Let’s revisit Dexter's final season and explore its lasting impact today, in 2024.
We are just over a month away from the premiere of ‘Dexter: Original Sin’ but the marketing engine hasn’t quite roared to life just yet. At the same time, the wheels are starting to turn on ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ as we quickly glide towards production which is scheduled to begin some time in January. While there is sure to be plenty of new footage and revelations to analyze in the coming weeks, I find myself thinking a lot about the legacy and impact of the controversial “final” season of the original show and how it will be remembered as the Dexter timeline continues to expand a decade later.
Where did Season 8 Go Wrong?
First, I want to unburden myself by addressing the obvious but complex faults with the original show’s final season. Truth be told, I don’t hate season 8 of Dexter (shocker, I know); Instead, I look at it as the season that I love the least. It is a wildly inconsistent chapter that I think had a lot of really neat ideas that were ultimately handled rather poorly.
With the writers knowing that they were writing a finale, it should have been a season that was laser focused on navigating the rift between Dexter and Deb that was created in Season 7 while doubling down on all of the things that made the show popular from day one: dark humor juxtaposed against disturbing violence, dynamic villains (“Big bads”), etc. Instead, that central conflict was moved to the back burner remarkably fast and several unnecessary side stories and characters were introduced for seemingly no reason.
In all honesty, between Deb, Vogel, and the Brain Surgeon, there were more than enough narrative threads worth pulling on for an entire 12 episode season. With that in mind, I find it kind of baffling that they found it necessary to introduce Zack, waste an episode on Hannah’s lame husband, or spend so much time focused on Masuka’s daughter.
Even stranger still, “kill room” scenes - which have served as fan-favorite narrative devices since the show’s inception - felt hollow when they should have been firing on all cylinders. In fact, the final kill room in which Dexter actually dispatches a bad guy happens in episode THREE of the final season! The sub-par kill rooms gutted the final season of a show that deserved to be emotionally exhausting, unapologetically violent, and relentlessly tense. Instead, the body count was dialed down and the stakes were crammed into the final two episodes. In the end, the whole thing felt incomplete, awkward, and uncharacteristically somber.
But where - specifically - did the season come off the rails? If you ask me, it wasn’t the final act of the season that sank it; It was the middle act (specifically, episodes 5 - 8). In that span of episodes, Deb’s PTSD was miraculously cured, Dexter explored the idea of becoming a “spiritual father” to Zack (for some reason), and Hannah came back in the most underwhelming way imaginable. To top it all off, the mystery of the Brain Surgeon moved forward at a snail’s pace and Vogel’s involvement in Dexter’s life became infinitely less interesting once they stopped focusing on her relationship with Harry. There was a wealth of ideas to explore yet they took an unnecessary detour and the audience started to lose their patience.
Of course, the season is remembered most for its strange finale and bizarre final scene which left many shell shocked (but not in a good way). I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that the final episodes left a lot to be desired but I feel like they would have been better received if the second act wasn’t wasted on unnecessary distractions. I think there are a lot of elements in those final episodes that had a wealth of potential even if that potential wasn’t fully realized.
The Potential for Greatness was There
It wasn’t all bad though. For me, the turning point for the season came with the resolution of the Brain Surgeon mystery and while that twist didn’t land as well as the big reveal in season 1, it reinvigorated the Vogel storyline dramatically and got the season back on track (to a degree). We were suddenly given a worthy adversary that, in a lot of ways, resembled the Dexter that we met in Season 1 (sans-code) which paved the way for a high-stakes finale with some neat ideas at play.
In retrospect, it might be difficult to discern the potential I am referring to; Especially given the backlash that is still a sticking point for the series to this day. For me, the game pieces in play were all really interesting: Hurricane Laura baring down on Miami added a fun wrinkle to the drama as it played out; Hannah returning to give Dexter an opportunity to suppress his demons and start a new life; Daniel Vogel’s (the Brain Surgeon) unchecked psychopathy and rage directed at Dexter because of his mother was palpable and felt like a full-circle moment for the series; Elway and Clayton (U.S. Marshall) threatening to derail Dexter and Hannah’s plan to leave the country; And of course, Deb’s tragic fate felt unavoidable as Dexter’s story was racing towards its presumed conclusion.
I genuinely appreciated and enjoyed all of these layers but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that nearly all of them were handled rather awkwardly. For me, Dexter’s story was always destined to end in tragedy and it was important to me that the character was ultimately forced to face the brutal consequences of his actions. At the end of the day, that is what the writers set out to do but they ended up draining some of the soul from the proceedings in pursuit of that goal. The result is a season that feels like it lacks confidence or a strong sense of direction despite the fact that it is ultimately one of the most important seasons of the entire series.
The Butterfly Effect
For all of its flaws, season 8 was full of important developments and revelations that sent an undeniable ripple effect outward in all directions. With a prequel (Original Sin) AND a sequel (Resurrection) currently in development simultaneously, the creative team is going to have to make some decisions about how those revelations should factor into the stories that will now bookend the original series.
With 'Dexter: New Blood' and the re-introduction of Clyde Phillips to the creative team (replacing Scott Buck who served as showrunner in season 6 - 8), we had our first glimpse at the effects of that original ending nearly 10 years after it aired. As divisive as some of those season 8 decisions were, they were canon and were deserving of respect when considering how to expand the story. With that said, there were a lot of questions that audiences would be expecting answers to: What happened to Hannah and Harrison? Did Dexter continue killing after surviving hurricane Laura? How did he end up in New York? What has this character become without his sister there to serve as his link to humanity? These were all very interesting questions that I think New Blood addressed in some truly inspired and unexpected ways.
But with Original Sin quickly approaching, it is going to be very interesting to see how that ripple effect impacts the story as we move backwards in time. Now the questions become more about how season 8 will restrict or influence the development of a more fleshed out origin story. While the show will take place in 1991 when Dexter is 20, we already know there will be plenty of flashbacks that will focus on Harry and how his role in Dexter’s upbringing actually played out (as opposed to how Dexter perceived it).
Considering Clyde Phillips is back at the helm, the question now becomes how to handle elements of Dexter’s origin that were introduced by the previous Showrunner; elements that Clyde may not have ever introduced had he stayed on as Showrunner in the original series. Chief among them is Dr. Vogel and the guidance she provided to Harry as Dexter was evolving into a serial killer. If you ask me, her role in all of this was simply too significant to ignore but it’s always possible that they will find creative ways to avoid or otherwise retcon that aspect entirely. Personally, I hope they don’t.
Season 8 also introduced several minute details that could have a more specific impact on how Dexter’s origin plays out. For instance, the recordings of Harry and Dr. Vogel’s sessions specified several key details such as the frequency and order in which Dexter dispatched some of his earliest victims. They also gave us an origin story of how Dexter became fixated on taking blood slides as trophies. These moments were mere blips on the radar in season 8 but they are too specific for them to be ignored. My hope is that these moments are kept and elaborated upon. The fun of any origin story is examining the past and expanding upon important moments that may have been mentioned but never fully explored.
The Future is Bright
While it is yet to be seen, Dexter’s controversial “final season” may end up clawing its way back into the hearts of fans or at the very least, finding some modicum of redemption. It is the season that has the most to gain retroactively from continuing the series and its legacy is one that won’t be fully defined until Dexter finally gets a true, final ending. How successful it is at redemption I think depends heavily on how interested the writers are in tackling the established canon head-on rather than avoiding it.
With all of that in mind, I think the question of legacy is what makes Dexter’s current trajectory so fascinating. Will Original Sin fit comfortably into the established timeline or will it create rifts that are difficult to overlook for fans? Will Resurrection justify its own existence and finally give the character the ending that both he and the fans feel he deserves? These are the questions that I think make the Dexter renaissance that we are currently experiencing so fascinating.
The answers to these questions will start to come into focus when Original Sin premieres on December 13th and details about Resurrection start to trickle out as we near the start of production. As always, stay tuned to Dexter Daily for news and analysis of this new and exciting era of Dexter.