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That Dexter finale

What do we make of that final, baffling episode of Dexter? And what explanations do producers give us?

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2013-09-23_2121Baffled by that Dexter finale last night? Feeling a little unsatisfied?

You’re certainly not alone.

While most of us thought Dexter would either be a) caught b) killed or c) get away to Argentina, he actually did none of them.

Instead he organised his own disappearance and finished up as a lumberjack. What the?

Dex finally came to realise that he brings nothing but misfortune to those he loved and so puts himself above his son Harrison and girlfriend Hannah McKay. Instead of following them to South America he orchestrates a new life as a loner, trapped in his own solitary -devoid of his own monologues and ghosts to keep him occupied.

As an audience we were denied the moment of exposure for our anti-hero and there will be division over whether that was a pay-off we were owed or whether our hero’s escape is more satisfactory.

But it was an inglorious exit for his sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who effectively died off screen and whose body was dumped in the ocean like waste. Charming.

When I think of other TV characters bidding each other goodbye after long runs, this one barely even required an emotional acting turn from Michael C. Hall. Ok he pulled a few faces here and there, but there will be no Emmy noms in any of those. Lost opportunity.

And what of the unfinished subplot for Masuka’s daughter this season?

Social media was getting stuck into the show last night, and who can blame them after 8 seasons of loyal viewing?

According to showrunner Scott Buck and longtime executive producer Sara Colleton the ending was pitched some years ago, centering around Dexter forced to kill his own sister (what as opposed to them making out?).

BUCK: The kernel idea were the last few scenes. They were what I pitched a few years ago. The main idea was Dexter is forced to kill Debra. And there are many ways that could happen. But those final scenes were pretty much unchanged.

It seemed like the ending that was most justified. In season 1, you saw this guy who was so compartmentalized. The last couple seasons have been about breaking down those walls by having his son and his relationship with Hannah and having Deb discover who he is. Still he was able to justify what he did. We felt it took the death of the one person he cared most about to really look at himself. [His fate] wasn’t something that happened to him but his decision. He had to bear the burden of deciding his own fate.

You can read much more on their answers in an interview with Entertainment Weekly here.

But you should also read another interview with Clyde Phillips who was executive producer and showrunner for the first four seasons.

He tells E!Online of his own vision of the finale:

“In the very last scene of the series,” Philips explained, “Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, ‘Oh, it was a dream.’ And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, ‘No, it’s not a dream.’ Dexter’s opening his eyes and he’s on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They’re just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery. 

“And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible killing, Doakes who he’s arguably responsible for, Rita, who he’s arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.

26 Responses

  2. @Dalmaniac…. you can’t be serious? Better than Breaking Bad?
    Breaking Bad is exploring the consequences of the characters actions…. whereas Dexter well and truly just glossed over it and gave us a terrible conclusion.

    There should have been a big fallout from Dex’s years of killing…. There should have been a bigger focus on LaGuerta’s death – really, honestly at the end of Season 7 I thought the writers had well and truly written the end for Dexter, yet they chose a completely different path… let LaGuertas death become just another kill, resolved in the first few episodes then introduce a bunch of pointless characters to propel the series to a unsatisfactory conclusion.

  3. Ah well, I really liked that last episode.
    Sad that Deb died, but she was so damaged….
    What I really like is the thought that Dexter could pull himself together in time, and head of to look for Hannah & Harrison.
    Any other loose threads can be satisfied with a bit of imagination surely.
    My only quibbles were that Hannah took too many risks – with no effort to disguise her appearance, and living at Deb’s place which was too open to the world – on the beach and with so much glass!
    More satisfying than Breaking Bad, where it looks like Walter has failed to provide for his family, and is going to die of his cancer very soon, Jesse is in a very bad place, and Skylar & the kids are in for a very tough life.
    Not looking forward to next week at all.

  4. @GloryDays
    Yes. In Boardwalk Empire they have gotten rid of all the interesting characters, It’s just plodding along as Nucky runs booze while the FBI try to slowly build a case.

  5. Well this should be a long comment.

    I have been a fan of Dexter since Season 1 first started airing on TEN back many years ago, I loved it so much that by episode 5 I had rushed out to buy the DVD which had just been released. Then quickly rushed to get Season 2 which wasn’t far behind it.

    Dexter has had up and down moment since Season 5 but it maintained a pretty thrilling, suspenseful and entertaining ride despite the flaws, which really, we minor.

    Heading into Season 8 it had the potential to become amazing. I enjoyed Season 7 and with Deb having offed LaGuerta it was the perfect chance for the writers to really set up the end-game.
    Season 8 had a few good ideas but they were executed terribly, I would have kept the Vogel storyline (though I would exclude Zacl) I would have had Deb struggling and becoming so damaged all season that it resulted in her confessing to the…

  6. What’s with all the lumberjacks this week? There’s a show about them on One and now one of the Big Brother intruders is one. Is the Monty Python episode on Foxtel somewhere.

    Terrible finale, completely dwarfed by Breaking Bad’s final episodes. My mum is up to the start of season six, but I told her not to bother investing anymore time in this show.

  7. I really can’t say anything here that. Has not already been said. Breaking Bad wil be a different story. Also, trying to get into Boardwalk Empire S4 but finding it a bit “meh”

  12. They should put an Easter Egg on the DVD of Dexter singing Monty Python’s Lumberjack song:

    “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay,
    I sleep all night and I work all day,
    I cut down trees I eat my lunch,”

    Be even better if they did a rewrite of it and at the end you see him dressed as a Lumberjack killing someone.

  15. I was really pissed off at the ending I spent 8 years waiting for Dexter to get caught out by his friends and colleagues and then get hunted down by them and either caught or killed and in the end his gets away with everything. I thought it was a ripoff of The Shield finale.

    And we still don’t know what happens to Batista, Quinn, Matthews, Masuka, Jamie, Hannah and Harrison.

    If I didn’t know it was the finale before watching it I would have thought there was another episode to go.

    Breaking Bad did more in it’s first episode than Dexter did all season.

    I think they should fire everyone that work for Dexter then hire everyone that works for Breaking Bad and give Dexter the ending it deserves. I can’t wait for Breaking Bad next week at least I know that won’t disappoint.

    This was the worst finale I have ever seen.

  16. it would of been better if they grab some story lines from the books i mean in the books dexter’s step kids have a dark passenger & Dexter teaches them to kill it would of been awesome to see the writers put that into the show the books are much better

  17. I thought it was awful. This entire final season has been full of gaps and inconsistencies that I had though would culminate and cause everything to fall apart for everyone in the finale, but it looks like that was just poor writing.

  18. It just doesn’t work.

    The shot of Dexter sailing into hurricane to his death is. They have done so much damage to character of Deb in the last two seasons that I didn’t really care when they casually killed her off in the last 5 minutes.

    The idea of Dexter getting rid of his Dark Passenger doesn’t make sense be he lost it in the previous episode when he lost his compulsion or even any desire to kill Saxon.

    The idea of him losing hope and having to abandon his son because his Dark Passenger will always endanger Harrison doesn’t make sense because the Dexter they show at end living in Argentina would be no more dangerous than the Dexter living as a lumberjack.

    The idea of Hanna on the run from murder as a model sole foster parent is just crazy. Though she is probably less dangerous to Harrison than to Dexter. (She would kill Dexter the first time their relationship got…

  19. Not sure I’ll bother with anything else that has Scott Buck as showrunner, he’s been in charge of 2 of the worst seasons of that show (6 & 8).

    Season 8 was just a trainwreck, it was pretty evident that didn’t have a clue what they doing and were just filling time – lots of meaningless characters and subplots introduced only to kill them off within a few episodes. Phillips hasn’t been shy about saying how bad the final season was on Reddit.

    I’m sure Buck thought he was constructing this epic piece of drama, but my friends & I couldn’t stop laughing at how sloppy the writing was – Dexter commits manslaughter with video evidence no less and the response is eh, Dexter switches off machines that would send an alert to a nurse’s station but evidently they abandoned the patients that hadn’t been evacuated yet, a non-hospital staff member walks through the hospital and out of it…

  20. Took me a while to digest the finale, but after being disappointed with it overall, I’ve come to my own personal conclusion of what it all meant.. and it’s a very psychological ending.

    The whole lumberjack ending was terrible, but faking his death in the ocean was Dexter ‘killing’ the Dark Passenger. Being by himself as a lumberjack is a new start for him and back to how he was at the very beginning – being empty and alone. Just like how he was all those years ago – covered in blood, crying his heart out in the storage container.

    So many loose ends – but I prefer the books. The books are totally different.

  21. Perhaps one of the worse finales I have ever seen, topping an absolutely atrocious season.
    Deb’s death was obvious from the outset of the episode, you knew she’d either die or there’d be a flashforward after she was better. It was devoid of any emotional response from me and the fact Dexter dumped her like all the rest of his kills was bizarre.
    Storylines are still left hanging- what happens when Elway wakes up? Wouldn’t Hannah and Harrison still be on the run? Where was the wrap up to the Miami Metro characters?
    The only redeeming scene were the shot of Dexter, sitting in a corner watching the video of him killing Saxon, emotionless. Quinn subtly catching on to Dexter’s true self, Batista unaware but not caring.
    I think the lumberjack scene will be used as a TV joke for years to come- don’t lumberjack your series finale!

  22. It was a terrible final season and final episode of what was a brilliant show. I get the killing Deb, his final kill was his sister and out of love. But to dump her with his victims… The cop out of him “dying” but going somewhere else. He should have either killed himself or handed himself in. This season had no suspense until the last 2 eps.

  23. I can understand why the ending underwhelmed a lot of people, my first reactions were probably the same. But only a couple of minutes after the credits, my mind had changed and I thought it was a good finish. Tragic on so many levels, but that will make it stick with me for longer. Those who wanted a happy ending could just finish with episode 11 – Dexter on his way out the door to meet Hannah at the airport, talking up his life, and Deb back with Quinn and on the force.

    I guess I didn’t mind this ending because in many ways it felt like what Dexter deserved. Not the death penalty or a life in prison, but a life in exile, where he couldn’t keep anything he loved. That ending was hard to swallow because it looked like he was making real progress: starting in season 7 when he let Hannah up off the table, continually revealing more about his dark passenger to Deb and Hannah,…

  24. I thought the finale was good. It was always going to disappoint some, but the writers clearly thought long and hard about how to finish things.

    The scene when Dexter leans over and tells Deb that he loves her as he turns off her life support was truly touching as we are finally exposed to Dexter’s humanity. I think it was the only time in 8 seasons that he ever spoke those words to Deb.

    I disagree with David’s comments that Deb’s body was dumped like waste. You missed the entire point of that scene. It was Dexter once again taking on the big brother role and looking out for his little sister.

    I don’t think it made sense to have him captured. Every season has shown that he manages to always find an escape. Concluding the show with Dexter realising that he could never be truly happy nor protect those he loves was a fitting end. He is left in his own version of solitary…

  25. So that’s why the show took a dive after Season 4. I wish Clyde Phillips had stayed with the show because I reckon it would’ve been so much better if he had.

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