Dexter: 5 Changes That Would Have Improved The Finale
Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for the Dexter series finale, as well as the entire series. Like many fans, I have been watching Dexter from the beginning and once placed it atop my list of favorite TV shows. And like most fans, I was terribly disappointed with the series finale. It was incredibly stupid and frustrating throughout, and it was icing on the cake of the worst season of the show by far. In a recent interview with Clyde Phillips (the original showrunner for the first four, far superior seasons), he revealed how he would have ended Dexter: "In the very last scene of the series, Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, Oh, it was a dream. And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, No, its not a dream. Dexters opening his eyes and hes on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. Theyre just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery. "And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killedincluding the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible killing, Doakes who hes arguably responsible for, Rita, who hes arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there. "Thats what I envisioned for the ending of Dexter. That everything weve seen over the past eight seasons has happened in the several seconds from the time they start Dexters execution to the time they finish the execution and he dies. Literally, his life flashed before his eyes as he was about to die. I think it would have been a great, epic, very satisfying conclusion."
That sounds so much better than the mind-numbing ambiguous ending that we got, which revealed Dexter to be alive and well as a bearded lumberjack/deadbeat dad in the closing scene of the series finale. Dexter needed to die that was always the inevitable and logical outcome. The fact that he gets away consequence-free by faking his own death undermines the character and the theme of the entire series, and insults the audience that has been watching and waiting through several sub-par seasons holding out hope that the show's finale would at least pay off on some level. How does the last showrunner Scott Buck not realize that?
It seems like he simply didn't understand the character at all, as he defended the finale by saying this.
That got me thinking about some additional and much more dramatic turns that would've made the final episode, and the final season as a whole, 1000% better. I came up with some ideas of my own that I think would've offered a much more satisfying and definitive end to Dexter's story."We wanted to leave it all in the viewers head. I dont know what hes thinking in that moment; I know hes in this self-imposed prison and the reason he locked eyes is essentially so we can feel as uncomfortable as he does in his world.
"Hes someone who was just moments from taking that final step toward humanity who then has to face himself as the monster he believes he is and decide his own fate.
"He gives himself what he deserves. I dont think in that moment hes fighting the urge to kill; hes dealing with the reality of the misery of his life in that moment."