This year’s Dexter: Resurrection was outstanding, with the franchise switching things up by putting Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) in New York City, as his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), last seen trying to kill his dear old dad, is failing to suppress his murderous urges in the Big Apple. At the same time, Dexter joins a bizarre serial killer club led by Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage), and most terrifying of all, has to deal with burgeoning, new emotions that have him both caring more for people and being scared of how his son might feel about him.
This was one of the best seasons of Dexter yet, with the common opinion being that it was for sure the most successful since the peak of Season 4 of the original series. After the Trinity Killer storyline, the popular belief is that Dexter fell apart over its last four seasons. Yeah, the series finale was a stinker, but what came before it is a lot better than you remember.
Lumen’s Storyline Is One of ‘Dexter’s Most Heartbreaking
We’re not going to argue that Dexter didn’t peak in Season 4 because it definitely did. John Lithgow‘s Trinity Killer was absolutely terrifying (the actor won an Emmy for his work), with a performance of what appeared to be a normal family named Arthur Mitchell contrasted with something much darker. He was the perfect antagonist to our anti-hero, and that season finale, where it’s discovered that Trinity has killed Rita (Julie Benz) is one of the most shocking moments in TV history. Where do you go after that?
The first time around, Season 5 of Dexter felt like a huge drop-off, not just because the series couldn’t match what John Lithgow established, but because what was put in his place was so inferior. The bad guys this time around were the Barrel Girl Gang, a group of men who rape and murder women. That’s, of course, chilling, but the actual villains came across as rather uninspired. Much of the season revolved around Lumen Pierce (Julia Stiles), a survivor of the gang, who is helped by Dexter and put on the path to kill her attackers. With Lumen and Dexter both so broken, Season 5 was a despairing story.
Watching it back now, though, it’s easy to see why Julia Stiles is so talented. She’s not here to entertain, but to be a realistic depiction of the trauma women suffer through due to the aggression of men. Lumen didn’t have a lot in common with Dexter, but that was the whole point. He let her know the real him, and she used that to get her revenge, but it wasn’t a joyful moment. After her attackers are dead, Lumen exits Dexter’s life because she doesn’t have an urge to keep killing. Yet again, Dexter gets close to someone, only to be left alone. This season of Dexter isn’t as exciting as what came before, but it’s one of the most important for Dexter Morgan as a human being.
Dexter Breaks His Code in Season 6
With all due respect to Colin Hanks, he wasn’t great as Travis Marshall, the Doomsday Killer. This felt like the type of religious-based villain we’d seen before in movies and TV, and even the twist that Professor Gellar (Edward James Olmos) was part of his broken mind wasn’t enough to make him fascinating. Many fans write this season off as a mediocre one where Dexter had started to run out of ideas, but there’s still a lot going on.
Mos Def is a major part of this batch of episodes, playing a religious ex-con named Brother Sam. He has killed before, but now, because of his faith, he has no fear of death, and tries to save others just like him. Among them is Dexter Morgan, who reveals who he really is to the man. Dexter ends up being unchanged and actually falls deeper into his urges, as he begins to kill more bad people who don’t follow his code.
It’s all done as a way, even if flawed, to show the struggle Dexter is dealing with inside himself. He’s falling apart, but his obsession can’t be stopped, and it’s only getting worse. Rather than being a serial killer we can root for, he’s become more complicated and tragic. Season 6 also has the huge reveal of Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) finding out that her brother is the real Bay Harbor Butcher, but the jump-the-shark plotline of Deb realizing that she’s in love with her brother destroys that twist for many. Yes, it’s arguably a bit of a step too far, but it’s also logical that a severely traumatized and broken soul like Deb Morgan could fall for the one person left in her life who truly cares about her.
Maria LaGuerta Discovers the Truth About Dexter in Season 7
If Season 6 was seen as another step down, fans at least thought that its successor was a bit better. After all, Dexter ramped up the intensity big time by having Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez) finally put it together that the lead character is the Bay Harbor Butcher. It leads to the tense episode where Dexter must decide if he can somehow kill Maria or turn himself in.
If that’s not enough, Dexter doubles down by putting the decision in Debra’s hands. Will she turn her brother in, exposing his truth and thus ending his life, or will she kill LaGuerta to keep him safe? It’s heartbreaking, yet a guilt-ridden relief for us when she chooses the latter, killing her own boss not only because she wants to save the person she loves for his sake, but because she needs him so badly and can’t exist without him. Dexter has passed his sins on to his sister, and there’s no coming back from that. Season 7 of Dexter also delivers a better antagonist in Isaac Sirko (Ray Stevenson) and introduces us to Dex’s romance with Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski), a soul as dark as our anti-hero who he doesn’t have to fake a life to be around.
‘Dexter’ Refuses To Give the Audience a Happy Ending
Dexter‘s eighth season is regarded as the worst of them all, but there is a lot of good to find in what is admittedly a mess of episodes that aims to do way too much in too little time. Many didn’t like how Dr. Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling) changed up Dexter’s origin story and diminished his father, but it aimed high to add more emotional complexity to the Dexter we thought we knew, even if it didn’t hit like Dexter‘s creators had hoped for.
Dexter also refused to give viewers a happy ending that was in no way possible. Debra Morgan had to die, and we had to see Dexter, who is now more in touch with his feelings for her because of Vogel, suffer for it. For someone who is supposed to be a soulless killer, Season 8 of Dexter gives us a character more human than he’s ever been outside of Dexter: Resurrection. Sure, the final act is silly, with Dexter faking his death and running off to become a lumberjack, but what other kind of ending could play out? If they weren’t going to kill Dexter off, there was no way for him to continue to live his life. Going to the Northwest and growing a beard might have looked weird, but he had to get as far away from himself, and from us, as he could. Dexter ends as a tragedy, but, because we couldn’t let him go, he keeps coming back to do our bidding.
