Clyde Phillips served as an executive producer and showrunner on Dexter in the early years, helping shape the series for its first four seasons until he decided to leave the show in late 2009, at the end of the fourth season which concluded with Rita's shocking death.
"I haven't shared this with anyone," Philips told E! Online. "And I can tell you that this is what I personally would have done should I have stayed with the show. I chose not to stay with the show, and so everybody did what they did, and I had no problem with that…and I think they did a good job with the final episode. But here is what I personally would have pitched."
Read Clyde Phillips' Dexter ending after the jump!
"In the very last scene of the series," Philips explained, "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, it's not a dream.' Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They're 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 killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible killing, Doakes who he's arguably responsible for, Rita, who he's arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.
"That's what I envisioned for the ending of Dexter. That everything we've seen over the past eight seasons has happened in the several seconds from the time they start Dexter's 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."
Phillips further explained that his idea for the ending was inspired by An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, the 1890 story by Ambrose Pierce about a Confederate soldier that is famous for its time-altering, plot-twisting ending. When the soldier is hanged, the rope breaks, he falls into the river, swims to shore, runs toward his family, see his wife and children and right before they are reunited, the rope catches and he dies. It turns out that the entire story takes place in the two to three seconds between the soldier's intial drop and his neck snapping.
Of course, even if Phillips had stayed on with Dexter, there's no telling how the series finale woudl have turned out. "That is what I would have pitched and what I would have liked to have done," Phillips tells me. "But I can't say what we would have done because nobody was the boss of that show. It was a collaboration between Sara Colleton and John Goldwyn and the network and me."
What do you think of that ending? Is it better than the original one? Discuss!