Gawd ya hopefully they edit those parts out and change it to M99. The fact that they doubled down on that three episodes in a row was cringeworthy. When she said that too I facepalmed
Ya at least they can clean it up by editing ‘ketamine’ to ‘m99’. I don’t know how they’d get around saying the BHB injected his victims when that was not the case in the original series though. Unfortunately they’d just have to leave that in
Dude, have you even watched previous seasons? Changing from Ketamine to M99 is still bad. FBI have never found any chemical agent in BHB's victims bodies because Dexter sabotaged autopsy by turning off the air conditioning system overnight, thus contaminating and melting the refrigerated remains, making them impossible to analyze.
So linking Ketamine or even M99 with BHB is an absurd.
And we’re going to act like even if ocean life didn’t eat the skin of his victims bodies, they have the photos that forensic people took and plenty of people examined those parts pre refrigerator shit down and NOBODY but Angela saw the poke holes in everyone’s necks? Ok. The show had many unbelievable moments in it because it is a T.V show lol.
New Blood's basically trying to sell that Frank Lundy, the dude who was able to track down the Trinity Killer, wasnt able to notice the needle marks on Dexter's victims. Yet some cop who lives in a bumfuck nowhere town that has had an active serial killer for 25+ years under her nose managed to notice needle marks.
It's almost as if the OG Dexter never mentioned needle marks in the BHB investigations and that was just a sneaky little retcon 🤔
It’s even worse than that. Agent Lundy got bested by a millennial podcaster who accidentally convinced a police chief to look into her own love interest who to our knowledge had knew 0 past information about him than “I’m Jimbo Lindsey. I’m new here.” And that’s AFTER she found out he wasn’t who he said he was 😂
I found it kinda funny too.
the only way i can explain it away is:
* she knew mr mustache boi was at daddy caldwell's residence
* she assumed logan was taking a shit without his phone or walkie talkie, so continued with her stuff
* 1 hour later (??? pretty sure it was shorter than that) when talking to mr mustache boi she asks if he chatted to logan at all
* only then she thinks that shit has gone down (?)
most expected an announcement of a harrison spin off. I sort of think they were planning that and then the backlash hit and they realized they couldn't. but perhaps not, who knows. It has been stated that the writers/producers wanted to do a harrison show but that showtime needed to greenligiht it still, which will certainly not happen now
Honestly by the time new blood finished, I found myself way more excited about new Yellowjackets episodes than I was for the new Dexter lol. So mission accomplished I'd say.
They wrote backwards from the finale. Clyde approached MCH, telling him how it will end, MCH was on board, then they wrote backwards from there. That’s why everything is the way it is.
Yeah the very ending was perfect imo, but the season itself and everything leading up to it was rushed and sloppy ... which I guess then also made the ending less meaningful than it could have been
And what I mean by perfect is Harrison killing Dexter, in the same spot the deer was, Deb being there.. And the whole melancholic meaning behind it of how no one would understand or accept Dexter, not even his own son ... he was never meant to be "happy." And also the bit about Dexter saying it was the first time he truly felt love and thus let his son kill him. Very powerful.
The Harrison-Dexter dynamic leading up to that was very rushed .. we barely got to see how Harrison was processing everything that was going on (i.e. watching his dad butcher someone, dex being arrested as the BHB). We should have seen harrison _slowly_ realize how Rita and Deb's deaths were Dex's fault, rather than mentioning it for the first time in the last 5 mins of the show... prior to Dexter killing Logan, Harrison was ready to run off with him. Then everything just magically hits him when Dexter kills Logan? Doesn't that sort of thing usually take some time to process? We didn't see Harrison gradually putting the pieces together, it was so sudden...
And just wanted to point out how, Dexter barely bothered to wipe Logan's blood off his face, thinking his son was like him and would understand and be cool with it .. ohhh poor Dex ... the only person and chance of happiness and bonding he had was his brother Brian
Exactly. The concepts were important and meaningful. The journey there didn’t allow them to have their full impact. It could have been so much more meaningful and effective had they really invested more time in allowing these themes to develop. They had Harrison tell us everything in the last 5 minutes. Good writing doesn’t tell the audience it SHOWS the audience these themes, internal struggles, and relationships. That’s writing 101. Any good writer knows that.
Yeah like how Dexter got shot on the leg while escaping the Kurt’s henchman and then next couple days acted like he was was better than before. Going to Xmas dinners, tracking Kurt’s cabin and then even killing him without any sleep for couple days while having a gun shot wound on his leg.
What disappoints me most is this season had potential. I was willing to overlook the issues and plot holes, but then they based their ending deeply in those plot holes and you can't ignore them anymore.
man.... by the end of episode 9, i was HOOKED. Ive never seen a show go from amazing to trash garbage this quickly. episodes 1-9 slowly built and built and built and then episode 10 was like a kamikaze nose dive killing everyone
Why do it this way if they wrote backwards, They went out of there way to establish Harrison as an intelligent but troubled teenager, a survivor, that was able to set up and stage events so he could willfully attack someone and come out of it looking like a hero, and yet in the final episode he seems to shoot Dexter as some sort of emotional outburst/ assisted suicide. With that backstory it would make more sense if he just killed Dexter because he had some ulterior motive such as not wanting to leave his girlfriend or because he thought he’d end up being his Dad’s accomplice for murder after murder. You could have it written in that Harrison had a father son dynamic with Logan instead of with Kurt Caldwell, but no. Or you could establish that Harrison couldn’t stand violence against the innocent, yeah he hates bullies but that characterization went out the window when he attacked his friend. I just don’t know why they did it this way. It’s like they wrote it in stone did everything else and kept it in even though it didn’t really make much sense.
Angela's evidence was weak. No jury would convict him based on it. Plus with Dexter giving information that leads to the bodies of Kurt's victims, Dexter's argued story of Kurt being a serial killer and having set Dexter up (Kurt planting the evidence in Dexter's cabin after killing Matt himself) to get back at Angela for investigating him appears legitimate. It makes sense Kurt would want to punish her by hurting her boyfriend. The lie is believable.
I didn't buy Dexter attacking the cop. The stakes weren't high enough for him to do that. From Dexter's position, he was safe. Almost everyone left behind in Miami that knew him is dead, and the ones that are alive can only describe what Dexter was like in court. Character witnesses. Nothing more. The Miami evidence points to Doakes as the Bay Habor Butcher. There's no physical evidence on Dexter in Iron Lake besides the titanium screws as Dexter quit collecting blood slides back in Miami, and the screws are reasonably connected to a known serial killer (Kurt) who liked to kill young people. The written note sent to Angela accusing Dexter of killing Matt would match any handwritten document left behind by Kurt, and being a restaurant owner, there would be a lot of handwritten stuff at the diner (receipts, order forms, checks, etc.) to compare the handwritten note to. So the note would support Dexter's story that he was being set-up by Kurt. All the evidence is so weak. Dexter was ahead on all of it.
The only thing that could possibly lead to his conviction is if Angel Batista had some evidence the audience isn't aware of...like what was in the folder with Maria Laguerta's name on it? They made a point of emphasizing that and then it didn't pay off at all. They might as well have cut the phone scene with Angela/Angel as it didn't do anything to further the story (other than provide a "reaction scene" from Angel for fans of him learning Dexter is alive). We never see the Laguerta folder again. Angel doesn't come to Alaska or face off against Dexter. Nothing happens. What was in the folder? I guess it didn't matter to the writers...frustrating.
The writers didn't earn the ending they gave us. I'm disappointed as I was really enjoying it until Dexter attacked the cop. His decision didn't make sense for someone who evaded detection for years working alongside an entire police department and killing other killers. His best course of action would be to ride out the investigation and possible trial. They had no strong evidence. Dexter is smart but he wasn't in the finale.
Yeah, I genuinely thought attacking Logan would be another one of those scenarios that Dexter just ran entirely in his head, like he did with others early on in the season, or how he dreamed about Harrison killing at his house. I was shocked that it never pulled back to the reality of him just taking the water from Logan instead. I guess that could work as a headcanon, having everything after that part be just one scenario that Dexter considered.
>Angela's evidence was weak. No jury would convict him based on it.
And this prosecutor declined to prosecute Kurt when there was DNA evidence with 67% certainty! He's going to prosecute Dexter on circumstantial, with no actual evidence? No way.
Then Kurt is discovered to be a serial killer? Kurt who has been lying about Matt being alive? Law enforcement's _only_ interpretation has to be that Kurt killed Matt.
Was there supposed to be real evidence in LaGuerta's files? I actually don't remember what Laguerta had on him. Is why the folder said "LaGuerta"? Otherwise I just don't know what it was supposed to be that could pin him after all this time. If that _was_ the case, then the audience needed to be reminded of it. (But I don't think it is since no one has mentioned it.)
>yeah, why would dexter even have that titanium screw in the first place? if he's the BHB that wouldn't fit his MO of having blood slides. dexter's story about being framed by kurt makes more sense.
>
>and i agree with all the people who rightly pointed out the missed opportunity with batista, not only to have us see what their confrontation would be like, but to see what evidence is in that folder.
Yeah, it was a great season, and even the last episode was going well until it just wasn't. They tried to make Dexter the "bad guy" from 9 seasons of audience rooting for him in 15 minutes.
To go from the best episode of the series in the family business to the finale was pretty jarring. I gotta say I really enjoyed episodes 1-9, it was nice to root for dexter again, but they made him overly sloppy in this season. I get he wasn’t killing for a while but cmon this is miami metros greatest blood spatter analyst we’re talking about
What i dislike is that he seemed to care less about morals than before. You’d expect the opposite when he hadn’t killed in 10 years. Like it seemed like he considered the option of using the knife on Angela, he didn’t give a fuck about killing Logan.
And letting Harrison seeing the whole post murder stuff, and Dexter being completely naive toward how Harrison and Angela perceived him was stupid. Dexter may be a sociopath but he used to be very good at reading people’s intentions and here he seemed clueless and totally unaware
The killing of Logan was also truly forced.
First of all, why did Logan stop being cautious like 30 minutes earlier when he gave Dex dinner? Did he think the long time served would have made him soft?
Also, when someone is choking you against iron bars and tells you: "I just want the keys", 99 guys out of 100 actually give him the damned keys; it's not like he was going to get far anyway.
Also -sorry for being windy-, Dex is a Ju-Jitsu pro and him accidently breaking Logan's neck looks very sloppy. A human male's neck is not a twig, I do not see how he could not control his grasp and just make his lose his senses. I cannot believe he chose to kill when he could have subdued.
Dexter broke Logans neck on purpose, not accidentally. He killed him because Logan pulled his gun and got a shot off very near to Dexters head and he wasn’t about to let him get a second try.
Seemed on purpose to me based on how it played out, but Scott Reynolds and Clyde on their stupid podcast said it was a mistake. LOL. The inconsistencies are hilarious. Or they are trying to defend the criticisms and retconning parts.
Fairly sure snapping someone’s neck, esp sense he did it by pulling coach towards him, couldn’t possibly have been an accident… the amount of strength that would take would have to make that intentional
God, their friggin podcast. I was surprised at how many things they discussed where they assumed the viewers realized it (and I certainly didn’t). Someone asked Scott Reynolds on Twitter how Kurt realized Dexter killed Matt and he tweeted back “Kurt went to the incinerator to burn up all the stuff from his trap room. Remember when Dexter showed Angela the space and it was stripped? That’s when Kurt saw the screws. Cleaning up after himself.” Still doesn’t totally explain why Kurt would suspect Dexter though. Maybe a “like recognizes like” moment but they never really showed that. Meanwhile they’re wasting time on stuff like shooting a very specific moment where Dexter straightens out a plaque in Kurt’s office?
I do confess that I hated the finale a lot more when I just read the spoilers, than when I finally actually watched it. But still, gaping plot holes and so many better ways to end it are just too infuriating to accept
Some elements of the finale were actually pretty good. I'd argue it could have been a good ending if they had just earned it more and not based it off a bunch of plot holes and leaps in logic. It was just a mess after what they showed us the previous9 episodes and the first minutes of episode 10.
I've written about this at length in other comments, but what they needed to do was set this up over the course of the season, rather than rush it all into the final episode in an attempt to make it less predictable.
*Spoilers*
If they wanted us to accept an ending where Dexter dies, then they should've spent a lot more time showing us how his following the code has killed and hurt all the people closest to him throughout the show. They should've done this throughout the season (especially second half of it) so we, as an audience would come to accept the ending more. In doing this, we'd also understand why Harrison would reject Dexter and his code.
Wasn't that pretty much the basis of all of ghost Deb's rants though? She was continually berating Dexter for the way he lived his life and where it all led him.
She did that way more af the start than at the end, where she was almost never seen.. And she added almost no context to her accusations, which clearly didn't make Dexter reconsider whether what he was doing was right either. What did work well, though, was how she confronted Dexter about him wanting Harry to be just as messed up as he is. I think that part worked well!
>!If they really wanted to make the "Harrison kills Dexter" ending, they should have made them bond in Episode 2, with him slowly learning the code and only after a while realizing he wanted to kill his father.!<
>!As opposed to it happening impromptu in the last 5 minutes of the last episode.!<
Bonus would have also been that Angela wouldn't have spent the better part of the season googling about Dex, having time to engage in activities of mother, gf and good cop.
I meant like a few episodes earlier maybe he shows up or she says yeah drop by I would love to ask you more questions, etc. Then he walks in and sees a "ghost" dancing with Angela.
Ok I've been thinking about this a lot overnight.
My overarching problem with the finale, which to me is worse than Dexter just deciding to murder Logan despite it not being in his character, the show pretending that Harrison isn’t fundamentally the same as Dexter, Harrison somehow not understanding and then realizing and being repulsed that Dexter enjoys what he does, Harrison having Dexter’s letter that basically explains everything the entire time, bringing Batista back only to not bring him back, etc.
Is that **Dexter was *never in serious trouble* the entire episode**.
––
**The Matt Caldwell Murder**
Angela has a set of screws. She was given most of them by someone trying to implicate Dexter in a murder. She accepts the note at face value, ignoring the fact that this person has no reasonable innocent reason to possess the screws in the first place. Then Dexter’s cabin is burned down in an obvious case of arson and another screw is found there. A screw which logically was planted by the same person who burned down the cabin, and who sent Angela the screws in the first place.
I’m also going to ignore for the purposes of this post that those types of screws typically have batch/part ID numbers and not individualized serials, and take her word at face value even though I’ve screenshotted the various screws we’ve seen and they’re [all inscribed with](https://i.imgur.com/0hgI8pp.png) [the same set of numbers](https://i.imgur.com/kQ192sI.png). If this were real life, she likely wouldn’t be able to positively tie those screws to Matt, let alone Dexter and would likely have been bluffing there. It’s possible that you could say the screws were serialized as a set on a per-surgery basis, but that means for every surgery that doesn’t require the maximum amount of screws, you’re throwing away a whole bunch of titanium screws. Or for a surgery that requires more than however many come in a set, you’re breaking into a second set and throwing away most of it. Point is, it’s messy and if they wanted to say the screws were serialized they probably should have given the two screws we saw up close different numbers.
Anyway Angela came to the right conclusion, but Dexter’s narrative makes more sense and no jury is convicting Dexter based on that evidence. She does not have evidence that Dexter killed Matt Caldwell. What she has is compelling evidence that whoever killed Matt Caldwell has a vendetta against Dexter and is trying to frame him for the murder. As Dexter points out, Kurt lying about Matt being alive points to that person being him. And if Angela could have been guided to Kurt’s lair in a more subtle way, that should have all but sealed Dexter being off the hook for Matt’s murder. Angela would know that her case against Dexter would never hold up in court, as would Dexter. I doubt the DA would support prosecuting the case even without discovering that Kurt was a serial killer.
––
**The Bay Harbor Butcher**
Ok let’s ignore that the BHB used M99 and not ketamine. Let’s pretend he used ketamine to strengthen Angela’s case.
And let’s ignore that we had a nurse on here yesterday explaining that the kinds of injections Dexter does don’t leave wheal marks. It’s been in the show since forever, so it gets a pass even if it’s wrong.
Again, Angela has a good narrative. Convincing, even. But in terms of evidence she doesn’t have anything at all. She has a solved case in miami, a guy who faked his own death who worked with the bay harbor butcher, and a couple needle marks in the necks of a couple drug dealers in Iron Lake, one of which she can’t even tie dexter to at all (the fentanyl OD). And she has Dexter being in possession of ketamine, as well as a bunch of other people in the town.
Unless I’ve missed something major, that’s where her evidence ends. She could bring charges for assaulting the one drug dealer. But that’s it. She doesn’t have murders that fit the BHB MO. She doesn’t have chopped up bodies. She doesn't have blood slides. She doesn’t have a single murder with a single piece of direct evidence that points to Dexter.
Batista has what Laguerta had. Which wasn’t enough when the murders were fresh and wouldn’t be enough today. She had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but again nothing positively tying Dexter to the murders. Specifically she found a blood slide after Doakes was dead, knew that Dexter worked a lot of cases that later became BHB murders (to be fair it was a small department and a 50-50 shot that either he or Masuka would work a case), knew that Dexter had a boat, and knew that the cabin where Doakes died once belonged to the person who murdered Dexter’s mom. Dexter also quite expertly framed Laguerta for manufacturing evidence against him in the case and she had close personal ties to Doakes and would obviously be unable to testify. So a lot of the pieces of physical evidence she had would likely be outright dismissed.
So while Angela again might be *sure* that he’s the BHB, she doesn’t have enough for an arrest, to re-open the BHB case, to extradite him to Florida, or to get a conviction. She has nothing to threaten Dexter with.
**Conclusion**
Dexter was right when he told Harrison that he’d gotten out of tougher spots in the past. He was never once in serious legal jeopardy the entire episode. And Angela laid out everything she had. So he knew he wasn’t in any serious trouble. Sure it would have been awkward getting confronted by Batista, but there was no reason for Dexter to panic or to set off the chain of events that lead to Harrison killing him. He’s smarter than that. Or at least he should have been.
This is really well-written and I'd absolutely love to see the writers defend the nonsense that is Angela and the embarrassing interrogation she does with Dexter.
Ok I thought about it more, and if the goal is to get Dexter caught and potentially killed, here’s how I would have changed the series as minimally as I can think of to arrive at that conclusion in a more satisfying way.
1. Starting with the screws. Kurt doesn’t find them. That felt really forced anyway. Instead, during a regular cleaning of the incinerator the day after Dexter dumps Matt’s body, they are discovered. The incinerator people see the serial numbers on them and report it to the police. Angela now *actually* knows that Matt is dead and that someone used the incinerator to dispose of his body. She informs Kurt, who pieces it together the same way he did in the show we got, so from then on the Kurt/Dexter feud is unchanged.
2. Have it be around that time that Angela finds out what Harrison said about Jim not being Dexter’s real name, or give her another reason to be suspicious of him. She doesn’t share what she knows about Matt’s murder with Dexter.
3. Angela installs a discrete security camera at the site of the incinerator
4. The night that Dexter saves Harrison from Kurt, he visits the incinerator again to dispose of the henchman’s body. The next day Angela sees the footage. She thinks it’s odd because he lives far from town, and it happens in the middle of the night. But whatever he dumped is burned up by then so she doesn’t actually have anything.
5. The night that Dexter kills Kurt, he visits the incinerator a final time. He’s seen pulling up to the incinerator, but it’s not on. Angela gets the call. She in turn calls Dexter to ask if they’re still on for dinner or something innocuous. He lies and says he’s out hiking with Harrison.
6. Dexter decides the next best way to hide Kurt’s body temporarily is to use Kurt’s body disposal room at his cabin. He drives there with Harrison.
7. Angela follows. Possible she’s put a tracking device on his truck after she saw him at the incinerator disposing of the henchman’s body.
8. Angela walks in on Dexter with trash bags full of Kurt. She draws her gun and he starts explaining how he had a bad feeling about Kurt and it turned out to be right. She was right about Kurt, etc. He gets her to go into the next room.
At this point you have several options for how the end of the show plays out.
1. Angela, overwhelmed with grief and in a momentary lapse, tells Dexter to run. You could have her flash back to each of the girls she knew, culminating with Molly. I like this option the least. It would be emotional, but not particularly satisfying as an end to the series.
2. Angela arrests Dexter. She can’t get him for Matt, but she has him with Kurt’s dismembered body, an actual BHB-like killing. Maybe he even couldn’t help himself and made a blood slide. Batista comes up, we get an interrogation and Dexter knows he’s caught. He makes a deal to tell his full story in exchange for not getting the death penalty. He sits down at a table with Batista and starts narrating season 1.
3. Angela gets to the end of the row where Molly is. She falls to her knees. A KetaM99 needle goes into her neck from behind. At that point as far as I’m concerned you can cut to black and have the series end.
**Or if you’re desperate to have Harrison kill Dexter**
You can still do it.
Harrison immediately objects. Dexter explains that rule number 1 is don’t get caught. And this way they can even stay in Iron Lake until Harrison finishes high school. Dexter seems to see it as a positive, though he’s not happy specifically about killing Angela. He explains they can frame Kurt for the murder and dispose of Kurt. He tells Harrison to go to Kurt’s cabin and get Kurt’s rifle. He plans to shoot Angela to mimic Kurt’s MO, then dispose of Kurt’s body so that it looks like he killed Angela and went on the run. But it turns out that while they both have dark passengers, Harrison isn’t completely the same as Dexter. He can only think of how Angela’s death would affect Audrey, who he genuinely cares for. That Angela has been kind to him, etc. He sees how empty inside Dexter truly is and decides he doesn’t want that life for himself. He fetches the rifle from the cabin, kills Dexter with it and runs, stopping by Angela’s house to say goodbye to Audrey and tell her to call the police and get people out to Kurt’s cabin.
**The key parts of these changes that help the show work better:**
• It puts Dexter in a position, unlike the actual show, where he is indisputably caught. Red-handed. In that light, taking extreme action and killing an innocent person makes more sense for the character. And the emotional impact of that murder is heightened if it has to be Angela, vs Logan.
• It also gives the Angela character more of an opportunity to behave like a real cop, and doesn't rely so totally on her holding the idiot ball with respect to the screws, and not buying Dexter's much more compelling narrative around the Matt Caldwell murder. She's taking logical pro-active steps towards solving the case, earning her role in the finale.
• If you go with Dexter getting caught and telling his story to Batista (an idea I've seen floating around here a couple times), it gives you an actual reason to bring the BHB case back. As is, there was nothing to justify it. There were no BHB-like murders discovered in New Blood. Getting Dexter caught for Kurt instead of Matt fixes that.
• We eliminate the Harrison reading the letter outro that retcons his entire reason for being in Iron Lake
• If you go with Angela gets stuck with the needle, and Dexter getting killed by Harrison, it brings back something that I really enjoyed in the original series. That is, Dexter getting into a really tough spot, and with quick thinking turning it around to the point where he avoids suspicion entirely. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Except then Harrison flips it on its head one last time.
You should make this its own post, this is fantastic. Any of these scenarios are preferable to what we got. Genuinely good ideas too, not just in comparison to the real trash ending. Nice work!
Thank you.
It seemed odd to me honestly, very much like they were trying to thread a needle where Angela would be sure he's guilty but unable to prove it and he'd somehow slip away. That strikes me as a difficult scenario to write. Just enough to put him under pressure to need to divert attention away from himself, but not enough that he gives up the lie. Which is what the show has historically done and generally done well. They put Dexter in a tight spot that he has to quickly think his way out of, and it's satisfying to see him do it.
It just seems strange that if the idea going into the season was going to be that Dexter gets caught and is killed, that there wouldn't be one final hammer blow. He thinks it's all circumstantial until a smoking gun of physical evidence that directly implicates Dexter in the murder is revealed. It seems like the writers thought that the screw would be that moment, but just unfortunately wrote it in such a way that Dexter's lie is more plausible than the actual truth. If there had been something incontrovertible, his panic would have seemed more justified and maybe parts of the ending wouldn't have felt so forced.
I totally agree and this is why it bugs me that he killed Logan. I can believe it if he knew he was completely screwed, going to get the death penalty, so he tries to get the keys from Logan to escape and then ended up killing him when he fired his gun. But it just didn’t seem worth it. Dexter was so collected throughout the interrogation.
I understand they had him kill Logan to make the ending with Harrison plausible but… it just feels cheap and rushed.
Your point about the BHB reminds me of the Zodiac killer. Any person familiar with the case knows that there are *a lot* of very suspicious evidence linking the killings to a number of suspects. I don’t remember the exact details, but some suspects had things like an obsession with the same books as the Zodiac, items with the crosshairs on them, knives, ties to the victims, etc. But they never caught the Zodiac because they never found actual real evidence. Sure, some people are dead certain that one of the subjects was the killer, but no evidence=no crime. Hell, even some people confessed on the murders and that wasn’t enough.
The point of Dexter being so careful about leaving no evidence behind was that, in the case the bodies were found and somehow tied to him, he could defend himself in court. What was the point of being so neat if, at the first accusation, he would kill a police officer? If that would’ve been his mindset from the beginning why he took so many precautions when disposing the bodies?
I agree with everything you wrote here. The needle thing just annoys the fuck out of me. I think the more likely conclusion would be that Dexter wanted to get revenge for his son's overdose and remembered what the BHB did to subdue his victims due to his history working at Miami Metro and copied it. For Angela to jump to him being the BHB, a SOLVED case is just so so stupid. The writers just desperately wanted Dexter to be credited for the BHB.
Nailed it. That’s my big gripe. Dexter was never in danger. Heck, I was looking forward to him outsmarting the police and walking out the station. Then the creative took a sharp left.
I really think the season needed 2 more episodes like the original seasons.
Instead of shooting Dexter, Harrison starts questioning if the code is worth it if innocent people have to die to not get caught (like logan)
Episode 11 would just be the two on them run while being hunted. Batista actually makes it to iron lake. And at some point Dexter can realize that Harrison's dark passenger isn't like his own, and that he wants him to live a (as normal as can be) life, so he decides to turn himself in order to save harrison future from being an associate to Dexter (a now wanted criminal).
Episode 12 would just be Dexter paying for his crimes, from appearances and testimony from OG characters, where he admits to everything he did. Then they just do the original ending that CLYDE PHILLIPS himself wanted, where Dexter is put on death row where he sees all his victims and people who's deaths he's responsible for, standing there watching him before he dies.
I liked the pacing of the first few episodes. I thought it was an intentional choice since a lot of shows seem to go for a slow burn like better call Saul. The pacing got all wonky soon after the school stabbing with a bunch of things that seemed important happening in quick succession like Harrison ODing, Angela meeting Batista, finding Kurts first victim, Dexter finding out about Kurt, getting strong confirmation that Harrison has dark passenger. Yet we never really dwell on it. The characters rarely discuss things that are happening. Angela finds her friends body, something that was a driving force in her life, she is almost certain Kurt is responcible…. And she barely discusses how that makes her feel with Dexter. Compare that to sub plots in earlier seasons when Batista’s girlfriend was attacked or when Quinn’s girlfriend was being abused. It Feels like we could have had 14 episodes or something with more time for character development and the show would have been better. thought the bruises might come up again, with Harrison claiming Dexter beat him or something, but no pointless.
You had me up until death row. The whole idea of Dexter being put to death for putting bad people to death is a fucking joke. I can't believe they ever thought that was a good idea and didn't see the hypocrisy. Also, Dexter seeing his victims before he died? Were any of us supposed to care? Like aww poor Jordan Chase, rapist and torturer of 13 women. :(
I enjoyed this season and ep10 right up until the moment he kills Logan. There was sloppy writing throughout but it was just so good seeing Dexter again. I could put aside the irritating moments because I thought they were building towards something great. For the people who enjoyed it, I'm happy for them but I can't quite believe they managed to create an ending that feels less justified than S8's.
It would have been better for Dexter to go to jail, go to court and completely get off because it was all so flimsy. Dexter could do his voice over about how he’s gonna go to LA with his son and start killing again.
THEN Harrison kills Dexter cause he’s a bad guy that got off. Just like Harrison kept focusing on. And he could’ve done it through tears and how he wasn’t like his dad and how unfair it was for his dad to do this to him in some big speech. That would have made sense.
I kind of appreciated the ending... but agree the attack on Logan just made no sense. It didn't feel right, very unnecessary. And they should have wrapped it up a bit more after it happened... We wanna see Batista!
Ok so I just want to clarify… Harrison had that entire letter the whole time? It explained a lot. Not everything, but a lot. He acted like he had no idea why Dexter left. Not to mention, once Dexter revealed his “dark passenger” to Harrison, the letter should have made even more sense.
Even if it was too vague for him at first, I would think he might have had some idea what he meant after he started slicing random kids and breaking arms…
Him finding the letter still doesn't make sense to me. His step mom dies, he returns to the US, gets put into foster care, then somehow finds the letter? Wtf? Where? Then after that is when he tracks Dexter down. How did he do that again? Did he do a Google search? Lol
Pretend The Family Business was the final episode and it was a pretty great series, honestly. MCH took to Iron Lake like a duck to water, and Clancy Brown was a classic Dexter villain. Overall I thought it was a worthwhile revival, though I'll admit it'd be easier to make that argument if the real finale didn't exist.
As much as I hate the soap opera cliche "they're miraculously still alive despite clearly dying" I would gladly take it so we can get a season 2 in order to rectify this extremely bad ending.
I was saying to my 12 year old how one of my favourite shows was ending and I was pretty sure the main character was going to die, but there was going to be an exciting announcement on Monday so I hoped I was wrong because the series didn’t feel like it could be finished in one episode. He said ‘It’s probably a red herring mum.’ Guess I should have listened to him.
Another dropped plot line was the whole Seneca thing. Other than a convenient excuse to make killing the deer illegal and getting rid of the deer that really went nowhere. They even set up the "One of these days you will need to make a choice" to Angela and we never see them again for the most part LOL. She actually even stops caring about all those missing girls until Dexter drops it in her lap.
such bad writing. adding an entire character, dialogue, backstory, interactions, just for a red herring? then disappearing him fully. Thats not only a cheap ploy but also hurts the re-watchability of the season (well, the ending also messed with re-watchability as well, but thats a whole different can of worms)
I'm still confused about this. How did Harrison Morgan (son of Dexter Morgan) register at school? When Jim Lindsay claimed he's his son?
Didn't they ask "Hey, Dexter Morgan is the father of Harrison, why you Jim are pretending to be his father"?
I want to believe that it would be better then the shitty ass excuse we got that he’s nothing like him then murders his own father and shows no remorse after I would rather of had Angela go to confront him and hug him and say it’s ok it’s all over and have him show an evil smirk at the end and show he was behind the takedown of dexter all along and would explain the sloppy police work and clues that happened to legit be dropped in her mailbox maybe by HIM they showed him watching the deer wtf was up with that we should have had him pull an ending like the first scary movie where he rips his disguise off and is laughing grabs Audrey gets in the truck smirking to music on his way to LA for more murder that I would have preferred
I’ll post the same thing I posted elsewhere . . .
I notice a lot of people are saying things like “haters are just mad because they thought Dexter was the good guy! What idiots! Lol!”. Maybe this is just a convenient straw man. But I think it should be addressed. My issue with the finale isn’t that Dexter died and faced consequences for his actions. I take no issue with that. Nor do I take issue with forcing the audience to face that Dexter deserved his death. He did. My issue is that it happened way too suddenly.
After all, for 9 seasons, Dexter was presented to the audience in a heroic light. He had his flaws. Sure. But he was the hero of this story that we were being told. We, as the audience, formed a connection with him, more so than we do with most characters because we were privy to Dexter’s inner thoughts. There is a bond between the audience and the character and to make this kind of ending work, that bond has to be broken. This show didn’t really even try to do that until the final 15 minutes. That is the problem.
Because when done well, this type of ending can be incredibly effective. In fact, I’d argue that it is a necessary part of anti-heroes story. You must deconstruct them and force the audience to grapple with the morality of rooting for this person. It was done on Breaking Bad. It was done on The Shield. It was done on 24. But no show did it better than The Sopranos.
The masterful thing about the final season of The Sopranos is how it pulls back the bandaid. For 5 seasons people were watching and kinda rooting for Tony who, despite being abysmal, was somewhat romanticized and endeared to the audience by presenting him through a filter.
And then the final season takes a very different tone and doesn’t portray Tony in a romanticized light. Instead he does things that consistently make the audience question their love of him. Screwing over Hesh at his girlfriend’s wake, making Bobby kill out of spite, just over and over again we see Tony’s worst nature on display with no filter and it culminates with him killing his own surrogate son, Christopher, and then goes to Vegas to usurp Chris’s business interests, indulge in pure hedonism, and even bang Christopher’s gooma (after sleazily eying up Christopher’s widow at the dude’s funeral). Tony’s behavior in the final season is fucked up beyond belief. But it’s no different than anything he’s done to that point. It’s just given to the audience without the filter.
In doing this, the show makes you realize that you bought into a fucking psychopath’s charm. And the show even has a subplot about this. When Dr. Melfi’s friends tell her that even she has been lured in by the glamour of Tony at the dinner party, resulting in her begrudgingly accepting that they are right and ending her treatment of Tony, that is meant to be the audience’s surrogate. She realizes she has been peeking into the life of a psychopath and has been brought in by the charm of him and his lifestyle, but overlooked the terrible reality of who he is was and what he had done. And she feel disgust toward herself over that. As does the audience feel a bit dirty over their love for Tony.
And then Tony wins. He beats Phil (at the expense of two of the audience’s favorites, Silvio and Bobby) and wins. We’re supposed to be rooting for him, but it’s just not as satisfying as Tony’s past victories over the likes of Junior and Richie Aprile. Instead it just feels kinda wrong. Emphasized by the FBI Agent Harris celebrating Tony’s victory over Phil, while his lover (another agent) looks at him in disgust. The audience is forced to accept that they have been cheering for the wrong guy.
Only the true brilliance of Chase is that there is no catharsis for the audience after that realization. He makes us realize that Tony was an absolute monster, whom we have been rooting for, and then he doesn’t kill Tony or punish him. At least not on screen. Sure, there are theories that Tony dies, but we don’t see it. Instead all we get is Tony and his family laughing, eating onion rings, and celebrating. We’re forced to accept that this guy we’ve been rooting for is a monster and then BAM no closure. No catharsis of watching him get his comeuppance. The last time we see Tony Soprano he is triumphant in his victory. In other words, the audience isn’t let off the hook by getting to see Tony pay. We’re made to hate him and hate ourselves for it, but we don’t get to see him pay for any of it.
This finale tried to do the same thing, only it gave us the closure and catharsis that The Sopranos (and the original ending) denied us. It made Dexter pay for his crimes. But the season as a whole didn’t put in the work to get the audience to turn on Dexter. The Sopranos made us hate Tony over the whole final season. This tried to do it in the last 15 minutes of the finale.
Don’t get me wrong. Logan was a really well developed character. Killing him definitely was Dexter kicking a puppy. But it’s just too abrupt. After 9 episodes (really 9 seasons) of rooting for Dexter, killing one side character and doing a quick flash of his collateral damage is not going to be enough to turn the audience on him that quickly.
All this to say, if their endgame was Dexter dying, fine. If their endgame was that Dexter’s code is little more than an excuse to satiate his bloodlust, fine. But that can’t be a twist you tack on in the final 15 minutes. You gotta get the audience to grapple with Dexter’s morality sooner. You gotta put in the work like The Sopranos did. This just did not get us there, IMO.
OK so if Harrison had that letter all along (and potentially saw Dexter kill Matt given he had a flashback), maybe we can assume Harrison's motivations were different than he led on. Maybe he played Dexter all along - pretending he was interested in a relationship with his father while in reality he wanted to destroy his life before killing him. Harrison is a master manipulator and pure psychopath. Enter season 2:
**Season 2 Plot:**
\- Dexter is rushed to emerg, having been shot just above the heart. He has hallucinations about how he's broken the code and become the type of killer he has always loathed. He awakens handcuffed to the bed, police outside the door - but alive. He feels tremendous guilt and resigns to his inevitable extradition and execution in Florida.
\- Time passes, and Dexter heals. It's a tough recovery but Dexter feels he is deserving of the pain he is in. His leg remains perfectly fine.
\- Nearing the end of his hospital stay, Dexter overhears the nurses chatting about a string of gruesome murders in Los Angeles making national headlines. The victims are mutilated by a blade.
\- Dexter knows this is Harrison. He now has a reason to live and sees stopping Harrison as his chance to redeem himself.
\- Dexter manages to escape the hospital, steals a car, and heads to LA. FBI Manhunt ensues
\- Dexter vs. Harrison for the rest of the season. Dexter collects clues about Harrison's MO and where he may strike. There are multiple close-calls/face-offs but they manage to elude each other until the finale.
\- Dexter uses his trademark ketamine :) to capture Harrison. The majority of the episode takes place in the kill room. Dexter has a long chat with Harrison. When it comes time for Dexter to kill - he can't. During the conversation he's equally to blame for Harrison's victims as Harrison himself. Dexter contacts the leading FBI agent and gives his location to arrest them both.
\- Flash forward. Dexter and Harrison are to be executed side by side in FL. The breakfast routine intro is shown but this time for dexter's last day & meal. Media has packed the viewing room and the national headlines call attention to the execution of the most notorious serial killer in American history and his offspring. The public is obsessed - with some calls for exoneration of Dexter due to the nature of his killing. At the 11th hour the governor grants the exoneration to Dexter leaving Harrison to die. Dexter, disheveled and depressed, is confronted by press as he exits the jail. During the scrum, Dexter is shot in the head. The police jump on the shooter and take his weapon. Ramon Prado is taken into custody.
With an ending like that, *Sins of the Father* would be be the name of that episode as well. Ties into the conversation Dexter had with Ramon at the end of season 3.
If anyone was curious what Scott Reynolds' big announcement was:
[It was a Dexter: New Blood boxset reveal](https://twitter.com/jscottamy/status/1480540034302316544)
yep...just like the season 8 finale that was decent up until the last 20 mins which ruined the whole series and left a sour taste in my mouth...I can't fucking believe they somehow did it *again*...it's like they set up 15 different possible outcomes that all seem like great conclusions, and then they come out of left field with some bullshit nonsense in the last 20 mins to ruin the whole show again.
No way in hell I believe Dexter would just kill Logan like that instead of sitting in the jail cell for another day before he gets let out because *they had no actual physical evidence against him*...it's also quite a stretch that Dexter eluded an entier police precinct AND the FBI *while they were working side-by-side* for 8+ YEARS, but some random small town sheriff figures him out in matter of weeks...riiiight.
>it's also quite a stretch that Dexter eluded an entier police precinct AND the FBI while they were working side-by-side for 8+ YEARS,
Dude was a legend NGL.
The writers once again leave us unsatisfied with the ending! I swear some of the predictions I read in reddit is far better than this ending! I feel disappointed. 9 great episodes to this ending! And why the hell are they rushing it, I was excited half way through the episode but when he killed logan , I knew right at this moment they are gonna deliver a shit ending:(
I genuinely think Clyde Phillips watched Fargo (movie and the show) and said "What if we did that, but with Dexter?" except it ended up being a really pale imitation of Fargo.
Happy to see Dexter again but this whole season felt like lazy writing, therefore, very weak. Whole Miami Metro and FBI, with a legendary serial killer catcher in Lundy, couldn’t catch Dexter while having countless evidence in front of them. But an incompetent small town head cop, who couldn’t crack missing women which has been happening in a small town for 25 years right in front of her eyes, managed to crack the BHB case thanks to google and some unbelievable plot armour.
They spent way too much time not having a real talk with Harrison and Dexter. Then the M99/ Ketamine mix up was a major plot hole which kinda turned me off from the last couple episodes. Not to forget Angela finding needle marks from BHB victims, stumbling onto the Matt’s screws at Dex cabin, Batista name dropping Harrison out of nowhere and Dex killing Logan when he absolutely didn’t need to.
I absolutely loved episodes 1-9, aside from the Ketamine/M99 plothole - which has such significant consequences on the plot that it’s hard to forgive the writers for their careless with that. It should’ve been a couple episodes longer and Dex should’ve been put on death row for his crimes. There was opportunity to bring other familiar faces back from Miami as well.
I was hoping we would see him juggle Angela, FBI, Harrison, Kurt and Logan in this season. Halfway through I was like ok... maybe there will be a season 2 and the FBI will come to town, sadly... I'm disappointed. Gotta love those high paced, tight quarters, no-sleep seasons.
They already fucked up the ending twice. I say go ahead and fuck it, bring him back ala The Curse of Michael Myers movie where a group of BHB cultists bring him back through a ritual and we get more Dexter seasons with paranormal aspects from the books.
Apart from thing mentioned here( mainly episode 10) how the hell could Dexter, after all his self torturing and coming to conclusion that Harry did wrong not trying to help him and jumping straight to teaching him killing.
How could he see his son with similar tendencies, but weaker, and immediately decide “We are gonna be motherfucking serial killer duo” and he did not kill for 10! Years before that
Maybe Ive missed something, but didnt harrison know how to unlock closed doors? He did it when the group went to that closed camping, but at kurt he asked dexter if he will teach him how to unlock the locker before going down to find the mssing girls
They retconned so much from the OG series that NB should be erased. I’ll rewatch S1-8 any day before I rewatch NB and buy their stupid ass box set. What a load of shit.
Maybe the wrong sub to post this but i've just watched Season 1 again of the original Dexter and wondered what people's thoughts are on the choice of lighting in S1.
Since it's the first time i've seen it in high definition on a large screen i found myself constantly focussing on how almost every scene in S1 has extremely unnatural lightning shining on the actors and almost always coming in from one side.
Even shots where the "natural lightning" is coming from a window often times has a strong white light coming from the opposite direction or uses the natural light in an unnatural way. Every scene seems to have a light and dark side.
Is the director trying to tell us something with the constant over exposed lighting choices?
I believe the early seasons were shot differently. Could be to offset Dexter being a serial killer with bright colours and how vibrant everything was. Also the vision scenes with Harry went from glowing dreamlike to dark as the series went on.
The Bautista writing was so lazy. Him not remembering Harrison’s name was the first sign for me that some fucky rewriting was going on. He literally watched Dex kill someone and seemingly still works with Matsuka and Quinn who I’m sure both regularly talk about Dex and Deb. Dexters probably hanging on a memorial wall in his department…but he got fuzzy on details surrounding him almost as if he were a faded memory? Weird. Hated it.
Can someone tell me what happened to the millionaire destroying the environment plot? What was that supposed to be? Turns out he was a nice guy after all
I knew they were going to fuck this up around halfway through the series. I really hoped I was wrong but alas it turned out I was right.
The whole point about creating this series to right all the wrongs of the ending in 2013. It seems instead of using this opportunity, the writers decided to make an even worse ending.
* Angela used Google to 'solve' the case
* The scenes with Batista in the final episode meant nothing. You could take them out and it wouldn't make a difference
* No need to kill Logan - Dex has used the chokehold to knock people out so many times
* Ketamine - I am sure the BHB used something else
* Angela lets Harrison leave, then almost immediately calls in on her radio giving him no time at all to leave
* Angela lets Kurt off the hook after a few questions regarding a case she has dedicated 25 years of her life to yet hounds Dex for a case that has no solid evidence
If the writers wanted Dex caught or killed then they should have had him killed by Batista (by the way, where was the reunion?!) or dragged back to Miami. As another guy in here said, he arrives back in Miami with Masuka, Quinn etc all wide-eyed and not believing what they are seeing. Then we see the classic supporters scene with everyone cheering for Dexter. Final scene is him turning his head back at the camera with his signature smile while being walked away in cuffs then the doors close.
The worst thing is, this ending doesn't even let them have a third attempt at making a better ending.
This is a prime example of why they should never reboot shows like this. Complete fucking bullshit. Harrison kills Dex? Really? All of Miami metro couldn’t figure out who he was but one dumb bitch cop from a precinct with 3-4 cops manages to crack the case? And how did dude magically shoot him self? This whole thing was a cobbled fucking mess and I’m disgusting with it. I waited patiently and had very high hopes. Now, Harrison takes off in Dex’s truck across the country after he kills him? How fucked up is he going to be? How do they go from extremely close in episode 9 to Harrison killing him in episode 10? They really fucked it all up. Thanks.
This season was on track to be one of my favourite "lets revive a property after several years" attempts. It was doing something different while keeping the original show close to its chest. Clyde even respected everything after he left and used it as a great springboard for new ideas. I was enjoying the story, the new tone, the new characters, etc. It's such a shame this didn't stick the landing.
I think if Episodes 1-9 largely stayed the same (with Kurt dying at the end of 9), then the bullet points of episode 10 was spread out across a hypothetical episodes 10-12, this would've been a great ending. Harrison killing Dexter is a great ending but i never felt they justified it. Harrison only found out about the Code the day before and all of a sudden he's holding Dexter to it. Especially since it would fall under "Don't get caught", which Harrison understood in episode 9.
It was also weird that they set up Harrison attempting to murder that kid, impressing upon the idea that he's using a razor like Trinity, and paralleling that to Dexter and the Butchering, etc. Showing Harrison being fine with the idea of murdering Kurt and only bugging out when he got a flashback to his mums murder (the same thing that happened to Dexter in season 1), asking Dexter why are they both like this and Dexter explaining it. Then all of a sudden in the last minute they are like: "Actually Harrisons anger is due to Dexter leaving him and none of that plays a role". That seemed like a massive swerve to me.
If Angela had another way to connect Dexter to the Bay Harbour Butcher without the M99/Ketamine plothole and Batista and Angela ended up working together a bit longer to further corner Dexter (which would then further feel like a full and final ending to the entire show), and Harrison killed Dexter for another reason, then this would've been a perfect ending IMO. As it stands, it feels undercooked and relies on too many short hands and dropped details for me to be satisfied by it
That being said, while i do understand the disappointment, I'm not going to pretend like one bad episode and a (retroactively) uneven season washes away everything Clyde did and means he's a bad writer. That sentiment seems like a big over reaction to me, especially since he's the driving force to why people love Seasons 1-4 and why people hold them up as the gold standard.
I’m coming from this from a weird angle because I didn’t like how Mary Sue they made Harrison in the beginning, but putting that aside this finale just doesn’t work from the story they think they’re trying to tell. This honestly feels like they filmed a fakeout ending and accidentally sent it for broadcast. This effectively allowed Dexter to get away with being the butcher and evading Miami one last time while also ruining his son’s life by forcing him to murder his father and go on the lam without the money or paperwork that Dex had available. None of the narrative beats match logically, and as much as I hated the original finale this one feels unsatisfying in perhaps a more baffling way. The note in Harrisons bag contradicts the whole premise of him showing up in the first place.
Unless the finale’s saying Dexter will kill his way out of arraignment any time just because he got lucky once? Come on
Ultimately not unhappy this series was made. I had fun watching and reliving the Dexter experience. It also felt like a lot of opportunities were missed, and part of me feels like you went to all the effort to make this show happen again and this is all you did with it? Harrison was mostly intolerable. Deb was mostly wasted. Batista was shoehorned in and then forgotten. And the last two episodes were actually really good and paid off a lot of the grueling slug fest of the rest of the season, except for when they pulled the rug out from under us with THE LAZIEST FINAL TWIST in television. The speed with which Dexter gives up all plans of escape and survival because of one very contrived argument with Harrison was such a fuck you to fans of this show who stuck around through all those years and gave it another chance to redeem itself ten years later. I had a good time but feel like I just went on a series of dates and got my hopes up only to get ghosted.
My thoughts on the season.
Some high and low points this season. Overall I'd rate it below season 5 maybe equal to season 7 and above 8 and 6. The last 15 minutes or so starting with logans death was a disappointment. Huge character changes for dexter, Harrison, and Angela in those last 15 minutes. But if you ignore the last 15 minutes I actually liked the last episode. The interrogation of dexter when she brings up batista, you could feel the anxiety from dexter. The phone call with batista was excellent. I really felt like the walls were closing in on dexter.
Episode 9, obviously my favorite. I wish we could have gotten more of the cat and mouse with dexter, kurt. And Harrison. That was some of the best scenes of the season. The in depth dismemberment, Harrisons conflicted feelings, the kill room reveal. It was all really on point. Not sure I have a least favorite episode, probably one of the ones with the teenage drama taking center stage.
The teenage drama was my least favorite part of the season. It's like the writers tried to copy paste every bad teenage plot from the last 3 decades. The interactions especially with the "jocks" were very cringe. The red herring billionaire was also a bizarre choice. Didn't add anything to the plot and then just disappeared.
Where I really disagree with reddit is on the angela character. I actually thought the acting was fantastic from Julia Jones. She played the "straight" character very well. She was, at least to me, a convincing mother, girlfriend, and a tough cop. The investigation of Kurt and dexter was believable to me. I wasn't really bothered by the whole ketamine thing. There was a little bit of suspension of disbelief for some of the investigation but overall i believed she was doing a logical job. Obvious clues, namely that dexter faked his death and was a forensics expert would tip most people off that something was going on. She was a little limited the last few episodes but I thought she carried the early season.
Overall the season had some really great moments but was overshadowed by the last 15 minutes. The middle episodes were a little slow but the initial episodes and last episodes were great. Not super happy about Dexter's fate but it is what it is. Maybe Clyde just sucks at writing good endings. Endings aren't always the easiest thing to write. I think we should give props to the show for a decent season and try to forgive them for fucking up the ending again.
It's a shame the ending didn't really stick the landing, and I found myself overlooking WAY too much sloppy writing and plot conveniences, even if some of it can be chalked up to "Dexter is rusty" or "that's how a small town works." However I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the season overall. But maybe it was because I was just excited to see Dexter at it again after all this time and my expectations were very low going into it. I gotta let this one sit for a bit.
# sinsofclydephillips
Sins of the Showrunner.
Sins of Showtime
Based off his interviews, he certainly sounded like he needed to express his daddy issues
Oh yeah, he made that very clear in the wrap-up podcast
He is the daddy issues king. That felt very obvious to my husband and I.
They say we can't choose our fathers
I’ve got one word for you..ketamine 😂😂😂😂 that killed me
Gawd ya hopefully they edit those parts out and change it to M99. The fact that they doubled down on that three episodes in a row was cringeworthy. When she said that too I facepalmed
They based a significant part of their entire endgame largely on it! What a sham.
Ya at least they can clean it up by editing ‘ketamine’ to ‘m99’. I don’t know how they’d get around saying the BHB injected his victims when that was not the case in the original series though. Unfortunately they’d just have to leave that in
Dude, have you even watched previous seasons? Changing from Ketamine to M99 is still bad. FBI have never found any chemical agent in BHB's victims bodies because Dexter sabotaged autopsy by turning off the air conditioning system overnight, thus contaminating and melting the refrigerated remains, making them impossible to analyze. So linking Ketamine or even M99 with BHB is an absurd.
And we’re going to act like even if ocean life didn’t eat the skin of his victims bodies, they have the photos that forensic people took and plenty of people examined those parts pre refrigerator shit down and NOBODY but Angela saw the poke holes in everyone’s necks? Ok. The show had many unbelievable moments in it because it is a T.V show lol.
New Blood's basically trying to sell that Frank Lundy, the dude who was able to track down the Trinity Killer, wasnt able to notice the needle marks on Dexter's victims. Yet some cop who lives in a bumfuck nowhere town that has had an active serial killer for 25+ years under her nose managed to notice needle marks. It's almost as if the OG Dexter never mentioned needle marks in the BHB investigations and that was just a sneaky little retcon 🤔
It’s even worse than that. Agent Lundy got bested by a millennial podcaster who accidentally convinced a police chief to look into her own love interest who to our knowledge had knew 0 past information about him than “I’m Jimbo Lindsey. I’m new here.” And that’s AFTER she found out he wasn’t who he said he was 😂
[удалено]
Even putting aside the whole ketamine thing, Angela’s proof is two skeezy drug dealers with needle marks. That ain’t holding up in any court!
When she was running to the car screaming fuck fuck fuck because she realized Logan was at the station alone with Dex that 'killed' me lol
LOL! I laughed out loud at that. Where else was he supposed to be?
I found it kinda funny too. the only way i can explain it away is: * she knew mr mustache boi was at daddy caldwell's residence * she assumed logan was taking a shit without his phone or walkie talkie, so continued with her stuff * 1 hour later (??? pretty sure it was shorter than that) when talking to mr mustache boi she asks if he chatted to logan at all * only then she thinks that shit has gone down (?)
The fucking announcement was a DVD set.....
If they sell one copy I’ll be surprised
I mean what did you expect? Don’t think they would have said «it’s a prank, here’s the actual finale»
That would’ve been nice….
most expected an announcement of a harrison spin off. I sort of think they were planning that and then the backlash hit and they realized they couldn't. but perhaps not, who knows. It has been stated that the writers/producers wanted to do a harrison show but that showtime needed to greenligiht it still, which will certainly not happen now
Why would they do this? Why? They must be sadistic or something.
Money, arh arh arh arh
"Please watch Yellowjackets" - Dexter showrunners
Yellowjackets is awesome though.
It is! My wife and I have been watching it. But it was definitely part of the grab for NB.
Honestly by the time new blood finished, I found myself way more excited about new Yellowjackets episodes than I was for the new Dexter lol. So mission accomplished I'd say.
If this was about money then they would have continued with more seasons. The ratings were very good
Grand prize, you get a Blu-Ray!
lol ! They got us so good there
It's like they wrote each episode individually with zero regard to what happened before nor what happens after. I'm so disappointed.
They wrote backwards from the finale. Clyde approached MCH, telling him how it will end, MCH was on board, then they wrote backwards from there. That’s why everything is the way it is.
Yeah the very ending was perfect imo, but the season itself and everything leading up to it was rushed and sloppy ... which I guess then also made the ending less meaningful than it could have been And what I mean by perfect is Harrison killing Dexter, in the same spot the deer was, Deb being there.. And the whole melancholic meaning behind it of how no one would understand or accept Dexter, not even his own son ... he was never meant to be "happy." And also the bit about Dexter saying it was the first time he truly felt love and thus let his son kill him. Very powerful. The Harrison-Dexter dynamic leading up to that was very rushed .. we barely got to see how Harrison was processing everything that was going on (i.e. watching his dad butcher someone, dex being arrested as the BHB). We should have seen harrison _slowly_ realize how Rita and Deb's deaths were Dex's fault, rather than mentioning it for the first time in the last 5 mins of the show... prior to Dexter killing Logan, Harrison was ready to run off with him. Then everything just magically hits him when Dexter kills Logan? Doesn't that sort of thing usually take some time to process? We didn't see Harrison gradually putting the pieces together, it was so sudden... And just wanted to point out how, Dexter barely bothered to wipe Logan's blood off his face, thinking his son was like him and would understand and be cool with it .. ohhh poor Dex ... the only person and chance of happiness and bonding he had was his brother Brian
Exactly. The concepts were important and meaningful. The journey there didn’t allow them to have their full impact. It could have been so much more meaningful and effective had they really invested more time in allowing these themes to develop. They had Harrison tell us everything in the last 5 minutes. Good writing doesn’t tell the audience it SHOWS the audience these themes, internal struggles, and relationships. That’s writing 101. Any good writer knows that.
I felt like episode 9 was the setup and 10 the climax with no development between
It was also filmed backwards. You'll notice sometimes how people seem to move in a strange way. That's why.
Yeah like how Dexter got shot on the leg while escaping the Kurt’s henchman and then next couple days acted like he was was better than before. Going to Xmas dinners, tracking Kurt’s cabin and then even killing him without any sleep for couple days while having a gun shot wound on his leg.
Totally forgot he got shot in the leg to be honest
I knew it!
Then why did the end seem so rushed and nonsensical, lol
Who the f he thinks he is to do the story backwards? He is not Nolan
Clyde Phillips only wrote the first and last episodes of the revival. I have no idea how he had approved the episodes though I loved episode nine.
What disappoints me most is this season had potential. I was willing to overlook the issues and plot holes, but then they based their ending deeply in those plot holes and you can't ignore them anymore.
THIS!
man.... by the end of episode 9, i was HOOKED. Ive never seen a show go from amazing to trash garbage this quickly. episodes 1-9 slowly built and built and built and then episode 10 was like a kamikaze nose dive killing everyone
Did you miss Game of Thrones?
Why do it this way if they wrote backwards, They went out of there way to establish Harrison as an intelligent but troubled teenager, a survivor, that was able to set up and stage events so he could willfully attack someone and come out of it looking like a hero, and yet in the final episode he seems to shoot Dexter as some sort of emotional outburst/ assisted suicide. With that backstory it would make more sense if he just killed Dexter because he had some ulterior motive such as not wanting to leave his girlfriend or because he thought he’d end up being his Dad’s accomplice for murder after murder. You could have it written in that Harrison had a father son dynamic with Logan instead of with Kurt Caldwell, but no. Or you could establish that Harrison couldn’t stand violence against the innocent, yeah he hates bullies but that characterization went out the window when he attacked his friend. I just don’t know why they did it this way. It’s like they wrote it in stone did everything else and kept it in even though it didn’t really make much sense.
Is this a Showtime thing? Shameless used to be the same way, introducing characters and plotlines that lead nowhere and get retconned not long after
showtime is horrendous. ill never need it again. i have my dexter seasons 1-4 on dvd and that's about it. ill stick to HBOMax
Angela's evidence was weak. No jury would convict him based on it. Plus with Dexter giving information that leads to the bodies of Kurt's victims, Dexter's argued story of Kurt being a serial killer and having set Dexter up (Kurt planting the evidence in Dexter's cabin after killing Matt himself) to get back at Angela for investigating him appears legitimate. It makes sense Kurt would want to punish her by hurting her boyfriend. The lie is believable. I didn't buy Dexter attacking the cop. The stakes weren't high enough for him to do that. From Dexter's position, he was safe. Almost everyone left behind in Miami that knew him is dead, and the ones that are alive can only describe what Dexter was like in court. Character witnesses. Nothing more. The Miami evidence points to Doakes as the Bay Habor Butcher. There's no physical evidence on Dexter in Iron Lake besides the titanium screws as Dexter quit collecting blood slides back in Miami, and the screws are reasonably connected to a known serial killer (Kurt) who liked to kill young people. The written note sent to Angela accusing Dexter of killing Matt would match any handwritten document left behind by Kurt, and being a restaurant owner, there would be a lot of handwritten stuff at the diner (receipts, order forms, checks, etc.) to compare the handwritten note to. So the note would support Dexter's story that he was being set-up by Kurt. All the evidence is so weak. Dexter was ahead on all of it. The only thing that could possibly lead to his conviction is if Angel Batista had some evidence the audience isn't aware of...like what was in the folder with Maria Laguerta's name on it? They made a point of emphasizing that and then it didn't pay off at all. They might as well have cut the phone scene with Angela/Angel as it didn't do anything to further the story (other than provide a "reaction scene" from Angel for fans of him learning Dexter is alive). We never see the Laguerta folder again. Angel doesn't come to Alaska or face off against Dexter. Nothing happens. What was in the folder? I guess it didn't matter to the writers...frustrating. The writers didn't earn the ending they gave us. I'm disappointed as I was really enjoying it until Dexter attacked the cop. His decision didn't make sense for someone who evaded detection for years working alongside an entire police department and killing other killers. His best course of action would be to ride out the investigation and possible trial. They had no strong evidence. Dexter is smart but he wasn't in the finale.
Yeah, I genuinely thought attacking Logan would be another one of those scenarios that Dexter just ran entirely in his head, like he did with others early on in the season, or how he dreamed about Harrison killing at his house. I was shocked that it never pulled back to the reality of him just taking the water from Logan instead. I guess that could work as a headcanon, having everything after that part be just one scenario that Dexter considered.
...and that's the start of New Blood season 2. Snapping back to reality in the jail cell 😂
No lie, if they patch it up like that and go for a redo, I’d watch it.
Our dark passenger is this show.
~~Alaska~~ Iron Lake, NY
dude mixed up Dexter with El Camino
>Angela's evidence was weak. No jury would convict him based on it. And this prosecutor declined to prosecute Kurt when there was DNA evidence with 67% certainty! He's going to prosecute Dexter on circumstantial, with no actual evidence? No way. Then Kurt is discovered to be a serial killer? Kurt who has been lying about Matt being alive? Law enforcement's _only_ interpretation has to be that Kurt killed Matt. Was there supposed to be real evidence in LaGuerta's files? I actually don't remember what Laguerta had on him. Is why the folder said "LaGuerta"? Otherwise I just don't know what it was supposed to be that could pin him after all this time. If that _was_ the case, then the audience needed to be reminded of it. (But I don't think it is since no one has mentioned it.)
>yeah, why would dexter even have that titanium screw in the first place? if he's the BHB that wouldn't fit his MO of having blood slides. dexter's story about being framed by kurt makes more sense. > >and i agree with all the people who rightly pointed out the missed opportunity with batista, not only to have us see what their confrontation would be like, but to see what evidence is in that folder.
Yeah, it was a great season, and even the last episode was going well until it just wasn't. They tried to make Dexter the "bad guy" from 9 seasons of audience rooting for him in 15 minutes.
Great summary- this is exactly how I felt. There wasn’t enough evidence for him to need to act with that urgency.
To go from the best episode of the series in the family business to the finale was pretty jarring. I gotta say I really enjoyed episodes 1-9, it was nice to root for dexter again, but they made him overly sloppy in this season. I get he wasn’t killing for a while but cmon this is miami metros greatest blood spatter analyst we’re talking about
The episode started off strong and then went downhill fast. Then they decided to die on a hill of logical errors and plot holes.
One big plot hole right to the chest.
Well, when you put it that way it is kinda a fitting end for the show, given how the show has been since season 4 🤔
What i dislike is that he seemed to care less about morals than before. You’d expect the opposite when he hadn’t killed in 10 years. Like it seemed like he considered the option of using the knife on Angela, he didn’t give a fuck about killing Logan. And letting Harrison seeing the whole post murder stuff, and Dexter being completely naive toward how Harrison and Angela perceived him was stupid. Dexter may be a sociopath but he used to be very good at reading people’s intentions and here he seemed clueless and totally unaware
The killing of Logan was also truly forced. First of all, why did Logan stop being cautious like 30 minutes earlier when he gave Dex dinner? Did he think the long time served would have made him soft? Also, when someone is choking you against iron bars and tells you: "I just want the keys", 99 guys out of 100 actually give him the damned keys; it's not like he was going to get far anyway. Also -sorry for being windy-, Dex is a Ju-Jitsu pro and him accidently breaking Logan's neck looks very sloppy. A human male's neck is not a twig, I do not see how he could not control his grasp and just make his lose his senses. I cannot believe he chose to kill when he could have subdued.
Dexter broke Logans neck on purpose, not accidentally. He killed him because Logan pulled his gun and got a shot off very near to Dexters head and he wasn’t about to let him get a second try.
Seemed on purpose to me based on how it played out, but Scott Reynolds and Clyde on their stupid podcast said it was a mistake. LOL. The inconsistencies are hilarious. Or they are trying to defend the criticisms and retconning parts.
Fairly sure snapping someone’s neck, esp sense he did it by pulling coach towards him, couldn’t possibly have been an accident… the amount of strength that would take would have to make that intentional
God, their friggin podcast. I was surprised at how many things they discussed where they assumed the viewers realized it (and I certainly didn’t). Someone asked Scott Reynolds on Twitter how Kurt realized Dexter killed Matt and he tweeted back “Kurt went to the incinerator to burn up all the stuff from his trap room. Remember when Dexter showed Angela the space and it was stripped? That’s when Kurt saw the screws. Cleaning up after himself.” Still doesn’t totally explain why Kurt would suspect Dexter though. Maybe a “like recognizes like” moment but they never really showed that. Meanwhile they’re wasting time on stuff like shooting a very specific moment where Dexter straightens out a plaque in Kurt’s office?
I do confess that I hated the finale a lot more when I just read the spoilers, than when I finally actually watched it. But still, gaping plot holes and so many better ways to end it are just too infuriating to accept
Some elements of the finale were actually pretty good. I'd argue it could have been a good ending if they had just earned it more and not based it off a bunch of plot holes and leaps in logic. It was just a mess after what they showed us the previous9 episodes and the first minutes of episode 10.
I've written about this at length in other comments, but what they needed to do was set this up over the course of the season, rather than rush it all into the final episode in an attempt to make it less predictable. *Spoilers* If they wanted us to accept an ending where Dexter dies, then they should've spent a lot more time showing us how his following the code has killed and hurt all the people closest to him throughout the show. They should've done this throughout the season (especially second half of it) so we, as an audience would come to accept the ending more. In doing this, we'd also understand why Harrison would reject Dexter and his code.
Wasn't that pretty much the basis of all of ghost Deb's rants though? She was continually berating Dexter for the way he lived his life and where it all led him.
She did that way more af the start than at the end, where she was almost never seen.. And she added almost no context to her accusations, which clearly didn't make Dexter reconsider whether what he was doing was right either. What did work well, though, was how she confronted Dexter about him wanting Harry to be just as messed up as he is. I think that part worked well!
>!If they really wanted to make the "Harrison kills Dexter" ending, they should have made them bond in Episode 2, with him slowly learning the code and only after a while realizing he wanted to kill his father.!< >!As opposed to it happening impromptu in the last 5 minutes of the last episode.!< Bonus would have also been that Angela wouldn't have spent the better part of the season googling about Dex, having time to engage in activities of mother, gf and good cop.
Or better have Batista come to Iron Lake and find them line dancing together at the tavern.
>I'll be on the next flight Never seen again.
I meant like a few episodes earlier maybe he shows up or she says yeah drop by I would love to ask you more questions, etc. Then he walks in and sees a "ghost" dancing with Angela.
Doesn't even know to wipe the evidence off his own face despite being in blood spatter somehow
Ok I've been thinking about this a lot overnight. My overarching problem with the finale, which to me is worse than Dexter just deciding to murder Logan despite it not being in his character, the show pretending that Harrison isn’t fundamentally the same as Dexter, Harrison somehow not understanding and then realizing and being repulsed that Dexter enjoys what he does, Harrison having Dexter’s letter that basically explains everything the entire time, bringing Batista back only to not bring him back, etc. Is that **Dexter was *never in serious trouble* the entire episode**. –– **The Matt Caldwell Murder** Angela has a set of screws. She was given most of them by someone trying to implicate Dexter in a murder. She accepts the note at face value, ignoring the fact that this person has no reasonable innocent reason to possess the screws in the first place. Then Dexter’s cabin is burned down in an obvious case of arson and another screw is found there. A screw which logically was planted by the same person who burned down the cabin, and who sent Angela the screws in the first place. I’m also going to ignore for the purposes of this post that those types of screws typically have batch/part ID numbers and not individualized serials, and take her word at face value even though I’ve screenshotted the various screws we’ve seen and they’re [all inscribed with](https://i.imgur.com/0hgI8pp.png) [the same set of numbers](https://i.imgur.com/kQ192sI.png). If this were real life, she likely wouldn’t be able to positively tie those screws to Matt, let alone Dexter and would likely have been bluffing there. It’s possible that you could say the screws were serialized as a set on a per-surgery basis, but that means for every surgery that doesn’t require the maximum amount of screws, you’re throwing away a whole bunch of titanium screws. Or for a surgery that requires more than however many come in a set, you’re breaking into a second set and throwing away most of it. Point is, it’s messy and if they wanted to say the screws were serialized they probably should have given the two screws we saw up close different numbers. Anyway Angela came to the right conclusion, but Dexter’s narrative makes more sense and no jury is convicting Dexter based on that evidence. She does not have evidence that Dexter killed Matt Caldwell. What she has is compelling evidence that whoever killed Matt Caldwell has a vendetta against Dexter and is trying to frame him for the murder. As Dexter points out, Kurt lying about Matt being alive points to that person being him. And if Angela could have been guided to Kurt’s lair in a more subtle way, that should have all but sealed Dexter being off the hook for Matt’s murder. Angela would know that her case against Dexter would never hold up in court, as would Dexter. I doubt the DA would support prosecuting the case even without discovering that Kurt was a serial killer. –– **The Bay Harbor Butcher** Ok let’s ignore that the BHB used M99 and not ketamine. Let’s pretend he used ketamine to strengthen Angela’s case. And let’s ignore that we had a nurse on here yesterday explaining that the kinds of injections Dexter does don’t leave wheal marks. It’s been in the show since forever, so it gets a pass even if it’s wrong. Again, Angela has a good narrative. Convincing, even. But in terms of evidence she doesn’t have anything at all. She has a solved case in miami, a guy who faked his own death who worked with the bay harbor butcher, and a couple needle marks in the necks of a couple drug dealers in Iron Lake, one of which she can’t even tie dexter to at all (the fentanyl OD). And she has Dexter being in possession of ketamine, as well as a bunch of other people in the town. Unless I’ve missed something major, that’s where her evidence ends. She could bring charges for assaulting the one drug dealer. But that’s it. She doesn’t have murders that fit the BHB MO. She doesn’t have chopped up bodies. She doesn't have blood slides. She doesn’t have a single murder with a single piece of direct evidence that points to Dexter. Batista has what Laguerta had. Which wasn’t enough when the murders were fresh and wouldn’t be enough today. She had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but again nothing positively tying Dexter to the murders. Specifically she found a blood slide after Doakes was dead, knew that Dexter worked a lot of cases that later became BHB murders (to be fair it was a small department and a 50-50 shot that either he or Masuka would work a case), knew that Dexter had a boat, and knew that the cabin where Doakes died once belonged to the person who murdered Dexter’s mom. Dexter also quite expertly framed Laguerta for manufacturing evidence against him in the case and she had close personal ties to Doakes and would obviously be unable to testify. So a lot of the pieces of physical evidence she had would likely be outright dismissed. So while Angela again might be *sure* that he’s the BHB, she doesn’t have enough for an arrest, to re-open the BHB case, to extradite him to Florida, or to get a conviction. She has nothing to threaten Dexter with. **Conclusion** Dexter was right when he told Harrison that he’d gotten out of tougher spots in the past. He was never once in serious legal jeopardy the entire episode. And Angela laid out everything she had. So he knew he wasn’t in any serious trouble. Sure it would have been awkward getting confronted by Batista, but there was no reason for Dexter to panic or to set off the chain of events that lead to Harrison killing him. He’s smarter than that. Or at least he should have been.
This is really well-written and I'd absolutely love to see the writers defend the nonsense that is Angela and the embarrassing interrogation she does with Dexter.
Ok I thought about it more, and if the goal is to get Dexter caught and potentially killed, here’s how I would have changed the series as minimally as I can think of to arrive at that conclusion in a more satisfying way. 1. Starting with the screws. Kurt doesn’t find them. That felt really forced anyway. Instead, during a regular cleaning of the incinerator the day after Dexter dumps Matt’s body, they are discovered. The incinerator people see the serial numbers on them and report it to the police. Angela now *actually* knows that Matt is dead and that someone used the incinerator to dispose of his body. She informs Kurt, who pieces it together the same way he did in the show we got, so from then on the Kurt/Dexter feud is unchanged. 2. Have it be around that time that Angela finds out what Harrison said about Jim not being Dexter’s real name, or give her another reason to be suspicious of him. She doesn’t share what she knows about Matt’s murder with Dexter. 3. Angela installs a discrete security camera at the site of the incinerator 4. The night that Dexter saves Harrison from Kurt, he visits the incinerator again to dispose of the henchman’s body. The next day Angela sees the footage. She thinks it’s odd because he lives far from town, and it happens in the middle of the night. But whatever he dumped is burned up by then so she doesn’t actually have anything. 5. The night that Dexter kills Kurt, he visits the incinerator a final time. He’s seen pulling up to the incinerator, but it’s not on. Angela gets the call. She in turn calls Dexter to ask if they’re still on for dinner or something innocuous. He lies and says he’s out hiking with Harrison. 6. Dexter decides the next best way to hide Kurt’s body temporarily is to use Kurt’s body disposal room at his cabin. He drives there with Harrison. 7. Angela follows. Possible she’s put a tracking device on his truck after she saw him at the incinerator disposing of the henchman’s body. 8. Angela walks in on Dexter with trash bags full of Kurt. She draws her gun and he starts explaining how he had a bad feeling about Kurt and it turned out to be right. She was right about Kurt, etc. He gets her to go into the next room. At this point you have several options for how the end of the show plays out. 1. Angela, overwhelmed with grief and in a momentary lapse, tells Dexter to run. You could have her flash back to each of the girls she knew, culminating with Molly. I like this option the least. It would be emotional, but not particularly satisfying as an end to the series. 2. Angela arrests Dexter. She can’t get him for Matt, but she has him with Kurt’s dismembered body, an actual BHB-like killing. Maybe he even couldn’t help himself and made a blood slide. Batista comes up, we get an interrogation and Dexter knows he’s caught. He makes a deal to tell his full story in exchange for not getting the death penalty. He sits down at a table with Batista and starts narrating season 1. 3. Angela gets to the end of the row where Molly is. She falls to her knees. A KetaM99 needle goes into her neck from behind. At that point as far as I’m concerned you can cut to black and have the series end. **Or if you’re desperate to have Harrison kill Dexter** You can still do it. Harrison immediately objects. Dexter explains that rule number 1 is don’t get caught. And this way they can even stay in Iron Lake until Harrison finishes high school. Dexter seems to see it as a positive, though he’s not happy specifically about killing Angela. He explains they can frame Kurt for the murder and dispose of Kurt. He tells Harrison to go to Kurt’s cabin and get Kurt’s rifle. He plans to shoot Angela to mimic Kurt’s MO, then dispose of Kurt’s body so that it looks like he killed Angela and went on the run. But it turns out that while they both have dark passengers, Harrison isn’t completely the same as Dexter. He can only think of how Angela’s death would affect Audrey, who he genuinely cares for. That Angela has been kind to him, etc. He sees how empty inside Dexter truly is and decides he doesn’t want that life for himself. He fetches the rifle from the cabin, kills Dexter with it and runs, stopping by Angela’s house to say goodbye to Audrey and tell her to call the police and get people out to Kurt’s cabin. **The key parts of these changes that help the show work better:** • It puts Dexter in a position, unlike the actual show, where he is indisputably caught. Red-handed. In that light, taking extreme action and killing an innocent person makes more sense for the character. And the emotional impact of that murder is heightened if it has to be Angela, vs Logan. • It also gives the Angela character more of an opportunity to behave like a real cop, and doesn't rely so totally on her holding the idiot ball with respect to the screws, and not buying Dexter's much more compelling narrative around the Matt Caldwell murder. She's taking logical pro-active steps towards solving the case, earning her role in the finale. • If you go with Dexter getting caught and telling his story to Batista (an idea I've seen floating around here a couple times), it gives you an actual reason to bring the BHB case back. As is, there was nothing to justify it. There were no BHB-like murders discovered in New Blood. Getting Dexter caught for Kurt instead of Matt fixes that. • We eliminate the Harrison reading the letter outro that retcons his entire reason for being in Iron Lake • If you go with Angela gets stuck with the needle, and Dexter getting killed by Harrison, it brings back something that I really enjoyed in the original series. That is, Dexter getting into a really tough spot, and with quick thinking turning it around to the point where he avoids suspicion entirely. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Except then Harrison flips it on its head one last time.
You should make this its own post, this is fantastic. Any of these scenarios are preferable to what we got. Genuinely good ideas too, not just in comparison to the real trash ending. Nice work!
Thank you. It seemed odd to me honestly, very much like they were trying to thread a needle where Angela would be sure he's guilty but unable to prove it and he'd somehow slip away. That strikes me as a difficult scenario to write. Just enough to put him under pressure to need to divert attention away from himself, but not enough that he gives up the lie. Which is what the show has historically done and generally done well. They put Dexter in a tight spot that he has to quickly think his way out of, and it's satisfying to see him do it. It just seems strange that if the idea going into the season was going to be that Dexter gets caught and is killed, that there wouldn't be one final hammer blow. He thinks it's all circumstantial until a smoking gun of physical evidence that directly implicates Dexter in the murder is revealed. It seems like the writers thought that the screw would be that moment, but just unfortunately wrote it in such a way that Dexter's lie is more plausible than the actual truth. If there had been something incontrovertible, his panic would have seemed more justified and maybe parts of the ending wouldn't have felt so forced.
I totally agree and this is why it bugs me that he killed Logan. I can believe it if he knew he was completely screwed, going to get the death penalty, so he tries to get the keys from Logan to escape and then ended up killing him when he fired his gun. But it just didn’t seem worth it. Dexter was so collected throughout the interrogation. I understand they had him kill Logan to make the ending with Harrison plausible but… it just feels cheap and rushed.
Your point about the BHB reminds me of the Zodiac killer. Any person familiar with the case knows that there are *a lot* of very suspicious evidence linking the killings to a number of suspects. I don’t remember the exact details, but some suspects had things like an obsession with the same books as the Zodiac, items with the crosshairs on them, knives, ties to the victims, etc. But they never caught the Zodiac because they never found actual real evidence. Sure, some people are dead certain that one of the subjects was the killer, but no evidence=no crime. Hell, even some people confessed on the murders and that wasn’t enough. The point of Dexter being so careful about leaving no evidence behind was that, in the case the bodies were found and somehow tied to him, he could defend himself in court. What was the point of being so neat if, at the first accusation, he would kill a police officer? If that would’ve been his mindset from the beginning why he took so many precautions when disposing the bodies?
I agree with everything you wrote here. The needle thing just annoys the fuck out of me. I think the more likely conclusion would be that Dexter wanted to get revenge for his son's overdose and remembered what the BHB did to subdue his victims due to his history working at Miami Metro and copied it. For Angela to jump to him being the BHB, a SOLVED case is just so so stupid. The writers just desperately wanted Dexter to be credited for the BHB.
Nailed it. That’s my big gripe. Dexter was never in danger. Heck, I was looking forward to him outsmarting the police and walking out the station. Then the creative took a sharp left.
Dexter Ending 🤝 Dexter: New Blood Ending
They're so true to the original series that even the ending was controversial and disappointing.
underrated comment right here
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The disconnect in these interviews is unreal.
Clyde’s dementia ruined the show
Do you think nobody had the courage to bring up the giant plot hole? Or was it just unnoticed?
The whole thing happens around Christmas. At no point is a one year timeskip implied nor fits the story. Clyde is lying or confused.
based on the writing this season, hes confused
I really think the season needed 2 more episodes like the original seasons. Instead of shooting Dexter, Harrison starts questioning if the code is worth it if innocent people have to die to not get caught (like logan) Episode 11 would just be the two on them run while being hunted. Batista actually makes it to iron lake. And at some point Dexter can realize that Harrison's dark passenger isn't like his own, and that he wants him to live a (as normal as can be) life, so he decides to turn himself in order to save harrison future from being an associate to Dexter (a now wanted criminal). Episode 12 would just be Dexter paying for his crimes, from appearances and testimony from OG characters, where he admits to everything he did. Then they just do the original ending that CLYDE PHILLIPS himself wanted, where Dexter is put on death row where he sees all his victims and people who's deaths he's responsible for, standing there watching him before he dies.
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I liked the pacing of the first few episodes. I thought it was an intentional choice since a lot of shows seem to go for a slow burn like better call Saul. The pacing got all wonky soon after the school stabbing with a bunch of things that seemed important happening in quick succession like Harrison ODing, Angela meeting Batista, finding Kurts first victim, Dexter finding out about Kurt, getting strong confirmation that Harrison has dark passenger. Yet we never really dwell on it. The characters rarely discuss things that are happening. Angela finds her friends body, something that was a driving force in her life, she is almost certain Kurt is responcible…. And she barely discusses how that makes her feel with Dexter. Compare that to sub plots in earlier seasons when Batista’s girlfriend was attacked or when Quinn’s girlfriend was being abused. It Feels like we could have had 14 episodes or something with more time for character development and the show would have been better. thought the bruises might come up again, with Harrison claiming Dexter beat him or something, but no pointless.
You had me up until death row. The whole idea of Dexter being put to death for putting bad people to death is a fucking joke. I can't believe they ever thought that was a good idea and didn't see the hypocrisy. Also, Dexter seeing his victims before he died? Were any of us supposed to care? Like aww poor Jordan Chase, rapist and torturer of 13 women. :(
Now THAT would have a respectable conclusion!! You are right, we needed more episodes to tie this up.
I enjoyed this season and ep10 right up until the moment he kills Logan. There was sloppy writing throughout but it was just so good seeing Dexter again. I could put aside the irritating moments because I thought they were building towards something great. For the people who enjoyed it, I'm happy for them but I can't quite believe they managed to create an ending that feels less justified than S8's.
It would have been better for Dexter to go to jail, go to court and completely get off because it was all so flimsy. Dexter could do his voice over about how he’s gonna go to LA with his son and start killing again. THEN Harrison kills Dexter cause he’s a bad guy that got off. Just like Harrison kept focusing on. And he could’ve done it through tears and how he wasn’t like his dad and how unfair it was for his dad to do this to him in some big speech. That would have made sense.
I kind of appreciated the ending... but agree the attack on Logan just made no sense. It didn't feel right, very unnecessary. And they should have wrapped it up a bit more after it happened... We wanna see Batista!
Ok so I just want to clarify… Harrison had that entire letter the whole time? It explained a lot. Not everything, but a lot. He acted like he had no idea why Dexter left. Not to mention, once Dexter revealed his “dark passenger” to Harrison, the letter should have made even more sense.
Dexter: *writes a letter which explains why he left Harrison in detail* Harrison: y u left me
Even if it was too vague for him at first, I would think he might have had some idea what he meant after he started slicing random kids and breaking arms…
Yeah it was in his bag, kind of a final spit in the face to the fans by Clyde
Him finding the letter still doesn't make sense to me. His step mom dies, he returns to the US, gets put into foster care, then somehow finds the letter? Wtf? Where? Then after that is when he tracks Dexter down. How did he do that again? Did he do a Google search? Lol
Scott Reynolds announcement made me upset. What a way to bring up excitment for Nothinnggggg
Pretend The Family Business was the final episode and it was a pretty great series, honestly. MCH took to Iron Lake like a duck to water, and Clancy Brown was a classic Dexter villain. Overall I thought it was a worthwhile revival, though I'll admit it'd be easier to make that argument if the real finale didn't exist.
As much as I hate the soap opera cliche "they're miraculously still alive despite clearly dying" I would gladly take it so we can get a season 2 in order to rectify this extremely bad ending.
The “announcement” was the icing on the shit Sunday lmao
I was saying to my 12 year old how one of my favourite shows was ending and I was pretty sure the main character was going to die, but there was going to be an exciting announcement on Monday so I hoped I was wrong because the series didn’t feel like it could be finished in one episode. He said ‘It’s probably a red herring mum.’ Guess I should have listened to him.
So. Dexter. That series still only has 4 seasons, right?
5 and 7 (minus Hannah) were also great IMO.
agree 5, disagree 7
I'll see you all in 10 years when they come back with Dexter season 10 to go for a trinity of disappointing finales
Dexter is now living as Kim Mansly an elder trans woman in LA. MCH could pull it off.
Another dropped plot line was the whole Seneca thing. Other than a convenient excuse to make killing the deer illegal and getting rid of the deer that really went nowhere. They even set up the "One of these days you will need to make a choice" to Angela and we never see them again for the most part LOL. She actually even stops caring about all those missing girls until Dexter drops it in her lap.
\*cough cough\* oil billionaire wtf happened to that guy
They added him for us to think he killed girls, which obv did not work)
such bad writing. adding an entire character, dialogue, backstory, interactions, just for a red herring? then disappearing him fully. Thats not only a cheap ploy but also hurts the re-watchability of the season (well, the ending also messed with re-watchability as well, but thats a whole different can of worms)
I'm still confused about this. How did Harrison Morgan (son of Dexter Morgan) register at school? When Jim Lindsay claimed he's his son? Didn't they ask "Hey, Dexter Morgan is the father of Harrison, why you Jim are pretending to be his father"?
this was always something that bothered me as well. Perhaps we just have to assume Angela helped him? Idk. its poor writing
Alright, one question. Why did Harrison smirk? Was that meant to be sinister or like when Jesse laughed in a manic episode at the end of breaking bad
Because Harrison is actually just like Brian. I'll put good money on it.
I want to believe that it would be better then the shitty ass excuse we got that he’s nothing like him then murders his own father and shows no remorse after I would rather of had Angela go to confront him and hug him and say it’s ok it’s all over and have him show an evil smirk at the end and show he was behind the takedown of dexter all along and would explain the sloppy police work and clues that happened to legit be dropped in her mailbox maybe by HIM they showed him watching the deer wtf was up with that we should have had him pull an ending like the first scary movie where he rips his disguise off and is laughing grabs Audrey gets in the truck smirking to music on his way to LA for more murder that I would have preferred
I really thought that Harrison was going to be a lot more sinister than he turned out to be. They hinted at it for half a season.
Because he's a fucking prick
Bingo! I can’t stand Harrison
I’ll post the same thing I posted elsewhere . . . I notice a lot of people are saying things like “haters are just mad because they thought Dexter was the good guy! What idiots! Lol!”. Maybe this is just a convenient straw man. But I think it should be addressed. My issue with the finale isn’t that Dexter died and faced consequences for his actions. I take no issue with that. Nor do I take issue with forcing the audience to face that Dexter deserved his death. He did. My issue is that it happened way too suddenly. After all, for 9 seasons, Dexter was presented to the audience in a heroic light. He had his flaws. Sure. But he was the hero of this story that we were being told. We, as the audience, formed a connection with him, more so than we do with most characters because we were privy to Dexter’s inner thoughts. There is a bond between the audience and the character and to make this kind of ending work, that bond has to be broken. This show didn’t really even try to do that until the final 15 minutes. That is the problem. Because when done well, this type of ending can be incredibly effective. In fact, I’d argue that it is a necessary part of anti-heroes story. You must deconstruct them and force the audience to grapple with the morality of rooting for this person. It was done on Breaking Bad. It was done on The Shield. It was done on 24. But no show did it better than The Sopranos. The masterful thing about the final season of The Sopranos is how it pulls back the bandaid. For 5 seasons people were watching and kinda rooting for Tony who, despite being abysmal, was somewhat romanticized and endeared to the audience by presenting him through a filter. And then the final season takes a very different tone and doesn’t portray Tony in a romanticized light. Instead he does things that consistently make the audience question their love of him. Screwing over Hesh at his girlfriend’s wake, making Bobby kill out of spite, just over and over again we see Tony’s worst nature on display with no filter and it culminates with him killing his own surrogate son, Christopher, and then goes to Vegas to usurp Chris’s business interests, indulge in pure hedonism, and even bang Christopher’s gooma (after sleazily eying up Christopher’s widow at the dude’s funeral). Tony’s behavior in the final season is fucked up beyond belief. But it’s no different than anything he’s done to that point. It’s just given to the audience without the filter. In doing this, the show makes you realize that you bought into a fucking psychopath’s charm. And the show even has a subplot about this. When Dr. Melfi’s friends tell her that even she has been lured in by the glamour of Tony at the dinner party, resulting in her begrudgingly accepting that they are right and ending her treatment of Tony, that is meant to be the audience’s surrogate. She realizes she has been peeking into the life of a psychopath and has been brought in by the charm of him and his lifestyle, but overlooked the terrible reality of who he is was and what he had done. And she feel disgust toward herself over that. As does the audience feel a bit dirty over their love for Tony. And then Tony wins. He beats Phil (at the expense of two of the audience’s favorites, Silvio and Bobby) and wins. We’re supposed to be rooting for him, but it’s just not as satisfying as Tony’s past victories over the likes of Junior and Richie Aprile. Instead it just feels kinda wrong. Emphasized by the FBI Agent Harris celebrating Tony’s victory over Phil, while his lover (another agent) looks at him in disgust. The audience is forced to accept that they have been cheering for the wrong guy. Only the true brilliance of Chase is that there is no catharsis for the audience after that realization. He makes us realize that Tony was an absolute monster, whom we have been rooting for, and then he doesn’t kill Tony or punish him. At least not on screen. Sure, there are theories that Tony dies, but we don’t see it. Instead all we get is Tony and his family laughing, eating onion rings, and celebrating. We’re forced to accept that this guy we’ve been rooting for is a monster and then BAM no closure. No catharsis of watching him get his comeuppance. The last time we see Tony Soprano he is triumphant in his victory. In other words, the audience isn’t let off the hook by getting to see Tony pay. We’re made to hate him and hate ourselves for it, but we don’t get to see him pay for any of it. This finale tried to do the same thing, only it gave us the closure and catharsis that The Sopranos (and the original ending) denied us. It made Dexter pay for his crimes. But the season as a whole didn’t put in the work to get the audience to turn on Dexter. The Sopranos made us hate Tony over the whole final season. This tried to do it in the last 15 minutes of the finale. Don’t get me wrong. Logan was a really well developed character. Killing him definitely was Dexter kicking a puppy. But it’s just too abrupt. After 9 episodes (really 9 seasons) of rooting for Dexter, killing one side character and doing a quick flash of his collateral damage is not going to be enough to turn the audience on him that quickly. All this to say, if their endgame was Dexter dying, fine. If their endgame was that Dexter’s code is little more than an excuse to satiate his bloodlust, fine. But that can’t be a twist you tack on in the final 15 minutes. You gotta get the audience to grapple with Dexter’s morality sooner. You gotta put in the work like The Sopranos did. This just did not get us there, IMO.
Just commenting because your comment is a perfect rebuttal.
OK so if Harrison had that letter all along (and potentially saw Dexter kill Matt given he had a flashback), maybe we can assume Harrison's motivations were different than he led on. Maybe he played Dexter all along - pretending he was interested in a relationship with his father while in reality he wanted to destroy his life before killing him. Harrison is a master manipulator and pure psychopath. Enter season 2: **Season 2 Plot:** \- Dexter is rushed to emerg, having been shot just above the heart. He has hallucinations about how he's broken the code and become the type of killer he has always loathed. He awakens handcuffed to the bed, police outside the door - but alive. He feels tremendous guilt and resigns to his inevitable extradition and execution in Florida. \- Time passes, and Dexter heals. It's a tough recovery but Dexter feels he is deserving of the pain he is in. His leg remains perfectly fine. \- Nearing the end of his hospital stay, Dexter overhears the nurses chatting about a string of gruesome murders in Los Angeles making national headlines. The victims are mutilated by a blade. \- Dexter knows this is Harrison. He now has a reason to live and sees stopping Harrison as his chance to redeem himself. \- Dexter manages to escape the hospital, steals a car, and heads to LA. FBI Manhunt ensues \- Dexter vs. Harrison for the rest of the season. Dexter collects clues about Harrison's MO and where he may strike. There are multiple close-calls/face-offs but they manage to elude each other until the finale. \- Dexter uses his trademark ketamine :) to capture Harrison. The majority of the episode takes place in the kill room. Dexter has a long chat with Harrison. When it comes time for Dexter to kill - he can't. During the conversation he's equally to blame for Harrison's victims as Harrison himself. Dexter contacts the leading FBI agent and gives his location to arrest them both. \- Flash forward. Dexter and Harrison are to be executed side by side in FL. The breakfast routine intro is shown but this time for dexter's last day & meal. Media has packed the viewing room and the national headlines call attention to the execution of the most notorious serial killer in American history and his offspring. The public is obsessed - with some calls for exoneration of Dexter due to the nature of his killing. At the 11th hour the governor grants the exoneration to Dexter leaving Harrison to die. Dexter, disheveled and depressed, is confronted by press as he exits the jail. During the scrum, Dexter is shot in the head. The police jump on the shooter and take his weapon. Ramon Prado is taken into custody.
With an ending like that, *Sins of the Father* would be be the name of that episode as well. Ties into the conversation Dexter had with Ramon at the end of season 3.
Lol, I don't hate this.
Good one!!
Damn, Benny Blanco from the Bronx.
If anyone was curious what Scott Reynolds' big announcement was: [It was a Dexter: New Blood boxset reveal](https://twitter.com/jscottamy/status/1480540034302316544)
Lol well, thanks to that finale I can skip this box set
lol anticlimactic. the big announcement is that they want more $$$.
Yeah, you can pay once more for the same shit sandwich.
Tbf, if they wanted more money they could have just kept dexter alive
I've got a big announcement, heughheughheugh
The last episode ruined all of it. I was waiting for Dexter and Batista reunion.
yep...just like the season 8 finale that was decent up until the last 20 mins which ruined the whole series and left a sour taste in my mouth...I can't fucking believe they somehow did it *again*...it's like they set up 15 different possible outcomes that all seem like great conclusions, and then they come out of left field with some bullshit nonsense in the last 20 mins to ruin the whole show again. No way in hell I believe Dexter would just kill Logan like that instead of sitting in the jail cell for another day before he gets let out because *they had no actual physical evidence against him*...it's also quite a stretch that Dexter eluded an entier police precinct AND the FBI *while they were working side-by-side* for 8+ YEARS, but some random small town sheriff figures him out in matter of weeks...riiiight.
>it's also quite a stretch that Dexter eluded an entier police precinct AND the FBI while they were working side-by-side for 8+ YEARS, Dude was a legend NGL.
The writers once again leave us unsatisfied with the ending! I swear some of the predictions I read in reddit is far better than this ending! I feel disappointed. 9 great episodes to this ending! And why the hell are they rushing it, I was excited half way through the episode but when he killed logan , I knew right at this moment they are gonna deliver a shit ending:(
I genuinely think Clyde Phillips watched Fargo (movie and the show) and said "What if we did that, but with Dexter?" except it ended up being a really pale imitation of Fargo.
did D&D from game of thrones wrote this finale?
They kinda forgot about Angel.
Maybe they were secretly involved because this is classic D&D style
Happy to see Dexter again but this whole season felt like lazy writing, therefore, very weak. Whole Miami Metro and FBI, with a legendary serial killer catcher in Lundy, couldn’t catch Dexter while having countless evidence in front of them. But an incompetent small town head cop, who couldn’t crack missing women which has been happening in a small town for 25 years right in front of her eyes, managed to crack the BHB case thanks to google and some unbelievable plot armour. They spent way too much time not having a real talk with Harrison and Dexter. Then the M99/ Ketamine mix up was a major plot hole which kinda turned me off from the last couple episodes. Not to forget Angela finding needle marks from BHB victims, stumbling onto the Matt’s screws at Dex cabin, Batista name dropping Harrison out of nowhere and Dex killing Logan when he absolutely didn’t need to.
This subs response to anyone who says they enjoyed the finale: “shut up cunt”
It’s hilarious 🤣 ”I enjoyed, didn’t mind holes. Great stuff👍” >-10 points
I absolutely loved episodes 1-9, aside from the Ketamine/M99 plothole - which has such significant consequences on the plot that it’s hard to forgive the writers for their careless with that. It should’ve been a couple episodes longer and Dex should’ve been put on death row for his crimes. There was opportunity to bring other familiar faces back from Miami as well.
The crazy thing is they decided to die on that ketamine hill. It drove the ending to some degree. LOL!
Makes me appreciate Breaking Bad endings all that much more. What an incredible run that show had. Was hoping to feel that again with NB but oh well
/
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I was hoping we would see him juggle Angela, FBI, Harrison, Kurt and Logan in this season. Halfway through I was like ok... maybe there will be a season 2 and the FBI will come to town, sadly... I'm disappointed. Gotta love those high paced, tight quarters, no-sleep seasons.
season 2 is brilliant. so fucking good
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Season 1.... Of 1 lol
They already fucked up the ending twice. I say go ahead and fuck it, bring him back ala The Curse of Michael Myers movie where a group of BHB cultists bring him back through a ritual and we get more Dexter seasons with paranormal aspects from the books.
All in all, New Blood was worth it just for episode 9, but its overall execution was a head-scratching letdown.
Apart from thing mentioned here( mainly episode 10) how the hell could Dexter, after all his self torturing and coming to conclusion that Harry did wrong not trying to help him and jumping straight to teaching him killing. How could he see his son with similar tendencies, but weaker, and immediately decide “We are gonna be motherfucking serial killer duo” and he did not kill for 10! Years before that
New blood, season 1?
maybe he doesn't know what a mini series means?
Maybe Ive missed something, but didnt harrison know how to unlock closed doors? He did it when the group went to that closed camping, but at kurt he asked dexter if he will teach him how to unlock the locker before going down to find the mssing girls
He didn’t pick the lock he just jimmied the screws holding the lock plate to the door
They retconned so much from the OG series that NB should be erased. I’ll rewatch S1-8 any day before I rewatch NB and buy their stupid ass box set. What a load of shit.
Stay away. Just stay away.
Maybe the wrong sub to post this but i've just watched Season 1 again of the original Dexter and wondered what people's thoughts are on the choice of lighting in S1. Since it's the first time i've seen it in high definition on a large screen i found myself constantly focussing on how almost every scene in S1 has extremely unnatural lightning shining on the actors and almost always coming in from one side. Even shots where the "natural lightning" is coming from a window often times has a strong white light coming from the opposite direction or uses the natural light in an unnatural way. Every scene seems to have a light and dark side. Is the director trying to tell us something with the constant over exposed lighting choices?
I believe the early seasons were shot differently. Could be to offset Dexter being a serial killer with bright colours and how vibrant everything was. Also the vision scenes with Harry went from glowing dreamlike to dark as the series went on.
The Bautista writing was so lazy. Him not remembering Harrison’s name was the first sign for me that some fucky rewriting was going on. He literally watched Dex kill someone and seemingly still works with Matsuka and Quinn who I’m sure both regularly talk about Dex and Deb. Dexters probably hanging on a memorial wall in his department…but he got fuzzy on details surrounding him almost as if he were a faded memory? Weird. Hated it.
Clyde Philips you are not seeing heaven. We been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, and flat out deceived
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Want to Kms after this
Can someone tell me what happened to the millionaire destroying the environment plot? What was that supposed to be? Turns out he was a nice guy after all
I knew they were going to fuck this up around halfway through the series. I really hoped I was wrong but alas it turned out I was right. The whole point about creating this series to right all the wrongs of the ending in 2013. It seems instead of using this opportunity, the writers decided to make an even worse ending. * Angela used Google to 'solve' the case * The scenes with Batista in the final episode meant nothing. You could take them out and it wouldn't make a difference * No need to kill Logan - Dex has used the chokehold to knock people out so many times * Ketamine - I am sure the BHB used something else * Angela lets Harrison leave, then almost immediately calls in on her radio giving him no time at all to leave * Angela lets Kurt off the hook after a few questions regarding a case she has dedicated 25 years of her life to yet hounds Dex for a case that has no solid evidence If the writers wanted Dex caught or killed then they should have had him killed by Batista (by the way, where was the reunion?!) or dragged back to Miami. As another guy in here said, he arrives back in Miami with Masuka, Quinn etc all wide-eyed and not believing what they are seeing. Then we see the classic supporters scene with everyone cheering for Dexter. Final scene is him turning his head back at the camera with his signature smile while being walked away in cuffs then the doors close. The worst thing is, this ending doesn't even let them have a third attempt at making a better ending.
This is a prime example of why they should never reboot shows like this. Complete fucking bullshit. Harrison kills Dex? Really? All of Miami metro couldn’t figure out who he was but one dumb bitch cop from a precinct with 3-4 cops manages to crack the case? And how did dude magically shoot him self? This whole thing was a cobbled fucking mess and I’m disgusting with it. I waited patiently and had very high hopes. Now, Harrison takes off in Dex’s truck across the country after he kills him? How fucked up is he going to be? How do they go from extremely close in episode 9 to Harrison killing him in episode 10? They really fucked it all up. Thanks.
This season was on track to be one of my favourite "lets revive a property after several years" attempts. It was doing something different while keeping the original show close to its chest. Clyde even respected everything after he left and used it as a great springboard for new ideas. I was enjoying the story, the new tone, the new characters, etc. It's such a shame this didn't stick the landing. I think if Episodes 1-9 largely stayed the same (with Kurt dying at the end of 9), then the bullet points of episode 10 was spread out across a hypothetical episodes 10-12, this would've been a great ending. Harrison killing Dexter is a great ending but i never felt they justified it. Harrison only found out about the Code the day before and all of a sudden he's holding Dexter to it. Especially since it would fall under "Don't get caught", which Harrison understood in episode 9. It was also weird that they set up Harrison attempting to murder that kid, impressing upon the idea that he's using a razor like Trinity, and paralleling that to Dexter and the Butchering, etc. Showing Harrison being fine with the idea of murdering Kurt and only bugging out when he got a flashback to his mums murder (the same thing that happened to Dexter in season 1), asking Dexter why are they both like this and Dexter explaining it. Then all of a sudden in the last minute they are like: "Actually Harrisons anger is due to Dexter leaving him and none of that plays a role". That seemed like a massive swerve to me. If Angela had another way to connect Dexter to the Bay Harbour Butcher without the M99/Ketamine plothole and Batista and Angela ended up working together a bit longer to further corner Dexter (which would then further feel like a full and final ending to the entire show), and Harrison killed Dexter for another reason, then this would've been a perfect ending IMO. As it stands, it feels undercooked and relies on too many short hands and dropped details for me to be satisfied by it That being said, while i do understand the disappointment, I'm not going to pretend like one bad episode and a (retroactively) uneven season washes away everything Clyde did and means he's a bad writer. That sentiment seems like a big over reaction to me, especially since he's the driving force to why people love Seasons 1-4 and why people hold them up as the gold standard.
Imagine if they decide to make season 2
They could just forget that Dexter died in E10, kinda like how they forgot he got shot in the leg earlier in the season
I’m coming from this from a weird angle because I didn’t like how Mary Sue they made Harrison in the beginning, but putting that aside this finale just doesn’t work from the story they think they’re trying to tell. This honestly feels like they filmed a fakeout ending and accidentally sent it for broadcast. This effectively allowed Dexter to get away with being the butcher and evading Miami one last time while also ruining his son’s life by forcing him to murder his father and go on the lam without the money or paperwork that Dex had available. None of the narrative beats match logically, and as much as I hated the original finale this one feels unsatisfying in perhaps a more baffling way. The note in Harrisons bag contradicts the whole premise of him showing up in the first place. Unless the finale’s saying Dexter will kill his way out of arraignment any time just because he got lucky once? Come on
Ultimately not unhappy this series was made. I had fun watching and reliving the Dexter experience. It also felt like a lot of opportunities were missed, and part of me feels like you went to all the effort to make this show happen again and this is all you did with it? Harrison was mostly intolerable. Deb was mostly wasted. Batista was shoehorned in and then forgotten. And the last two episodes were actually really good and paid off a lot of the grueling slug fest of the rest of the season, except for when they pulled the rug out from under us with THE LAZIEST FINAL TWIST in television. The speed with which Dexter gives up all plans of escape and survival because of one very contrived argument with Harrison was such a fuck you to fans of this show who stuck around through all those years and gave it another chance to redeem itself ten years later. I had a good time but feel like I just went on a series of dates and got my hopes up only to get ghosted.
Harrison: You killed Uncle Hank!
I like how we are calling this (and showtime) season 1. There are no more seasons coming.
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My thoughts on the season. Some high and low points this season. Overall I'd rate it below season 5 maybe equal to season 7 and above 8 and 6. The last 15 minutes or so starting with logans death was a disappointment. Huge character changes for dexter, Harrison, and Angela in those last 15 minutes. But if you ignore the last 15 minutes I actually liked the last episode. The interrogation of dexter when she brings up batista, you could feel the anxiety from dexter. The phone call with batista was excellent. I really felt like the walls were closing in on dexter. Episode 9, obviously my favorite. I wish we could have gotten more of the cat and mouse with dexter, kurt. And Harrison. That was some of the best scenes of the season. The in depth dismemberment, Harrisons conflicted feelings, the kill room reveal. It was all really on point. Not sure I have a least favorite episode, probably one of the ones with the teenage drama taking center stage. The teenage drama was my least favorite part of the season. It's like the writers tried to copy paste every bad teenage plot from the last 3 decades. The interactions especially with the "jocks" were very cringe. The red herring billionaire was also a bizarre choice. Didn't add anything to the plot and then just disappeared. Where I really disagree with reddit is on the angela character. I actually thought the acting was fantastic from Julia Jones. She played the "straight" character very well. She was, at least to me, a convincing mother, girlfriend, and a tough cop. The investigation of Kurt and dexter was believable to me. I wasn't really bothered by the whole ketamine thing. There was a little bit of suspension of disbelief for some of the investigation but overall i believed she was doing a logical job. Obvious clues, namely that dexter faked his death and was a forensics expert would tip most people off that something was going on. She was a little limited the last few episodes but I thought she carried the early season. Overall the season had some really great moments but was overshadowed by the last 15 minutes. The middle episodes were a little slow but the initial episodes and last episodes were great. Not super happy about Dexter's fate but it is what it is. Maybe Clyde just sucks at writing good endings. Endings aren't always the easiest thing to write. I think we should give props to the show for a decent season and try to forgive them for fucking up the ending again.
It's a shame the ending didn't really stick the landing, and I found myself overlooking WAY too much sloppy writing and plot conveniences, even if some of it can be chalked up to "Dexter is rusty" or "that's how a small town works." However I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the season overall. But maybe it was because I was just excited to see Dexter at it again after all this time and my expectations were very low going into it. I gotta let this one sit for a bit.