Dexter, one of the biggest shows of the past decade, came to a close recently and left fans very divided. Ever since season four of the show, fans have been quite unhappy with the direction, plot holes, repetition and generally uninteresting story arcs. I haven't been quite as jaded with the show as many fans seem to have been, I always gave it the benefit of the doubt and never looked into plot holes or things of the sort. As the writers of Dexter said in a recent interview, "Dexter has always been a kind of hyper-reality". My favourite run for Dexter is still season four which just hit all the right notes and came with a truly shocking end that left our appetites wetter than ever. Seasons one and two were also fantastic coming in behind number four in my opinion but season three was forgettable. So generally for the first four seasons, Dexter was an incredible show that rarely missed a beat. Then came season five, which, after the greatness that was four, really felt like a drop in quality and direction. With such a great set-up from the season four finale, big things were expected of five but didn't materialise. Season six was a further dip in quality, with the show taking a religious storyline about two men trying to bring about the biblical apocalypse by killing people and setting them up like the four horsemen, which sadly, sounded excellent on paper. I want to clarify that I still liked seasons five and six, but they just weren't as good. I've honestly never thought a season was ever bad or boring, just some more so than others. After those two seasons that didn't work as well as they could have, I think seasons seven and eight brought the quality back a degree. The end to season six set up the major arc for the last two seasons, which was Debra seeing Dexter kill Travis Marshall. So season seven dealt with Deb's shame, anxiety and uncertainty over what to do with the knowledge that her brother is Miami's biggest serial killer. She eventually chooses Dexter by killing her former boss Laguerta and thus season eight deals with her personal and professional spiral.
As a fan of the show I was always more interested in Dexter himself than his relationship with Deb, so I wasn't keen on the new storyline but now that the dust has settled I realise it was definitely the right way to go. So, I've seen a lot of people complaining about the side stories in season eight and how they were pointless but I entirely disagree. By having Masuka find a daughter and Quinn take the Sargent's exam we got a big view of what the future holds for these characters,.Masuka is beginning to settle down and Quinn has a bright future in the force. Bautista, admittedly, was a rarity this season but I think it's obvious he would retire soon, for real, and return to his bar. These side characters, except for their love lives, had their stories wrapped up and their futures were set. The next discussion piece is Debra's death; a moment that I think was handled brilliantly. Debra gets shot by the Brain Surgeon, Saxon, and is sent to hospital where they operate on her. Everything goes ok, Deb wakes up and she and Dex have a nice conversation before he leaves for Argentina. Dexter changes his mind and comes back to the hospital after getting wind of Saxon heading that way to kill Deb, which results in an excellent, tension-filled moment, in which Dexter and Saxon meet outside of Deb's room. Bautista arrives and stops Saxon, Dexter heads into Deb's room and....it's empty. My first impressions were that she'd been moved to another room or something, then Dexter walks toward Quinn, who has his back turned. For me this was what made the entire scene so epic, the way Quinn turns around and we see his red, blood-shot eyes, indicating something very bad has happened. Indeed it turns out Deb has suffered a clot and her body went into a coma, leaving her without her mental faculties and in need of a feeding tube. WOW. The second biggest character in the show essentially killed off-screen; a very bold move but one that I think paid off. This was a unique way of having a character die and it was entirely unexpected. One other thing I liked about this was the fact that we found out through Dexter, there was no big ER moment when the machine stopped. Deb crashed and the doctors were rushing around, we simply see it as Dexter did, a visitor calling in. Truly a great move. I know fans weren't happy that, once Dexter pulled the plug on Deb, he dumped her body in the ocean like the rest of his victims. To be honest I'm not entirely sure of why he did this either, other than the fact that he wanted to be the one to bury his sister and this was the only way he knew how. The final thing to address about the finale was just that, the ending. The ending that no-one saw coming. Since season one people assumed that the show would end with Dexter being caught and killed, which was logical and obvious, which is exactly why the producers chose not to do that. As the show drew to a close Dexter drove his famous boat into a hurricane and we're left assuming he's dead but with no body, which leaves us with an ambiguous ending that pissed people off. After we see Hannah and Harrison, happy together, the camera fades to black, only to come back and show us a bearded Dexter living as a lumberjack in isolation. This ending was entirely unexpected. I mean, who could have seen Dexter as a lumberjack? I was honestly ok with this ending, definitely more so than the ambiguous hurricane ending that we almost got. The writers said they chose to do the fade out to show that the rest of the world is moving on without Dexter, to them he's gone, then it comes back to show him by himself, without voice-over; his personal torture for letting Deb die. I didn't want Dexter to die in the hurricane it was too easy and if he was going to die I'd rather it came in the form of being caught by Miami PD or getting killed by Deb. Or, as a friend suggested, had Debra been caught for the murder of Laguerta, only for Dexter to take the fall for it. This would have been quite poetic the Bay Harbour Butcher going to the chair for the only crime he didn't commit. The scene in which Dexter, Bautista and Quinn watch the playback of Dexter killing Saxon, gives us the first and only tease of those characters finding out who Dex really is. The scene gives us the impression that both Quinn and Bautista see that Dex did not act solely out of self-defence but they understand and agree with his killing of Saxon, so they overlook it. It's a fun scene that gives us that little taste of Dexter being discovered. I would have been fine with any of these endings but I'm also fine with the one we actually got. One of the last scenes was Dexter standing on his porch, with the storm looming overhead and the last time we get voice-over he sums up the show from the first season to the last.
"As much as I may have pretended otherwise, for so long all I've wanted was to be like other people, to feel what they felt... Now that I do, I just want it to stop."
This line was incredible, it concluded the show and showed us that, after 8 seasons, Dexter had finally known what it felt like to be human, to feel, and the pain is too much for him to bear. He finally understands the impact and cost that his life has had on everyone he's ever known. This is an incredibly emotional moment that encompasses his eight-year journey. Season 8 of Dexter was not the best but the finale delivered in scale, emotion, effects and closure. The problem with any show is that the finale is always going to disappoint in some fashion as people have been watching for many years, all for it to conclude in 50 minutes. It's a tall order for any show but I think Dexter did it well, better than I had expected. In retrospect, the good times of Dexter far outweigh the bad. The first four seasons were so incredible that it doesn't matter that the next two weren't so great. In its entirety Dexter is a fantastic show that I would recommend to anyone. Sure the show wasn't always great but I for one will always remember Dexter for being one of the most unique, mysterious and unpredictable shows of all time, and I loved it.
