When Dexter premiered on Showtime in 2006, it became an immediate hit. Based on the series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter drew an audience initially due to its unique premise of a forensic technician for the Miami Police Department named Dexter Morgan, who, while he tries to be a good person, has a surging darkness underneath the facade that compels him to kill. He takes his urges out on killers who have gotten away with their crimes, and becomes a twisted take on a modern vigilante.
Dexter was portrayed with quiet ferociousness by Michael C. Hall, who was coming off a star making turn on the hit HBO series Six Feet Under. With a great supporting cast, especially Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter’s foul-mouthed Miami detective sister, Deb, and thrilling plots that saw Dexter go up against a new villain every season, Dexter was riding high as one of television’s most popular series.
That popularity reached its heights in Season 4, when Dexter went up against the creepy Trinity Killer, played to frightening brilliance by John Lithgow. The two took viewers on a thrill ride that ended with them both winning Golden Globes for their performances. The season was so monumental, however, that there was nowhere to go after that. It doesn’t mean that it fell off the cliff, but every season after that lived in the shadow of Season 4.
The Original 'Dexter' Didn't Know How to Say Goodbye To Its Antihero
Dexter probably went on a little too long, making it to Season 8, where there were too many twists and main character deaths, with the series almost trying too hard to be shocking. Then came the infamous series finale in 2013, one that has been much maligned in the decade since as one of the worst TV goodbyes ever. It ends with Deb dead, a mercy killing at Dexter’s hand, and our antihero driving his boat into a hurricane to his presumed doom. Instead, the show’s creators are unable to let go, as one last shot shows Dexter alive, having faked his death and moved to Oregon to become a bearded lumberjack. It was completely out of left field and felt like a cheap end for a character we’d spend eight years getting to know.
For the next decade, there was always that gnawing idea of giving Dexter a better final chapter. With so many shows coming back for reboots, why couldn’t our favorite serial killer do it too? So he did. In 2021, Dexter Morgan returned in Dexter: New Blood. While longtime fans may have been excited about a possible course correction that would get the bad taste of the past finale out of their mouths, it started off on the wrong foot before it even began, for Dexter: New Blood never truly deserved to happen. It was green-lit for the wrong reasons. Dexter wasn’t being brought back simply because fans missed him. He was being brought back as an apology. It was like getting back into a toxic relationship that had lasted too long and was no longer working because we were promised that this time would be different. The original series sputtered out in the last season because it no longer knew where to go. How many people could Dexter kill, only to get caught, then get away with it, get caught, then get away with it again? It became just a series of familiar beats. Yet eight years away was somehow supposed to change all of that. All the mistakes of the past could be overcome and smoothed over simply through the passage of time.
TV has a long history of not getting finales to major series right. Michael C. Hall was part of a perfect series finale with Six Feet Under, but for every Six Feet Under or Newhart or M.A.S.H. was a Seinfeld or Lost. The latter two are seen as imperfect endings, but they stayed that way. Outside some Curb Your Enthusiasm appearances, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine didn’t get back together for one more run, and those poor souls on Lost didn’t find themselves back on the island again. The finales didn’t work and that was that. Dexter, however, gave in to the criticism and decided to try again.
'Dexter: New Blood' Sought to Fix an Imperfect Original Ending
Fans of the original turned out for Dexter: New Blood, which averaged 8 million viewers a week for the 10-episode revival. At first, it even worked, despite the odds. Dexter Morgan was thankfully no longer an Oregon lumberjack, though he was still in hiding, living in a very small town in New York and calling himself Jim Lindsay, while working at a sporting goods store. In the past series, it was his adopted father (James Remar) as the ghost who haunted his conscience, but now the brilliant move was made to bring back Deb to be the potty-mouthed angel on his shoulder. Dexter also found a new foe in Kurt Caldwell, played by Clancy Brown with a believable creepiness not seen since Lithgow’s run.
While it was fun, not all of it worked. For one, Dexter is trying so hard to stay off the radar, yet he chooses the town’s police chief, Angela (Julia Jones), to be his girlfriend, a move that makes no sense if he cares about keeping his true identity hidden. He also finds the most unsatisfying reason to kill again, going after Kurt Caldwell’s son, Matt (Steven M. Robertson), when he finds out that this person he barely knows once accidentally killed some people in a boating accident years ago and got away with it. Dexter’s first kill in so many years should have happened because of a major moment, but this part of the story is underwhelming.
The series does find its footing by reintroducing Dexter’s son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), who has tracked down the father who abandoned him. Dexter takes him in and we see how not only damaged Harrison is, but that he also has his own violence-releasing Dark Passenger. We wonder if Harrison is going to end up becoming a killer himself that Dexter has to deal with, but instead, he ends up saving his troubled son from Kurt Caldwell, and after confessing who he is, lets Harrison be in the kill room with him when he ends Caldwell’s life.
We then wonder if father and son are destined to become a Batman and Robin-like murderous duo, but instead, Dexter ends up finally caught and arrested for his Bay Harbor Butcher past. It then felt like after that the show's creators didn’t know what to do with the myriad of different paths, so they just chose one randomly out of a hat. Firstly, Dexter, in his attempt to escape, kills an innocent cop named Logan (Alano Miller) who has been nothing but nice to Dexter and his son the entire season. Dexter has killed innocent people before, but this one feels so unnecessary and goes against the code he was taught as a child. It’s a twist for the sake of having one, turning Dexter into someone completely different from the character we knew so well.
Dexter then meets up with Harrison in the woods. When it’s revealed that Dexter killed an innocent man, the father decides to save his son by making sure that he can’t be part of his life any longer. He tells Harrison to kill him, that it’s the only way it can end, even though they were just talking about moving to L.A., and he could have simply confessed, gone to prison, and accepted his fate. That would have rid Harrison of him too without adding to the torment by putting his father’s death on his hands. Harrison, who before was in awe of his father’s revealed secret, now so easily shoots him, only for Angela to show up and strangely let Harrison go, telling him she’ll take responsibility for shooting Dexter.
Dexter Morgan's Flawed Story Needs to Be Left Alone
Though the outrage was not quite as intense as the original finale, the consensus was that this one didn’t work either. A well-received season crash-landed in its final episode because it didn’t know how to reach the runway. Some were upset because Dexter died. Others were upset because he didn’t go to prison. And many were upset, not because of Dexter’s fate, but because of how out of character he acted getting there. It was rushed, with the cunning Dexter making stupid mistake after stupid mistake, and doing things he would never do.
No matter why the finale didn’t work, it showed that there was no way to end Dexter’s story that would satisfy everyone. The creators of the original series didn’t know what to do with him. That same issue crept up with Dexter: New Blood. You can’t fix a toxic relationship if you’re still making the same bad choices, and you can’t save a show if you’re doing that either. Dexter should have stayed gone, living his life hidden from us, just like the character would want. We didn’t need to see him again, no matter how ridiculous that last image of him had been. He was a flawed character. Let him have his flawed ending. He didn’t deserve to be brought back, just to repeat the same bad choices.
This is the same reason why we didn’t deserve to see New Blood go on. Thankfully, a potential Season 2, following Harrison, has been canceled, but still Dexter refuses to die, as a prequel series following his childhood growing up in his father’s code is now in the works. There’s no reason to believe that it will work. There’s no Michael C. Hall or Jennifer Carpenter. There’s no finale to work toward. Instead, it’s just a chance to mess up a character not only at his ending but at his beginning too. Dexter doesn’t deserve that.