full image - Repost: The ending of Dexter is Flawless. (from Reddit.com, The ending of Dexter is Flawless. )
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I keep seeing posts and comments on this sub that just don’t make any sense to me — specifically the disdain for the ending of the original run, the general belief that Rita being killed off was a terrible mistake, that Hannah is awful, and that Harry’s code actually means something significant. I don’t want this to sound smug but it just leads me to believe that a lot of people here just didn’t understand the show at all, because I don’t see how you could understand what you were watching and hold any of these opinions, so I’d like to share my perspective. Unlike most shows — especially American dramas — Dexter is one single story, not a bunch of stories. You need to understand this point to understand that, unlike other popular shows at the time, like Lost or Prison Break or 24 etc, Dexter wasn’t an idea that got commissioned that they just kept dragging out until the network said “okay we’ve had enough thanks”. Everything that happens and all the people we meet during the course of the 8 seasons all just reiterate the same singular story.Dexter had spent his entire life up until the beginning of series one quite content. He was an unfeeling psychopath. He had an appetite to kill, and had perfected how to do it. He had enough of an understanding of how to behave in society so as not to arouse suspicion. He had a girlfriend and a sister that helped maintain his cover. He knows nobody would ever understand his truth and that he cannot share who he really is with anyone. Harry had taught him that he has a dark passenger within him, a concept that he entirely believed, and that nobody who ever sees this dark passenger would ever be able to love and accept him fully.Brian comes in and changes everything that Dexter has ever believed. Brian revealed himself to Dexter and showed Dexter, for the first time in his adult life, what it was like to feel seen and to feel loved. Brian defied everything Harry ever taught him by showing Dexter that he understood this concept of his dark passenger and loved him anyway, and that this love was unconditional. The story really properly starts when Dexter kills Brian. Dexter kills the only person (other than Hannah, but I’ll get to that…) who knew who he really was and loved him unconditionally anyway.This is when the story gets going. After killing Brian — ostensibly to save Deb, Dexter kills the only person who ever made him feel anything, and, in a nutshell, he continues to search for a way to recreate that feeling by showing his dark passenger to someone every single season, and fails miserably every single time, learning a new harsh lesson each time. It’s not an accident that nobody has ever seen it up until that point. He wants someone to see it, and love him anyway, and nobody ever gives him that feeling fully. As desperate as he is to have that relationship with Deb and Rita, he knows they would never understand and it would do nothing but destroy their relationship. His confession to Rita is his attempt at kind of being honest with her, not fully, but enough to test her response. Her response is “change or I will take the kids and leave”. This lets him know she can never know the truth. Skip to the second last paragraph if you don’t want a breakdown…In season 2, he shows his dark passenger to Lila. Lila never loves Dexter, she just fetishises his dark passenger. In season 3, he shows it to Miguel. Miguel doesn’t love or care about Dexter either, he exploits his dark passenger for his own gain. In season 4 he meets Trinity, he’s fascinated by Trinity because he wants to understand how someone ‘like him’ can have a loving happy family. He wants to love Rita and Harrison, and wants to learn how Arthur does it. He soon realises (after it’s too late) that Arthur doesn’t have a loving happy family, and his attempt at this gets Rita killed, setting Dexter back even further than before because he now has the guilt to add to his already conflicting feelings about himself. In season 5, he shows his dark passenger to Lumin, for a short while he feels it again, a connection with someone who knows who he is, but once her appetite for revenge is satisfied, her dark passenger leaves her (her name literally means Light… it was never going to go any other way) she is, like most other normal people, put off by Dexter. In season 6, he gets a glimpse of himself — a serial killer who follows a strict code written by someone else (even though it’s all in his mind, right down to the conversations he has with Harry) and realises how much of a monster he really is, and that Harry’s code is bullshit and has done nothing but push him further and further away from any chance at real love and connection with anyone else — bear in mind that by this point he has gone through all of the above rejections/heartbreaks whilst also carrying the guilt of Rita and Brian’s deaths, and his faith that he will ever love again like he did with Brian is pretty much depleting by the minute. He meets Hannah and finally he has a chance once again to be with someone who knows about him and doesn’t care — Hannah isn’t drawn to his dark passenger, she doesn’t use his dark passenger, she doesn’t exploit it or parade it around, she just loves Dexter, but life catches up with him once again in the form of Deb proving to him that she can’t handle the truth despite being the one person who truly “loves him”. Her love, unlike Brian’s, is not unconditional, no matter how hard either of them try. Season 8 concludes the idea that his whole life has been one stinking shit heap of a lie, and that’s he’s been exploited by everyone around him and that everything Harry ever taught him was a crock of shit. His attempts at finding love and a human connection have resulted in him losing absolutely everything and destroying everyone around him. So instead of continuing to try, he gives up and resigns himself to a lifetime of solitude and loneliness where he can’t hurt anyone else or be hurt by rejection anymore. It’s a dark and sad story, but there is no other ending, no way of saving Deb or Rita, that would have made any sense whatsoever, and I cannot understand how this is not considered to be the most satisfying ending of a tv show ever made. Like, it fully blows my mind. If you wanted a happy ever after Hollywood ending, fine, I get that this may be disappointing to you, but any show that puts good storytelling above pleasing the masses gets props from me.
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