Dexter Franchise - Tonight's the night

[lichen]

Rewatched the finale in English.

Lance vaping openly and excessively at the event felt a bit convenient - how stupid would he need to be? He did open his door for Batista while smoking a fat one, though, so they did set him up as a bit of a pothead.

Prater gets a shot off outside the vault, which the cops don’t hear - but Prater and Dexter can hear the crowd chanting from inside the vault? I guess the party was that loud?

Dexter raged when Batista died, but he barely touched on it while Prater was on his table. Making his victims face what they did is usually his thing so I was a bit surprised there wasn’t a moment when he made Prater look at Batista, or one of the Rapunzel hair trophies.

Another thing that should lead to Harrison - he’s on the cameras at the moment Prater demands they be shut off and asks for his security guard’s gun. No way that guy doesn’t get interviewed and I assume those record. So Harrison will: be on the worker list, Lance will confirm that Harrison asked for the job at the last minute, he’s all over Batista’s call records, and if the police review the cameras at the event he’s going to be on the footage the moment Prater tells his guard to stop recording.

Grabbing the Slides might come back to bite Dexter - that spot was labelled for the BHB’s trophies and someone’s might notice that those are some of the only things missing with Angel lying dead a few feet away. There are so many things that should refocus the detective on the Morgans.

I fixated on the labels on Prater’s files for a bit.

Dexter grabbed a bunch of files but leaves the NY Ripper’s. The Ripper label says “Farm” instead of “Active” or “Inactive” and also lacks any dates on the label - I guess he saw that it wasn’t “Active” so left it. The label is more scuffed than the others, for some reason. Perhaps Prater’s first find?

The files Dexter grabbed all have the killer’s media name on them, but only Rapunzel’s has his real name - I guess those investigations were incomplete? But the dividers in the drawer all have surnames on them.

The Yonker’s Slayer’s file is marked “VIP-PDG”, same as Lady Vengeance, Rapunzel’s, and the Dark Passenger’s, which I assume means he’s a member of the group. Perhaps he was the disinvited guest? Between this guy and the ripper there’s at least two serial killers other than Dexter who presumably know Charley knows them.

I expect Season 2 sees more of Charley - they hinted at a darker backstory (her history of torture) which seems unnecessary if she's written of five minutes later. She should be under a lot of scrutiny in the coming days (Prater’s right hand, perhaps the obvious person who is uncovering serial killers for him, and skipped town the night of Batista’s murder) and she’s got the names of at least three serial killers who she can use to bargain with police. Her mother is a convenient device for keeping her from simply vanishing.

Rapunzel is in Wisconsin, nowhere near Charley. But again - he knows she knows. I'm on the fence about whether she becomes an active antagonist again or if Dexter just moves to take her out to keep Harrison and himself safe. I wonder how much she dug into Harrison and the murder at the hotel.

Regarding Masuka - I’m pretty sure he acted uneasy about Doakes whenever he was brought up after S2. Quinn’s got fuzzy ethics and is willing to look the other way to a point, but I don’t see him looking the other way on several decades of serial killing. I’m not sure Masuka has the burning sense of justice to crusade against Dexter, but Quinn has enough personal ties to people who’ve been destroyed (Deb and Angel, arguably Jamie, arguably Christine) to feel compelled to at the very least pester the NYPD without putting himself in the room with Dexter.

 

[Kulee Baba]

Very happy with the season finale, Resurrection S1 might be the strongest season after Season 4. It was emotionally very satisfying to have Dexter back on top after New Blood ended as a downer - not to mention y’know all the mediocre seasons of the original series.

I just hope Resurrection only has 3 or 4 seasons. Once Clyde Philips decides to retire (dude is 75 years old) that’s it Dexter needs to be wrapped up with a good finale.

 

[TheHarbinger]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the show should have ended with Dexter blatantly breaking the code, realizing that he's fed too much into his vice to quit on his own, and handing himself over to the authorities, rather than trying to kill himself like a coward. The public would mostly see him as a monster, but some people who know how awful his victims were would show gratitude toward him.

If he was captured alive he would be the most infamous serial killer in history. Someone with decades of kills, of other killers mostly, would be talked about in the media forever. Every single true crime podcast would have years of episodes on just Dexter Morgan. There would be documentaries and movies. Groupies and fans. Like that fantasy scene in the first season where people throw a parade for Dexter for cleaning up the streets.

Though he'd be afraid to face death, Dexter would feel a peace he hadn't felt since childhood, knowing that he had killed his dark passenger. The last scene could be his lethal injection, where surviving side characters would spectate before being replaced by visions of the deceased, with whom Dexter would reconcile in his last moments.

Clyde Phillip's original ending was Dexter being strapped to a table like his victims and getting a lethal injection from the government.

 

[With the actors on it?]

Considering the Dexter socials, should we consider a 24 hour grace period on spoilers or no?
As in having to blur/SPOILER spoilers from upcoming episodes from now on

 

[Grug]

Considering the Dexter socials, should we consider a 24 hour grace period on spoilers or no?
As in having to blur/SPOILER spoilers from upcoming episodes from now on

>Dexter socials

What are you talking about? Do you mean trailers/previews of season 2 and so on?

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Regarding the cops who'd "okay" what Dexter's done, Quinn would be the one. Every cop in Miami Metro – besides Quinn and Deb – were paragons essentially. Lawful Good. Masuka was a sleezeball, but he still came forward in season 3 to point the planted evidence by that obsessed brother of the DA; I think he'd be disgusted with Dex and either want him out of sight or try to take him down, though with far less personal courage on his part. Quinn I think would be obliged to hunt him down if he attributed Bautista's death to Dexter, but if not, then he's got no personal incentive to try and bring him to justice. He wasn't with Miami Metro when Doakes was there and the BHB case was broken. I don't recall him expressing any real sentimentality towards anyone else besides Deb, and it can be assumed he and Angel got closer over the ten year gap to some extent. That's about the only forward inertia Quinn would have to go bring down Dexter down, but it dissipates if he learns Dexter didn't kill Bautista.

I vaguely remember the episode flashing to the NY Ripper weapon, but I didn't really register that it was in the museum (I was probably drunk)

See that's where I disagree re:Masuka. Yeah, if it was just some rando he didn't know, he'd probably do something like that, but if it was Dexter? I think he'd be way more into it/intrigued/not willing to immediately turn him over and hear him out, unless it's a rando. I'm with you on Quinn. I just hope they're not setting him up as an antagonist.

Mobland's your #1, where's your second or third depending on Dexter's placement? I watched Mobland, it was alright. That fuckin' wife though. No Englishman has felt this intensity of contempt for the Irish since Cromwell.

Dexter would be second. It's close to first. It's almost first. By the time the year ends, it might be first. Still, it's hard for me not to think of MobLand as first because it fucking ruled, and also

Spoiler: I mean, fuck.

That was fucking rad.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the show should have ended with Dexter blatantly breaking the code, realizing that he's fed too much into his vice to quit on his own, and handing himself over to the authorities, rather than trying to kill himself like a coward. The public would mostly see him as a monster, but some people who know how awful his victims were would show gratitude toward him.

It could still genuinely end like that. I hope it does.

Another thing that should lead to Harrison - he’s on the cameras at the moment Prater demands they be shut off and asks for his security guard’s gun. No way that guy doesn’t get interviewed and I assume those record. So Harrison will: be on the worker list, Lance will confirm that Harrison asked for the job at the last minute, he’s all over Batista’s call records, and if the police review the cameras at the event he’s going to be on the footage the moment Prater tells his guard to stop recording.

Grabbing the Slides might come back to bite Dexter - that spot was labelled for the BHB’s trophies and someone’s might notice that those are some of the only things missing with Angel lying dead a few feet away. There are so many things that should refocus the detective on the Morgans.

I'm not sure why you think they've been written out of the show, instead of noticing all of this shit and still trying to get to Dexter in Season 2. I kind of hope they don't, but yeah.

I just hope Resurrection only has 3 or 4 seasons. Once Clyde Philips decides to retire (dude is 75 years old) that’s it Dexter needs to be wrapped up with a good finale.

Or James Remar, the actor who plays Dexter's dad (he's 71). This show can't continue without Head Harry.

 

[frozen_runner]

About the finale:

I was, ultimately, fairly lukewarm on this entire season. It's filled with plot holes, unlikely explanations, and dead ends. Dexter behaves in ways he shouldn't have given what we know of the character. It definitely feels like New Blood was intended as the end of the franchise but that Showtime demanded more. And then the writers had to write themselves out of a hole.

I guess you should write every season finale like it's your last, because you never really know if you're getting picked up again... and while they did that, the final lines of this one almost felt like an indictment of the audience by the writers. Dexter says he's back being who he is, and he's "exactly what you want [him] to be" while he looks at the camera. As in, Dexter can't really grow or change too much as a character because then the premise of the show changes. He can't stop killing. He can't even change his M.O. too much. He can't even fucking die at the end of his story because Showtime won't allow it. (Fuck the detractors, the end of New Blood would have made a fitting ending for the character.)

Odds and ends:

• So... that whole thing about Dexter not collecting trophies anymore in New Blood was just... a one-season thing? Uh, why? And he's just back to doing it now for no reason, huh?
• Why wouldn't Dexter leave his old blood slides and items in Prater's vault? Isn't it going to be pretty obvious now that the real Bay Harbor Butcher is alive, even if Prater is verified as the one to kill Angel? Why not deviate from the usual MO to get rid of Prater? Then Dex could find a way to set him up as a perfect fall guy for being the "real" BHB! (But maybe all this sloppiness explains how disinterested Dexter was in, you know, hiding his fucking identity throughout the season.)
• I thought Prater had some sort of self destruct thing set up for his serial killer vault. Did I imagine that? And why wouldn't he have something like that when everything there is so incriminating?
• Charlie could be a recurring character... but she's going to just disappear from the show now, isn't she? I just have a feeling.
• I'm disappointed Prater won't be a multi-season antagonist. It could be interesting him tracking and trying to stop Dexter as the latter tried to pick off other killers under Prater's watch.
• Isn't Prater's boat really huge and conspicuous? Does it have a transponder and a GPS and all that, something the cops could use to trace its location and course? How did Dexter get on it? Where did he get the keys? Was anyone watching it? Does it have a crew? Why would Dexter assume he could just dump Prater's body parts in a highly active part of the water near D.C. and nobody would notice?
• Why is everyone in this season so disinterested in how easily cellphone data can be tracked by the police? Did the writers just decide keeping up with The Wire-type shit was too hard and so they ignored it?
• So Dexter has decide to accept there's some virtuous aspect of his being after all. I assume next season is going to be him tracking down the killers in those files? If we're lucky, he won't literally rebrand himself The Dark Defender.
• This season was chock full of misdirection and red herrings. Perhaps they were necessary, but I preferred the simpler, more taut narrative of New Blood.

And now, after finding out Christian Slater played Harry in Dexter: Original Sin, I've actually decided to give that a try since I'm out of new stuff. Some reactions after 3 episodes:

• The cast is shockingly good and believable as younger versions of original characters. I'm really impressed, as pointless as this series (season?) was.
• The 70s flashback scenes are missing something. I know they're on a TV budget, but I don't believe them like I accept the 90s setting of the "present day." (Lol @ the 90s soundtrack, though. I was actually surprised to hear it was Ice Ice Baby instead of Under Pressure.)
• Did they de-age Slater in several flashback shots? It looks strange.
• I'm reminded how very much I disliked the way the original series was shot. You want bright and sparkling Miami beach scenes and comedy to contrast with the dark nature of the content and premise, sure, I get it. But the premise deserved more style and gravitas, I always thought.
• This show probably isn't a great loss if it is, indeed, canceled. But I hope it at least got a decent ending.

Or James Remar, the actor who plays Dexter's dad (he's 71). This show can't continue without Head Harry.

Of course it can. They're already setting up for other "characters" to take over. How many different ones showed up over the course of New Blood and this season?

 

[>IMPLYING]

Why wouldn't Dexter leave his old blood slides and items in Prater's vault? Isn't it going to be pretty obvious now that the real Bay Harbor Butcher is alive, even if Prater is verified as the one to kill Angel?

My one counterpoint here is that they wouldn't know what was missing since they wouldn't know what exactly was on that pedestal. It could've been empty for all they know, like a trophy pedestal waiting for a trophy.

• 
  [*]I thought Prater had some sort of self destruct thing set up for his serial killer vault. Did I imagine that? And why wouldn't he have something like that when everything there is so incriminating?
  [*]

I thought so too, but the only explanation I got in my head to why that is the door was open. Prater demonstrated the alarm during their first meeting too I believe, also with the door already open, so I think it has to be someone trying to break into the vault for the whole self-destruct system to initiate? Maybe they just forgot.

• I'm disappointed Prater won't be a multi-season antagonist. It could be interesting him tracking and trying to stop Dexter as the latter tried to pick off other killers under Prater's watch..

I thought this was going to be the driving force of the show. Essentially I thought the officer Prater made would be in the last episode or something. I began to consider it a possibility when Prater and Dexter spoke about the former's parents being murdered. I had a theory that Prater killed the man who killed his parents via a proxy similar to Lady Vengeance (his comment about the man dying before he reached 50 stuck out to me), and thought he was like Dexter in a weird, roundabout way, only he invested much more time and money into the trophy collection side of things and allowed people to die indirectly through inaction. Meanwhile I thought the Bautista was an element was going to be irrelevant for the season's conclusion or similarly follow into season 2. But really, it's in-line with the rest of Dexter, which didn't really have much in the way of multi-season villains, unless you counted the cops.

sn't Prater's boat really huge and conspicuous? Does it have a transponder and a GPS and all that, something the cops could use to trace its location and course? How did Dexter get on it? Where did he get the keys? Was anyone watching it? Does it have a crew? Why would Dexter assume he could just dump Prater's body parts in a highly active part of the water near D.C. and nobody would notice?

This is 100% going to get brushed off. With the boat I think they're going to contrive him swimming back to shore whilst the boat drives off towards the Atlantic, creating the impression that he "got away" or something, or fell overboard at some point between it leaving New York and its recovery.

• 
  [*]Why is everyone in this season so disinterested in how easily cellphone data can be tracked by the police? Did the writers just decide keeping up with The Wire-type shit was too hard and so they ignored it?
  [*]

Don't they usually have to have a place to start? If they suspect nothing then they won't be bothered probing you. It's another thing entirely if he becomes a target of suspicion but it's neither here or there.

• 
  [*]So Dexter has decide to accept there's some virtuous aspect of his being after all.
  [*]

This counts as change/development, right?

 

[frozen_runner]

This counts as change/development, right?

I thought about that while I was writing the post.

There was an Instagram post I saw before Resurrection's premiere that had Michael C. Hall talking about Dexter having grown and changed after his brush with death. Something about how he wasn't primarily driven by his Dark Passenger anymore.

I thought that was a fascinating idea. What would Dexter be if he woke up from a coma and his Dark Passenger was gone? What if he had these capabilities but he didn't feel the compulsion to do it anymore? He was a made psychopath, not a born one. Who's to say what the ceiling is for him to become a "real boy?"

Of course, what that post said wasn't true. Not really. Not unless MCH was talking in retrospect about Dexter coming to recognize his internal, instinctive drive for justice. Dexter is back to killing just like in the old days, and he's even reverted to collecting trophies again, bizarrely, after the previous season had him recognize he didn't need them anymore. (Isn't it odd how easily he changes MOs too? He keeps changing how he gets rid of bodies.)

Dexter can change, but he can't change much. The network won't allow it. That's what I was thinking when I posted. And he really hasn't changed much this season. Harrison trusts him and doesn't want him dead. But all that drama and character stuff at the end of NB, of Dexter actually welcoming death if it was at the hands of his son (because his death would release his son from his father's fate)... all that really strong stuff is gone because the audience wants old Dexter back. Sigh.

The last time I dropped a show for, finally, proving itself to be more product than art was The Walking Dead. I don't want to drop Dexter too, but it would be nice if they gave the character more room to truly evolve.

Also, about Resurrection, I forgot to mention:

• Didn't it seem like the show was setting up a love triangle drama with Harrison, Elsa, and Gigi? Elsa just disappeared from the show once Dexter scared her landlord and the plot got moving.
• Does Gigi rub anyone else the wrong way? She seems so trashy. I'm not surprised Harrison likes her at his age, but she gets on my nerves.
• That makes me wonder, what is the show going to have Harrison doing next season? If Dex is on a road trip to find and eliminate serial killers across America, what could Harrison's part be to play? Isn't he likely to stay in New York?

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Of course it can. They're already setting up for other "characters" to take over. How many different ones showed up over the course of New Blood and this season?

There were always different characters who popped up in Dexter’s head throughout the series.

Harry was still always the main Head character.

 

[TheHarbinger]

I was, ultimately, fairly lukewarm on this entire season. It's filled with plot holes, unlikely explanations, and dead ends.

This is how Dexter always has been. Dexter's plot armor dictates the entire show. Usually the writers would put themselves into a corner each season and Dexter's only way out was for his antagonists to make the dumbest possible moves. Which is mostly what happened in Resurrection. Rarely would anyone outsmart anyone.

The worst was when finally someone outsmarted Dexter, Trinity, and killed Rita. But then the entire rest of the world got collective amnesia. And by the end of the fifth season it was like nothing had even happened of significance and the show just reset itself. If Rita had divorced Dexter and left him it barely makes a difference in the overall plot.

Dexter behaves in ways he shouldn't have given what we know of the character. It definitely feels like New Blood was intended as the end of the franchise but that Showtime demanded more. And then the writers had to write themselves out of a hole.

Dexter's plot armor is tied more into Showtime and Paramount subscriptions than anything else unfortunately.

Why is everyone in this season so disinterested in how easily cellphone data can be tracked by the police? Did the writers just decide keeping up with The Wire-type shit was too hard and so they ignored it?

I can't think of any high profile shows other than The Wire or Sopranos where every single phone call is done in a way to prevent police listening. And The Sopranos was extremely lazy with fingerprints on that show. Where characters would commit mass murder inside of an apartment and touch every single possible surface and handle.

 

[Ted's of Beverly Hills]

Didn't it seem like the show was setting up a love triangle drama with Harrison, Elsa, and Gigi? Elsa just disappeared from the show once Dexter scared her landlord and the plot got moving.

Gigi puts out, Elsa doesn't. No surprise which one Harrison started spending more time with.

 

[MrGodSlave]

Batista was chilling in front of the TV in Miami, gets a call and email from Angela saying Dexters alive in her jail cell. He says he'll be there by the morning. In the interim Dexter kills Logan, reveals Caldwell's victim location to Angela, and is shot by Harrison. Then Angela calls Angel again and says, "just kidding, don't worry about it," and bounces.

If the writers weren't so sloppy and lazy, it would be interesting to bring her back upon hearing of Angel's murder. She teams up with Quinn, who is also filled with guilt from turning a blind eye to Dexter's true nature because he helped him as well. Have Angela learn of Logan's family being shunned back in Iron Lake. Quinn says something to Jamie (if she is still around) who mentions some dodgy memory of Dexter.

Overall, this season was quite mid. Detective Wallace was never an intimidating presence like Doakes or Lundy or even Liddy. She was more of a foil for Batista than Dexter or Harrison. Is 99% convinced Harrison killed the guy in the Hotel until Mia dies. Has one conversation with Dexter about Batista and instantly shifts her belief to Batista being a lunatic.

The Billionaires Secret Serial Killer Club had potential, but the writing was just so poor in quality. Cheesy dialogue only Al could sell. They were getting killed off so fast I saw theories maybe Prater has a 2nd, deeper club that he's testing Dex on before allowing him in. Thought Charley was miscast and pretty irrelevant as a character. Not saying Prater needs his own private militia, but the old lady assassin wasn't doing it for me. Harrison was more enjoyable to watch than in New Blood, can do a lot better than that cooze he's always sucking on though.

6/10 season

Spoiler: Absolute Cinema

 

[Paradox Mystic]

Clyde Phillip's original ending was Dexter being strapped to a table like his victims and getting a lethal injection from the government.

In the books Dexter often thinks he'd get the electric chair if he gets caught by the government

Spoiler: Book 4 spoilers

I finished book 4 recently and it is arguably the closest Dexter gets to being caught because he fails to lie convincingly when interrogated by cops and the FBI and he's seen killing on video, and fails to convince the witness that it isn't him in the video. Additionally, Dexter is present at a exploding house, and a serial killer trying to chop Rita up in public. If being on video killing someone who is a missing person and Dexter has a known motive to kill isn't enough it should atleast put Dexter high on the list for potential suspects for any future violent crimes in Miami especially since Doakes is still alive although crippled.

 

[UnKillFill]

Uma Therman's going back to her home with her mother which is in Massachusetts which is where Rapunzel lives (the state not the exact town they mentioned) so that'll be a season 2 thing probably. I do think she could've gone out of state in the discord following the vault's discovery without being immediately intercepted.
She could also tell the police pretty much what happened and in order:
1. My boss killed Angel
2. I quit
And throw in some lies about fearing for her life and she's pretty much off Scott free, yeah?

I'm just picturing the hardened girlboss marine chick telling the police that she was in fear for her life from a lawn gnome. I'd personally laugh her out of the station.

 

[With the actors on it?]

>Dexter socials

What are you talking about? Do you mean trailers/previews of season 2 and so on?

no like within 24 hours or so of the new resurrection episode being out, the Dexter YT channel would just reupload clips from the newest episode lmao and SHOWCASE on the social media platform formally known as twitter would also do the same thing

 

[lichen]

I'm not sure why you think they've been written out of the show, instead of noticing all of this shit and still trying to get to Dexter in Season 2. I kind of hope they don't, but yeah.

I'm on the fence about it. It seems likely that the detectives remain characters into S2 since they've established her as a Ripper obsessive and bought him up repeatedly. It doesn't seem like they're going to be in competition with Dexter for a shot at the Ripper since he didn't bother taking Don's file from the vault, so they'll need to have some other story relevance. (Maybe this is a bit of confirmation that Dexter is driven more by a desire to protect innocent people than the urge at this point - the Ripper is no longer active so he's not interested?)

One of the things that's frustrating about Dexter is there are so many details that could be relevant but are equally likely to just get the Angela treatment, if the writers realize they exist at all. They could have written S1 with events that set the board for the whole arc of Resurrection's 3 seasons or they could just wipe the board of all leftover S1 plot points by the second episode then introduce a new serial killer who Dexter plays with for eight episodes. Experience tells me the second is entirely possible.

Dexter says he's back being who he is, and he's "exactly what you want [him] to be" while he looks at the camera.

This one bothered me too, but at least the show is wearing its intentions on its sleeve at this point. Dexter Resurrection exists to be a few more years of milking for showtime: it's why every "big bad" shows up at one point or another, why the blood slides magically reappeared and Prater walked through his vault narrating only pieces of related to Dexter, why Dexter immediately starts operating as a high frequency serial killer without really spending any time ironing out the details, etc - it's a series of fanservice beats inserted into a hastily reworked series template.

I thought Prater had some sort of self destruct thing set up for his serial killer vault. Did I imagine that? And why wouldn't he have something like that when everything there is so incriminating?

Nope, just the alarm and the promise that Charley will come and eliminate the problem.

My one counterpoint here is that they wouldn't know what was missing since they wouldn't know what exactly was on that pedestal. It could've been empty for all they know, like a trophy pedestal waiting for a trophy.

Everything in that vault was labelled for the killer at least, even the pedestals. (I went back to the first Prater episode - the don't show the plaque on the slides, but you can see plaques mounted on other pedestals as they walk through) Doesn't mean they would suspect it's the slides, and I'm not sure if they'd be curious enough to investigate further since the BHB is a solved case.

 

[>IMPLYING]

The last time I dropped a show for, finally, proving itself to be more product than art was The Walking Dead. I don't want to drop Dexter too, but it would be nice if they gave the character more room to truly evolve.

I think one of the aspects of Dexter's personality is that he keeps reinforcing within himself, more or less continuing from Harry, that he has no real emotions, is incapable of forming legitimate connections, and is ultimately not in control of his own urges. So long as he believes this to be true, despite numerous examples of the contrary, he's effectively the one holding himself back.

Some unwarranted character analysis, and why Dexter is basically his own free agent, and what they're potentially attempting with Resurrection: [He blatantly feels sincere emotions, He's just colourblind/dyslexic to them (he can tell words are words, colours are colours, but can't assign names to them), partly because he's been told numerous times that he doesn't know what he feels and he doesn't know how to feel because he demonstrated some potential emotional bluntness as a child. He knows enough that what he feels for Harrison is different than what he feels for anyone else (Love) but he can't ascribe a name to it because he's effectively reinforcing a sort of delusion in some respect. He felt love for Rita, love for Deb, for Lumen, and that writer's pet character who ran off with Harrison in the finale. He has a strong sense of justice and has the basic tenet of "an eye for an eye," in his guidance system. He clearly believes in redemption and that the code isn't universal – something he can and does just choose not to feel whenever he likes, and its absence in his decision-making is typically marked by a complete absence of Harry. This indicates that he's far more in control of his own actions than he likes to admit. We saw a bad example of this (Trinity, which he felt on some level was wrong due to Harry's interruptions) and a good example (Brother Sam, which he knew was moral because Harry never once interjected + he fit the code completely, which has no exceptions to it). He also didn't kill a single person for over a decade whilst living in the woods, and he basically killed again because he had something he felt sentimental toward (white deer) get shot by some prick bozo.

In Resurrection, they've made 3 points about Dexter. Some were said outright by him in the final moments, but others were sprinkled through. Ghost Harry remarks on Dexter saving a life, which he apparently never did before (lmao what?) and that, "things are different now." Dexter's unspoken love for Harrison is made overtly clear. He involves himself in Blessing's family of his own volition and feels bad about potentially driving a wedge between Blessing and his daughter. He outright says he misses Quinn and Masuka, calls Angel, "brother." He is overtly disgusted by Rapunzel's on-film murder whilst the rest gathered are getting off on it. He also outright foregoes killing Eve because framing her saves Harrison and despite her fitting the code, he was under the initial assumption her victims were bad people. He contrives a way to justify killing the landlord to bring justice to him (I don't recall if he decided he was just going to scare the dude or not, but he gave himself impetus enough to put him on the able) but doesn't kill him, and appears to have forgotten about him entirely now whereas Rapunzel who is much harder to reach is still at the back of his mind. (1) He's not longer 1:1 with "Old" Dexter (The remark about him not saving lives was complete bull but alright lol) (2) He values human connection now and is open about voicing his feelings/emotions (3) He feels disgust for senseless killing and views what he does as virtuous now

If their ultimate objective is to have a happy ending for the show, I think the cardinal direction is going to be New Blood's beginning but without the angst. He'll completely give up killing in the end, maybe because he becomes a grandfather or something in the conclusion. I'm not someone who things he's a good boy who dindu nothin', but I have a meta-theory for thinking this and why the writers will end up giving him some kind of happy ending.

The end of Resurrection with Dexter killing the big bad, Charlie escaping with her mother, Harrison with his new GF and Blessing dancing in his house make you forget they also carted off Bautista's body. I think their trajectory of the show is it's going to try and be happy? So the conclusion to it all in the end might be in the same vein. But I'm just just guessing. TV and film usually follows trends set by bigger, more prestigious works then ripples outward. Game of Thrones was pretty much killed by subversion being popularised which meshed horribly with bittersweet. Whilst the bittersweet series ending has been a thing for a long-ass time, the element of subversion that ended up getting mandated to precede it fucked over a ton of potential conclusions and actively killed the enjoyability of many films/shows (New Blood also attempted subversion: Dexter dying whereas he always managed to escape consequence before, Harry for Debra, Harrison killing him). I can't really put an exact pin on when it infected everything, but I think it started around 2015/16 or 2017/18 and has persisted until 2023/24, the trend officially dying with Oppenheimer/Barbie as its swansong. I think now we're going to be in a period of movies and film that are overly saccharine and upbeat in tone, all while being relatively straight forward and with sensible characters (Barbie is an example of the former, but it was still reliant on subversion, which did kill its potential long-term appeal), which Dexter Resurrection will fall into as well. Tom Hardy's character in Mobland, another show mentioned, is sort of representative of the type of character/protag we might see in tv for a bit too. Both he and Dexter converse with people directly and sensibly and the reception is typically positive (Dexter with Harrison; Harry and Eddie Harrington) and tonally the series ends happy in spite of events that might've preceded it.

I'm just picturing the hardened girlboss marine chick telling the police that she was in fear for her life from a lawn gnome. I'd personally laugh her out of the station.

The show has done everything it can to ignore the fact her boss was a dwarf so I think they'd legit play it completely serious.
Or, at bare minimum, do the whole, "he said if I didn't keep it a secret he'd stop caring for my mother." Blackmail is enough to get you off in instances like with Prater. It just gets added on to the list of the blackmailer's crimes.

 

[UnKillFill]

The show has done everything it can to ignore the fact her boss was a dwarf so I think they'd legit play it completely serious.
Or, at bare minimum, do the whole, "he said if I didn't keep it a secret he'd stop caring for my mother." Blackmail is enough to get you off in instances like with Prater. It just gets added on to the list of the blackmailer's crimes.

The show can forget all it wants. I didn't. When they put little Dinklege up on the kill table it was hilarious because he thought he was people. XD

 

[frozen_runner]

Gigi puts out, Elsa doesn't. No surprise which one Harrison started spending more time with.

Yeah, but why set up all that stuff with Harrison being fatherly towards Elsa's kid? Why waste the time to show him him spending so much time with her? (Speaking of, she certainly used to put out. She doesn't even know who the boy's father is )

Unless they're going to bring Gigi and Elsa back next season, I don't see why they showed all of that. To characterize Harrison, sure, but that's a long way to go only to give him a second girlfriend towards the end.