemail to Dexter and a collection of obituary clippings put together by Nurse Mary (who featured in Season 1 of the original series and Dexter: Original Sin).

Photos: Harvey Williams-Fairley

The final scene of Dexter: The Experience has guests enter a situation unfamiliar to even the most die-hard fan, as it offers a glimpse into Dexter's future and a peek into what's to come in Dexter: Resurrection.

Set in the hallway of a New York hotel, which Dexter has tracked Harrison to, guests are tasked with working out the code to open a locked door. Throughout the space, there are UV-based clues, which all appear in succession after the previous clue is found. While the previous puzzles in Dexter: The Experience required teams to work in smaller groups, this final challenge has everyone working together. There's some light lateral thinking involved, with each clue delivered in the form of a riddle, but much like how Dexter can escape any precarious situation largely unscathed, guests will likely succeed regardless of how well they solve these riddles.

Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley

While it's perhaps unfair to judge a free-to-attend pop-up experience against the countless other shows on offer within London's immersive scene, Dexter: The Experience still holds up pretty well in comparison. With detailed sets full of easter eggs, it's clear that great care has been taken to faithfully recreate scenes and environments from the original series to a degree even the biggest superfan wouldn't find fault with. The 45-minute-long experience moves at a brisk pace with little downtime, and tonally it matches the original series wonderfully. While there's not a huge amount of freedom offered to guests inside the experience, the puzzles presented were all varied and offered ample opportunity to step into the shoes of the show's titular character with no real-life killing required.

Running for a limited time, Dexter: The Experience more than earns its place among London’s strongest IP-driven immersive events. It also demonstrates that, given the right conditions, even free-ticket pop-ups can deliver something with real atmosphere, attention to detail, and a satisfying narrative, rather than feeling like a forgettable promotional event. It’s a killer way to spend an hour, and we’d gladly return as Dexter’s Dark Passenger if the opportunity arose.

★★★★

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Dexter: The Experience runs at 83 Rivington Street in Shoreditch until 13th July 2025. Tickets are sold out, but there is a standby queue available for those without pre-booked tickets. For more information on Dexter: The Experience, visit dextertheexperience.co.uk

For more reviews of immersive shows like Dexter: The Experience, check out our recent Reviews.