The killer's out of the bag!   ‘Dexter’ season 7 reveal the terrifying truth in its first episode of the season, as Dexter tries to keep the extent of his double-life from his sister Debra following her discovery of Travis Marshall, while Miami Metro loses one of its own, and a young woman's death begins unraveling the thread of a Ukrainian crime syndicate.

Last season’s ‘Dexter’ finale “This Is The Way The World Ends” saw the rampage of Doomsday Killer Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks) finally coming to an end, as Debra discovered her brother right in the act of his ritualistic killing, so how does “Are You..."  get the new season started?  Will the show be able to survive now that Deb knows the truth about Dexter?

Read on for your in-depth recap of everything you need to know 'Dexter’ season 7 premiere , “Are You...?”

Dexter races to the airport, but quickly finds he needs to stop for gas.  Surprisingly, the machine declines all of his credit cards, forcing him to dip into a pack in his trunk for some cold hard cash!  As the killer ruminates about the secrets everyone keeps, he books a flight to Budapest, eying another to Kiev, Ukraine.

Back at the scene we left last season, Deb immediately pulls her gun on Dexter and instructs him to back away.  Explaining that Travis Marshall is his victim on the altar, Dexter pleads with Deb to lower her gun as he covers his tracks by saying Travis attacked him, and the anger built up inside of him after Rita’s death took over.  Being a forensics expert, he naturally knew how to kill Travis without leaving any evidence, hence the plastic, but Deb still wants to call in to Miami Metro.  Dexter stops her, pointing out how an investigation would complicate both their lives, and see Dexter locked away if if he plead Temporary Insanity.  Manipulatively, he coaxes his sister that their best option is to burn the church, making it look like Travis committed ritual suicide.

As Deb goes to get the gas, Dexter arranges the murder scene (accidentally dropping his blood slide) as he flashes back to a day when he and Harry returned home to find young Debra playing with a dog.  Fearing what Dexter might have done to the animal, Harry tells his wife that they can’t keep it, in spite of Deb’s happiness.  When Deb returns in the present, still on edge over what they’ve done, the pair light the church ablaze and flee.

Not willing to leave him alone, Dexter and Deb sit in silence on the peer the next morning, as the calls come in that Miami Metro has found the burning church.  Back at the scene of the crime, Dexter posits to the team what Travis must have done to himself, while Deb looks on.  Noting plastic accidentally left on the foot of the body, Deb distracts Masuka long enough for her brother to retrieve it.  La Guerta calls the team outside to talk to the press, but once they’ve gone finds the discarded blood slide Dexter had accidentally left the previous night...

At night, Dexter returns to his home to find Louis on the wrong side of the apartment, and having recently used his computer.  Apologizing, Louis reunites with Jamie and departs.  Once they’ve gone, Dexter checks on the security of his blood slides, before realizing he’s lost Travis’s!  Meanwhile back at his own apartment Louis complains to Jamie about Dexter’s attitude, before cancelling the man’s credit cards over the internet!  What could he be up to?

Deb arrives home, still shaken from the day’s events, when Mike calls wondering why Travis wouldn’t have had his car at the church.  Deb dismisses the significance, but okays him to follow up about it as Mike notices a car with a flat tire on the side of the road.  Mike pulls over to help, despite the man’s insistence he has it handled, but when a search of the trunk reveals a dead girl, the man shoots and kills Mike before he has a chance to react.  Frustrated, the man pulls a bracelet off the dead girl, and departs in Mike’s car, leaving him by the roadside.  Pour one out, y’all.

The next morning, Debra drops by Dexter’s before work with an important query: how was he so perfectly prepared to kill Travis, with plastic, knives and an entirely different outfit?  Dexter dismisses that everything not belonging to Travis was something every forensics expert would have with them, before once again remembering how said it made Debra to have to give up the dog all those year s ago.  Unsure of what else to say to pacify Deb, Dexter listens as his sister gets the call that Mike’s been shot.  Debra hurries out, with Dexter claiming he’ll take his own car, but once his sister leaves Dexter kicks through a section of wall to retrieve his emergency getaway pack.

At the scene of the crime, Dexter arrives to find the coroner taking Mike’s body away, and quickly identifies how the girl in the car’s trunk was beaten to death.  While Deb eyes him down, Dexter uses his phone to identify the girl as Ukrainian Kaja Soroka, before secretly swiping the driver’s fingerprints from the car turn signal.  Deb takes a moment to herself to breathe, but in the process has a flashback to her time on the table of the Ice Truck Killer, wrapped up exactly as Dexter had wrapped up Travis!  Uh-oh!  Once she arrives back at work, she pulls the old files out of storage.

Meanwhile, the team identifies Kaja Soroka as a stripper from a chain of nightclubs they’d previously investigated, while Dexter uses the fingerprint he’d swiped to identify the driver.  Before he completes the search however, Deb enters asking how Dexter perfectly recreated his own brother’s plastic handiwork, but Dexter turns it around by asking what Deb was doing at the church.  Momentarily defeated, Deb slinks away as the computer completes its search: Ukranian criminal Viktor Baskov!  Dexter leaves to find his next target, while Deb snoops around his lab space, pausing over a photo of she, Dexter and Harrison together.

Investigating Viktor’s apartment to find hasty packing, blood and gunshot residue, Dexter admits to himself that he shouldn’t be doing a kill, but needs to feel that rush of control.  Returning to the scene at the episode’s beginning, Dexter attempts to book the same getaway flight as Viktor, paying for the ticket in cash, and explaining the needles in his bag to security before he spies his target.  Dexter corners Viktor in a bathroom, drugging him and escorting him out of the facility in a wheelchair.

Elsewhere, Quinn and Batista shut down a local strip club looking for information about Kaja Soroka, recognizing the owner as a man named George Nabokov, but find nothing of use.  Reporting their findings to Deb later, she gives them the rest of the night off, while Masuka explains that Dexter too has taken the night off.  Meanwhile, Quinn and Batista toast Mike over drinks, confessing that both Batista’s transfer threats and Quinn’s alcohol addiction counselor were bluffs from either side. Well, that’s convenient.

Viktor awakens to find himself strapped down in the airport’s unclaimed baggage room, with Dexter looking over him.  He pleads with Dexter to release him for either money or fear of his powerful friends, though Dexter’s heard it all before.  Cementing his control over the situation, Dexter varies his usual kill routine by placing a bag over Viktor’s head, and clubbing him to death with a fire extinguisher.  Meanwhile back at the strip club, George Nabokov places a calls to a mysterious, well-dressed man in the Ukraine named Isaac (Ray Winston), informing him that Viktor should arrive there soon and the police have nothing on Kaja Soroka's murder.

Deb tries to relieve stress with a run, but quickly finds herself unable.  She calls looking for Dexter, but instead finds Jamie, who claims that Dexter is out working late (you know, the opposite of what Masuka said), something that happens quite a bit.  Out on the ocean, Dexter dumps Viktor’s body as he remembers Deb being given a stuffed dog to replace the real one all those years ago.  Dexter nearly reveals his young, murderous instinct before Harry stops him, and reminds him that Deb would never be able to love him if she knew the truth.  Realizing how screwed up things have gotten, adult Dexter reasons that the compassion he showed Travis wasn’t a good fit for him.

Deb pours over the Ice Truck Killer case files once more, briefly remembering that Dexter was present longer than simply rescuing her.  Meanwhile back at the station, LaGuerta asks Masuka if forensics aver takes blood slides of crime scenes, to which he point out that the only one who ever did was Sgt. Doakes, the bay harbor butcher.  On her way out, LaGuerta swipes the slide from evidence.

Arriving back at his apartment, Dexter finds Debra sitting in the living room, having pulled out all his tools, blood slides, and equipment from his double life.  He admits to having killed the people in the blood slides, and when she flat out asks if he’s a serial killer, he helplessly offers a weak “yes.”

Ruh-roh!  We have to admit, we were largely worried that we'd spend the season with Deb slowly discovering the full truth about her brother's murderous lifestyle, but tonight's premiere laid it all out on the line.  The big reveal injects the latest season of 'Dexter' with a lot more energy than its had in years, so hopefully no good fortune will be squandered by the prevalence of this mysterious Ukrainian crime ring.  The episode also managed to sweep all the Batista/Quinn beef under the rug, so all that remains to be seen is how Deb will respond to the shocking news about her brother!  Either way, the show finally has our attention again.

What about you?  Did you get your fill of darkly dangerous ‘Dexter’ drama?  What did you think about the premiere ? Join us next week for another all-new ‘Dexter’ episode recap of “Sunshine and Frosty Swirl” on Showtime!

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