Clyde Phillips Talks About Watching the Season 1 Finale: "I Was Crying Again. It Just Destroys Me. I Wrote It With a Pen Filled With Blood"

"There's a lot of me in there" Clyde added.

Showtime

In a brand new interview with website Entertainment Weekly, executive producer and writer of Dexter: New Blood Clyde Phillips discusses the brave decision the writers took, Batista's return, and more. He also reveals whether he's open to a continuation featuring Harrison. Warning! Finale spoilers ahead.

Entertainment Weekly: So this is the ending you wanted, right? You always wanted Dexter to die? 

Clyde Phillips: If you're referring to what I had said previously about the end of season eight, yes (Phillips had wanted to kill Dexter off once the series ended on Showtime but he left after season 4). Had I been in charge of the show and had I done that, we wouldn't be talking now. Thank God I wasn't there and thank God they didn't do it because I had an amazing couple of years doing this.

Now we can talk fully and candidly about that initial meeting that you had with Michael C. Hall about bringing the show back! Did you immediately pitch that Dexter would die and it would be at the hands of Harrison?

Let me think about that 'cause it was two and a half years ago, believe it or not. It was at the beginning of July of 2019 when I spoke with him. I believe that we did discuss that he would die and there was really only one way for him to die. There was nobody else, really. I think it would've been unsatisfying if anybody else killed Dexter.

In those initial meetings, did you want both Jennifer Carpenter and David Zayas to come back?

We definitely wanted Jennifer. David's character Angel Batista grew out of the writers' room when everybody saw them sitting around talking about what's best for the story.

Was there anything that came up in the writer's room that you didn't initially set out to do?

Well, we had to work on the big bad in a big way. The Clancy Brown character, Kurt Caldwell, grew and grew until we had one of the most gruesome and brutal scenes I've ever done. I'm talking about his underground lair with all of the women's bodies preserved forever. I've never seen that before.

Harrison made a really good point in the final scene with his dad when he said, 'I thought you only killed the bad guys.' Yet Dexter killed Logan (Alano Miller). Did you wrestle with that idea?

It was organic to the story. Dexter had to get out of the police station. He was in a lot of trouble. Dexter cleverly set it up so he got Angela Bishop (Julia Jones) out of the police station because of her missing persons' situation. That left him alone with Logan. Logan was the last obstacle for him to get out of there.

It was great when Dexter's remembered all the players from his past. 

Harrison says 'open your eyes and look at what you've done,' which is a callback to the first episode ever of Dexter many years ago. There are a lot of Easter eggs in these episodes. We combed through footage to find the most appealing, innocent, vulnerable people to make it seem like what Dexter had done is even more heinous. Because if it weren't for Dexter and his ways, those people would not have been killed.

The finale was blissfully tidy. It felt like you answered a lot of questions.

The intent was to tell a complete story. It's no secret that the eighth season was very unpopular and dissatisfying to the fans. I wanted the audience to feel as if we had completed the story. I guess I was striving for redemption, not in any religious sense. I just wanted to redeem the show for the audience and send it off with something that we're proud of instead of something that we'd have to make excuses for.

As soon as you presented Harrison, we were thinking, 'oh my God, they're gonna spin it off. They're setting up Harrison as the next evolution of the Morgan family.' But after seeing that finale, maybe that's not the plan after all?

I am open to the possibility. I've been with Showtime forever. I did the first four seasons of Dexter and the last three seasons of Nurse Jackie. Showtime is family. I'm open to the possibility if they wanna pursue it but there are no plans at the moment for that. Jack Alcott is a great actor. He took wrestling lessons. He took baseball lessons. He took chopping wood lessons, fighting lessons. He was a great spirit. We had to shoot out of order because we had to chase the weather. We always needed snow. There's a scene where he's in therapy with Dexter. We purposely did that earlier to give him and Michael C. Hall a chance to really react to each other, to get to know each other. By the time it was over, Jack was ready to play the end of the series. We shot that in the first month. We needed the snow!

That was quite a moment in the end when Dexter holds his sister's hand, but then she pulls away. He then reaches for her, to no avail.

That was Jennifer's idea. We talked about that entire scene for a long time. When you shoot and kill somebody, what's the body position? You don't want him to look like too much of an angel. So Michael came up with this cross leg thing and it was perfect. 

It was rather sad to say goodbye to Dexter. How was it for you?

I just watched it this morning. I was crying again. It just destroys me. There's a lot of me in there. I wrote it with a pen filled with blood. It was very emotional for me.

Source: EW