About

Dexter Staring, also known as the Dexter Stare meme, is a reaction image and exploitable image macro depicting actor Michael C. Hall as his character Dexter Morgan from the Dexter TV show sitting in a dimly lit room with a lamp behind him while looking blankly into the camera. The format is typically used in image caption memes and POV memes with some altering Dexter's appearance.

Origin

The original scene used in the meme comes from season two, episode nine of the original Dexter TV series, titled "Resistance Is Futile," which was aired on November 25th, 2007.^[1] In the clip, Dexter returns to his apartment when he realizes that somebody's been there, discovering that his blood slides (his keepsakes from his murders) are gone from the hiding place he kept them. Dexter then looks directly into the camera as a "dolly zoom" occurs and fear sets in as he thinks he's been discovered as the Bay Harbor Butcher.

The scene was uploaded by the YouTube^[2] channel Clashed PR on July 24th, 2024, titled "Lundy Found Dexter's Blood Slides," which received over 1.1 million views, 91,000 likes and 460 comments in roughly one year.

The first known use of the Dexter Stare meme as a reaction image appeared on August 22nd, 2022, when X^[3] / Twitter user @drsoap8 posted it in a quote-tweet about another user claiming Better Call Saul had better cinematography than Eternals, receiving over 470 likes in three years.

Spread

The meme of Dexter Morgan staring into the camera continued to spread over the following years into the mid-2020s, eventually being used as an exploitable as it was edited into other memes or altered.

On June 4th, 2024, Redditor Bensons4beds07 posted an example about their reaction to the finale of the TV show Mr. Robot to the /r/MrRobot^[4] subreddit, receiving over 200 upvotes and 10 comments in a year.

On May 5th, 2025, TikTok^[6] user @yosemiter_ posted a version of the meme in reference to the COVID-19 Pandemic, receiving over 16,200 likes, 1,600 saves and 60 comments in four months.

On June 23rd, Instagram^[5] user @ryangosling.exe posted an edit combining the reaction image of Dexter with the Thousand-Yard Stare meme, receiving over 2,200 likes in three months.

On September 10th, 2025, X^[7] / Twitter user @ExtremeBlitz__ used the meme of Dexter to react to seeing a graphic video of the Charlie Kirk Shooting at Utah Valley University, receiving over 62,000 views, 51,000 likes and 30 replies in an hour.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References