Caution! SPOILERS Ahead for Dexter: New Blood.
In Dexter, the main character has a biological son named Harrison, and while he has appeared in every season of the show since season 4 (and most recently in SHOWTIME’s 2021 reboot Dexter: New Blood), Harrison has actually been played by several individuals. At the end of season 4, Harrison’s mother Rita (Julie Benz) was murdered, and he was left to be raised by his serial killer father, while his two half-siblings eventually opted to live with their grandparents. In the original, universally panned Dexter series finale, a slightly older Harrison is left in the care of Dexter’s love interest and fellow killer Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski), who raises him in Argentina after Dexter is presumed dead. Over the course of 4 seasons and a reboot there have been a few Harrison Morgan actors — here’s a list of every single one that’s appeared on the screen.
Viewers have already been introduced to teenage Harrison (Jack Alcott) in Dexter: New Blood season 1. The character appeared first as a figure dressed in all black who seemed to be following Dexter around Iron Lake, New York where he lives. Dexter confronted Harrison after the boy broke into his home looking for proof that the man was indeed his father. Initially, Dexter lied to Harrison and claimed to have no idea what he was talking about. At the end of the first episode, however, he revealed his true identity and asked Harrison to stay in town. Throughout Dexter: New Blood the new Harrison actor plays the character with a mixture of cold indifference, teenage angst, and simmering violence lurking beneath the surface. Unfortunately Dexter: New Blood ends with Harrison killing his father, as he realizes that Dexter actually fits Harry’s code.
While the Harrison Morgan actors only had to go through two recasts, he was also shown in a brief vision of what a future 17-year-old version might look like and was initially played by a handful of uncredited infants before any Harrison performers were officially cast. Young actors tend to get recast more frequently than the older teen and adult actors because small children haven’t had a chance to make their own career decisions yet. Child actors are also very limited in how long and how often they are able to be on set, which is the reason why there are so many instances of young children in recurring roles being played by twins. Here is a look at every actor who has played Harrison Morgan in Dexter.
Various Child Actors Played Harrison In Dexter Season 4
As an honorable mention, there were various uncredited infants who played Harrison in Dexter season 4. Multiple babies were used as little Harrison Morgan actors, introduced to drive the relationship between Dexter and Rita forward as the couple and their two other children, Astor and Cody, had finally found some much-needed peace in suburban Miami – that is, right up until Rita was brutally murdered by John Lithgow’s unforgettable Trinity Killer. It wasn’t until Dexter season 5 that audiences got to see an actor consistently play the part of Harrison, as up until that point, viewers had seen various seemingly interchangeable babies used for the part.
Evan George & Luke Andrew Kruntchev Played Harrison In Dexter Seasons 5-7
The first two actors officially portraying Harrison Morgan before New Blood were actually a set of twins named Evan George and Luke Andrew Kruntchev, who played the part in Dexter seasons 5-7. Much like the way Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were cast as Michelle in ABC’s Full House, Harrison was played by two young actors who were interchanged throughout the episodes. Due to child labor laws, this allowed the showrunners to consistently shoot more often and for more hours than they would’ve been able to had they only used a single actor. It is unclear why the Kruntchev twins left the show after the seventh season wrapped, but there are rumors that it was because of their role on Days of Our Lives.
Lucas Adams Played Harrison In Dexter Season 7
Lucas Adams was cast to play Harrison in a short sequence in Dexter season 7 wherein an idyllic future Harrison was shown while Dexter imagines his life with Hannah in the future. Adams was not officially cast to play the part outside of the sequence in Dexter’s imagination. While two other Harrison Morgan actors had roles in Days of Our Lives, Adams had a part in the soap opera The Young and the Restless early in his career. Adams was too old in 2021 to be cast as the teenage Harrison, so the actor wouldn’t have been eligible for the part even if SHOWTIME had wanted to bring him back.
Jadon Wells Played Harrison In Dexter Season 8
In Dexter season 8, then four-year-old Harrison Morgan was played by the six-year-old Jadon Wells. Some viewers of the show were disappointed in the recast because there was such a stark and obvious difference between the two seasons, but casting Jadon Wells resulted in a much more expressive Harrison Morgan Dexter actor who did a wonderful job at playing the character. Jadon played the part until the original show’s very last episode but is not in any of the episodes in New Blood. Much like the Kruntchev twins, Wells also had a part in Days of Our Lives after his time on Dexter came to an end.
Jack Alcott Played Harrison In Dexter: New Blood
Jack Alcott is the newest Harrison Morgan actor to join the Dexter legacy. When Alcott auditioned and was first cast, he was told he’d be playing a character named Randall who was described as having a close relationship with Dexter and a significant character arc during the course of New Blood. Until he had signed an NDA and received the first script for the show, Alcott had no idea that he would be playing Dexter’s teenage son Harrison.
In New Blood, Hannah mysteriously passed away just a few years after Dexter abandoned her and Harrison and sent them off to Argentina. Harrison found a letter that Dexter sent to Hannah. Its contents made him believe that Dexter abandoned him due to the darkness he saw inside of his son, and this was the reason that Dexter didn’t want to stick around and raise him. This resulted in Harrison having his own internal struggle with darkness that had he never found out about Dexter’s letter – or had Dexter had stayed to help raise him – may not have been there.
Jack Alcott did a great job portraying his at-first contentious relationship with his father. The Harrison Morgan actor was able to delicately balance his deep emotions along with the sense of abandonment that he gained from an absentee father. Harrison’s journey throughout Dexter: New Blood is a rocky one: while he initially rebuffs Dexter, there’s a clear need for him to be accepted. Dexter mentors his son when he realizes that Harrison hosts the same urges as himself, but Harrison takes Harry’s code to a new level and, in a moment of black-and-white morality, he kills Dexter. While the finale was certainly controversial among audiences, the Harrison Morgan actor was praised heavily for his portrayal of the serial killers’ son and mentee. If Dexter: New Blood was to have a second season, there’s no doubt that viewers would be happy to see Jake Alcott return as the character.
How Watching Harrison Grow Up Through Different Actors Made His Journey More Powerful
It’s unknown if showrunners knew Harrison Morgan’s arc from his infancy, but watching the character grow up through different actors has made his journey more powerful. People didn’t get to see Harrison through his later childhood and early teenage years, save for the season 7 episode where Lucas Adams’ Harrison is seen through Dexter’s imagination. Still, that doesn’t mean that Dexter watchers didn’t really see Dexter’s son grow up. When Harrison is first introduced in Dexter season 4, he’s a typical baby, but his presence raises a very important question in people’s minds: will he have Dexter’s killer urges, or will he be normal? More simply, are killers born or are they made? Harrison complicates Dexter’s life and his murders as time marches forward, and the serial killer must learn how to balance his family and his extracurricular activities. It’s relatively normal, and mostly unnoticeable, that the character is played by different babies in his infant stages.
The first major Harrison Morgan actor change occurs after the Trinity Killer makes sure that the baby is born in blood, the same as his father. While the switch-up is clearly due to needing an older actor for the role of Harrison, it does point to a very specific change in the character as a whole. He was recast again in season 8, as a more expressive actor was needed to show that the child had gone through the passage of time. All in all, this was done to round out Harrison’s character. The teenage/adult Harrison was finally revealed in Dexter: New Blood, which showcased just how much the boy had grown and was now a full-fledged adult driven by an inherited killer instinct. Watching Harrison grow up from infancy to his amoral adult self is necessary for the Dexter series, but it also makes his journey that much more powerful and disturbing. Using child actors that could flesh out the character in more specific ways makes his arc more real and the consequences more terrifying.
