Who is the Sleepy-Eyed Stranger? ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Season 2 introduces a terrifying new killer
Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) has made a reputation for himself by pursuing killers the police fail to catch. Season 2 of ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ brings him back to New York City three years after Season 1, and episode 2, titled ‘Fallen,’ introduced one of his new targets on November 6. This target is the Sleepy-Eyed Stranger, identified as Ray Ballard (Gabriel Luna), one of the three remaining members of the killers’ club that Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage) led in Season 1.
Charley Brown (Uma Thurman), formerly Prater’s head of security, names him as the first target after offering to assist Dexter in eliminating the club’s remaining members. Dexter refuses to encounter the targets on their home turf, so he demands that Charley bring them to his turf in New York. Charley, who previously hosted meet-and-greet dinners for Prater’s secret society of serial killers, sends Ray Ballard an email invitation to the dinner. Dexter will show up in disguise at the dinner as “Red Schmidt” (a real New York serial killer, The Dark Passenger, whom Dexter previously killed and previously posed as to get onto Prater’s circle list in Season 1).
Charley then sets up a rented New York townhouse with two bedrooms – one for “Sleepy” and one for “Red Schmidt” – and a kill room basement with noise-proofing so Dexter can safely kill Ballard. Ballard takes the bait, accepts the invitation, and begins traveling to New York. Charley keeps the exact townhouse address out of the email invite until Ballard arrives in town, at which point she plans to be the hostess and introduce him to “Red.”
Notably, Ray has a routine he goes through before killing his victims. He creeps into the homes of his victims, messing around with items in the house, confusing the victim. He then murders the victim while they are sleeping. Showrunner Clyde Phillips shared how the killer has a pattern to his killings in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in September, saying he moves things “just enough to haunt them — until he finally does the deed that’s made him infamous.” Episode 2 shows that pattern in action, set to Nine Inch Nails’ ‘The Day the World Went Away.’
In Episode 2, Dexter and Charley are at an open-air restaurant to put the Ray Ballard plan into action. When a waiter assumes they are a couple, Dexter says they should let people think they are dating, to which Charley agrees by holding his hand over the table. Their talk is interrupted by a dead guy falling through the roof above onto a Broadway newsstand that lands directly beside their table. Charley quickly exits to avoid the police.
Earlier in the episode, Five Borough Killer (Dan Stevens) calls NYPD Homicide to inform them that he will be putting on “a very special show” on Broadway. As cops descended on the Theater District, the killer struck further down Broadway, where Dexter and Charley were dining. Dexter looks up from the wreckage, catches sight of the Five Borough Killer on the rooftop, and promises himself he’ll get him before he adds a third victim.
