A show notorious for an awful ending comes back from the dead and has an even worse second ending.
An ending which wasn't earned at all:
- Dexter is acting sloppy and idiotic the whole time. This is a man who got away with hundreds of murders.
- Angela, who hasn't been able to solve a series of missing persons cases in her own town for 10+ years, solves the BHB case thanks to a series of plot contrivances, a google search and a freaking retcon (the M99/ketamine inconsistency, that made all of this possible). Her conversation with Batista in the final episode makes no sense either.
- The writing for Harrison is all over the place. After ten episodes I barely know who this kid is and what he wants. He keeps running away from conversations until the final couple of episodes and then we get barely 45 min of father-son bonding out of the whole season. His 180° turn in the next and final episode feels incredibly rushed.
- The show completely falls apart when Dexter kills Logan and he didn’t have to. All the evidence they had on Dexter was circumstantial at best, they had nothing solid to tie him to any of the murders. Any capable lawyer would have got him out of this. So his decision to attack a cop and prove himself a killer is the most illogical and out of character action he could have taken at the time. It was all downhill from there.
I am not upset Dexter died. His death could’ve happened in any number of fulfilling ways that honored the journey and the themes of humanity, morality, consequences, personal growth, development of empathy, justice/vengeance, the lasting effects of trauma the show explored in its' original run.
I’m upset they instead had his own son put him down like an animal while undermining years of character development to tell us he was just a psychopath incapable of feeling all along. Vilifying him entirely at the last second to force this outcome feels like weird moralistic bullshit punishing and mocking us for caring. Miss me with that bullshit.
Second viewing, previously unrated.
Wow, I did not expect that this would be this much of a trainwreck. A show notorious for its terrible ending doubles down with an even worse second ending. Let's start with the dead person Dexter's talking to this time around, Debra. We see a much different Debra, a Debra who apparently hates Dexter even going as far as calling him a monster and saying it's his fault she died. Directly contradicting the character in the main show. Then, we have Angela. A small town cop who couldn't solve missing person cases for over ten years solves the Bay Harbour Butcher case. She does so with a simple Google search. The search was "ketamine miami homicide" which somehow turned up BHB. Dexter had never used ketamine before so it's both a contrivance and a retconning, great job. The main show spent multiple seasons showing us that Dexter is not just some psychopath but is a human capable of love and more than just a cover life. Well, here he is a much different person. He's incredibly sloppy. A man who got away with hundreds of murders is worse at covering up than some small-town serial killer (Kurt Coldwell.) And, for some reason kills Logan (a cop) to escape his cell. Angela had only one piece of circumstantial evidence against him. Any decent lawyer would've gotten him out of that. Not to mention he could've just knocked him out. It ends with my beloved Dexter being gunned down like some animal by his own son. Absolutely terrible.
