This story is spoiler-free for Dexter: New Blood, but contains detailed plot-points for the original series.
Ending any series on a high note is a daunting task. People were enraged over the “fade to black” tail end of The Sopranos, and the phrase “pulled a Lost” has entered the cultural lexicon. A satisfying finale, especially one of a long-running series, is a tall order. Among them, Dexter’s original 2013 series finale, "Remember the Monsters," which sent Dexter into certain death and back out the other side. With the impending revival, Dexter: New Blood, there’s been a lot of “will make up for the finale” rhetoric but hear us out: it's high time for fans to revisit the finale, a stunning episode of television that is likely to be better received upon a rewatch.
When we arrive at the original series finale in Season 8, Dexter (Michael C. Hall) has quit his position at the Miami Metro Police Department and is preparing for his escape to Argentina with his girlfriend and son. Trying to wrap his duties before the arrival of Hurricane Laura, Dexter quashes his urge to kill, opting to leave his latest foe, Oliver Saxon (Darri Ingolfsson), gift wrapped for the police. But Saxon doesn’t go down easy, and escapes Dexter’s confines in time to shoot would-be-arresting officer, Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter), Dexter’s beloved adoptive sister. Unable to leave his injured sister behind, Dexter delays his getaway to visit Deb in the hospital. The two share an unknowing goodbye, reflecting on their lives and their futures. As the storm bears down on Miami, Dexter grounds himself beside his sister who falls suddenly into a vegetative state. He chooses to release her and plunge her into the water like all his victims before her, then he sails directly into the hurricane, presumably to his death. But after a brief fade to black, it’s revealed that Dexter weathered the literal storm, and has set up a new life. Before the credits roll and the Blood Theme plays, a Dexter without his signature voiceover or score breaks the fourth wall and glances at the camera.
Predictably, critics and audiences weren’t immediately warm to this end. Comparing it to the finales of both Lost and Alias, Vulture said “Dexter — and Deb, and all of us — deserved better.” Variety called it a “sloppy send off.” (”) In discussing the upcoming revival in 2020, The Guardian said “[…]you could spend years racking your brain and still not come up with a better example of a show crapping the bed than Dexter.” Even IGN’s own ranked the final season as its worst.
But the rawness can only last so long. And just as countless deep dives into the ending of The Sopranos have proven it to be a piece of art, it’s time to revisit and, yes, maybe even appreciate the once final end of The Dark Defender.
The finale of this beloved anti-hero story finds Dexter at an impasse. For eight seasons, Dexter has been struggling to find human connection while simultaneously satiating his need to kill by murdering those he deems deserving of death. As the series marches to a close, Dexter has finally gotten what he wanted; he has made connections with Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski) and his son, Harrison (Jadon Wells), and resisted the urge to kill. Dexter is racing towards his happy ending, but his story is a tragedy. Remember the Monsters ensures everything Dexter ever wanted ends up being what ruins everything he ever had.
Speaking to EW, writer, Scott Buck, reflected on the misfortune of Dexter Morgan. “For us, that’s the tragedy. The one thing we felt Dexter wanted more than anything was human connections. Even in the first season we see him trying to get with Rudy. Now that he’s finally made that journey and he’s almost poised to have a real human life, he has to give all that up to save Harrison and Hannah.”
Dexter’s human connection became the thing that allowed him to leave behind Saxon without plunging a hunting knife into his sternum. This tipped over the dominoes that left his sister, a woman introduced by Dexter in Season 1 with “if I could have feelings at all, I'd have them for Deb,” being critically injured.
The death of Deb was a difficult display that further bolstered arguments that Deb was “done dirty.” A punching bag, Deb spent the series falling in love with a serial killer who’d used her as a pawn in a game with Dexter, falling in love with another man killed destined to be killed by Dexter’s foe, being cursed with Dexter’s secret forcing her to kill an innocent woman to save him, and then dying at the hands of Dexter’s enemy and Dexter himself. But throughout, she persevered. A tragic character herself, Deb spent her life turning her father’s neglect into motivation, her brother being favored into a way to love him, and deaths into motivation to be a better cop and to save more lives. Deb’s arc was always a fatal one, one of a kind-hearted and innocent woman with the visage of a foul mouth who loses every part of herself when her brother kills the core of who she is.
Before her death, Deb has two important conversations that give her peace. In an ambulance with Joey Quinn (Demond Harrington) she confesses she has done too many dark things in her past (referring to protecting Dexter and taking lives to do so) and Quinn assures her everyone is flawed and her good actions outweigh her bad. Later, she makes peace with Dexter, who laments, “I screwed up your life.” She replies, “it’s not yours to screw up.” After seasons of turmoil, and Deb’s core self being shredded by everything Dexter brings into her orbit, Deb realizes that her life was worth living. She brought goodness to the world, and she can accept Dexter for who he is, wanting him to carry on his life and be happy, allowing her to atone for her actions that enabled him to do so.
Dexter has destroyed Deb, the one person who had always loved him unconditionally. His struggle to find human connection leaves the first connection he had in the dirt. And in finding connection with Hannah, he has created his curse.
On a rampage after seeing his injured sister, Dexter visits Saxon in prison and kills him with a pen. Reviewing the footage, Officers Quinn and Batista (David Zayas) decide it was self-defense and let him go. Seemingly having gotten away with it, Dexter still chooses to launch into the storm on his boat. Dexter is a precision killer who makes few, if any mistakes. The times only times he trips are when he kills for himself instead of Harry’s code. He fumbled when he hunted his mother’s killer, resulting in the collateral damage of innocent Sergeant Doakes (Erik King). This time, killing for Deb, he’s shown too much of himself to too many inquisitive eyes.
Of course, Dexter couldn’t just disappear into Hurricane Laura. Speaking to Vulture, executive producer, John Goldwyn, said "They won't let us kill him. Showtime was very clear about that. When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said, 'Just to be clear, he's going to live.'"
Washing up ashore and setting up his life of solitude seemed a cheap portrayal that kept Dexter alive for the studio, but the finale's scenario was set up in fan favorite Season 4 by the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow). Over his plastic wrapped body, Trinity and Dexter converse:
Trinity: You think you’re better than I am?
Dexter: No, but I want to be.
Trinity: You can’t control the demon inside of you any more than I can control mine.
Dexter: Did you ever actually try?
Trinity: Oh my god, yes. I prayed to be changed. To be made… different.
Dexter: That’s not trying. That’s waiting to be stopped.
Trinity: Worked, didn’t it? Case in point.
Dexter: What’s the alternative, Arthur? Leave? Disappear? Fake my own death and start over again?
Trinity: No, you’ll still be you.
With the return of Lithgow in the revival, there’s a poetry to how the seasons later finale was set up by this conversation, and how it left the door open for New Blood. While we don’t know much about what’s next for Mr. Lindsay (formerly Dexter Morgan), we know that the series plans to wink and nod at the killer of old, teasing us with shots of Dexter over a plastic wrapped body with the lyrics “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.”
Audiences might have lamented the “lumberjack” ending of the Bay Harbor Butcher, they didn’t predict the rise of revivals and how it could mean more of the beloved series. And though the fourth wall break of our bearded lab geek wasn’t immediately well received, the poetic tragedy of the Season 8 finale deserves to be not only revisited, but revered.