2. Deborah Morgan: Always On The Losing End
Dexter's sister Deb has struggled pretty much the entire series with her own demons. Whether it be the chain smoking, or her inability to get into the right and stable relationship, or her descent into alcohol and drugs in the final season, Deb was always on the bad side of whatever was taking place in her life. Only in this final season was she able to emerge from years of torment as a new woman, and ready to fall in love with her former partner Joey Quinn. But the happy ending was never meant to be for Deb. Throughout most of the final season she struggled with what she had done to LaGuerta in order to save her brother, and she still had to deal with those feeling of love she had for him as well. Not sisterly love, mind you, but actual romantic love for her own brother. But she struggled on, and she pushed through, working with Dr. Vogel to better understand who Dexter really was, and how her place in his life was just as important to her as it was to him. Ultimately though, Deb was destined for a different fate, and perhaps she always was. Deb was the one person throughout Dexter's life, until he reconnected with Hannah McKay, who was his foundation, his ground zero, his compass. Not his moral compass, but his life compass. She was always there when he needed her, and likewise so was he for her. Her journey for us as fans came to be just as important as Dexter's, but you had to know it was a journey that would never end with her walking off into the sunset. She was always the tragic character of the story, the one with the ongoing struggle to turn her life around and get her own feelings in check, always dealing with something bigger than she could handle. And so by the show's end Deb had come full circle, finding the courage to return to Miami Metro given all that she had been responsible for and had to emotionally deal with, and start anew doing again what she loved. But she was obviously not going to end the show unscathed; after all, she had been the only person Dexter had cared about aside from his own children (and initially Rita), so ultimately Dexter was bound to lose her. Shot in the line of duty and suffering from surgical complications while on life support, Deb passed away at the hospital in the show's finale, albeit at the hands of her brother who pulled her proverbial plug. An act of mercy, to be sure, for a life that was more tormented and conflicted than any life really should be. And so Dexter fittingly takes his sister from the hospital, and onto his boat aptly named Slice of Life, for a burial at sea. For many fans, this was a decision made in poor taste. This was only how Dexter disposed of his own victim's, after they had been brutally murdered by his blade, and certainly not an end fitting for his beloved, adopted sister. But it was fitting, and it was just, and it was right. Burial at sea was always Dexter's way of finding closure. It was the closure to every journey that he took towards ending the life of those who had deserved it. And for Dexter, taking Deb out to sea for her burial was cathartic. Burying her like he did was so eerily similar to the way he handled most of his actual kills, but it always brought him closure. And in the end, this was the scene where Dexter realized he could not go away with Hannah and Harrison, that in fact he had not changed, and that he could not live a normal life, complete with a true family unit. This scene epitomizes everything Dexter was, and honestly always had been; a final example of how he was ultimately unable to separate his dark passenger from his true self, no matter how hard he tried and wanted to believe that he could. And killing Deb was probably partly just another kill for him, to some degree, but it was also how he had grown to deal with death itself over the years. Always alone, out at sea where another chapter of his life would come to an end...until the next time. And what of Dexter's final move?