So what's the alternative, Arthur?
Leave?
Disappear?
Fake my own death and start over again?
No.
You'll still be you.
This was peak Dexter.
And this was how Dexter decided to wrap up his story in 2013
during the first series finale.
With the world's most prolific serial killer
driving his boat into a hurricane
and becoming a lumberjack somewhere
in the woods for some reason.
When Dexter returned to Showtime in 2022 with Dexter: New Blood,
fans were a bit skeptical about how the series was
going to play out.
However, the pilot was surprisingly successful,
and it really started to clean up
the mess that was made by the original final season.
Each episode was more positively received
than the last, building to the season's penultimate episode
actually becoming the second highest rated episode
in the entirety of Dexter.
Then the finale happened.
The season finale of Dexter: New Blood
is the lowest rated episode in the show's history.
So what happened here?
How did Dexter spend so much time
redeeming itself only to break down at the finish line?
Dexter was a Showtime original series
that initially ran for eight seasons from 2006 until 2013.
Based on a series of novels written by Jeff Lindsay,
the story centers around a forensics examiner
for Miami Metro PD's homicide division
who moonlights as a serial killer who
only targets proven murderers.
Dexter was truly a cultural phenomenon back
in the early aughts.
There were fan clubs, watch parties,
and Comic-Con exclusive bobbleheads.
This all came to a halt somewhere around the beginning
of the show's fifth season.
The finale of season four was watched by 3.3 million viewers
and is to this day the most watched episode
in Showtime's history.
But if you follow it up with the first episode of season five,
you don't feel like you were watching the same show at all.
Sorry for your loss.
This tonal shift happens because at the end
of Dexter's fourth season, executive producer
and showrunner Clyde Phillips left the show.
Dexter's success was undoubtedly due to the sum
of all its parts.
However, Clyde Phillips was the linchpin
that held all of those parts together
as the primary creative force behind the adaptation.
The creative direction, the writing, the casting,
the hiring of appropriate directors.
You name it, they were all part of what
Phillips's version was for the show, and by all means,
it worked.
Replacing a showrunner can be a huge risk.
When big changes happen to such a widely adored show,
audiences can sniff out those changes almost immediately.
Dexter never recovered, and it's largely
because the new showrunners just couldn't tap into what
made the show successful.
As a character, Dexter is a sociopathic monster.
However justified you find Dexter's version of justice
to be, extrajudicial murder followed
by grotesque dismemberment doesn't make you a hero,
it makes you a maniac.
I don't know what made me the way I am.
But whatever it was left a hollow place inside.
When we have characters that do these reprehensible things,
we need to see consequences.
We want repercussions.
We want accountability.
For the most part, that's what seasons one through four
delivered.
It all culminated with Dexter's actions
directly resulting in the devastating death of Rita
Morgan at the hands of the Trinity Killer.
The new showrunners seem to think
that the real success came from the Trinity Killer
being such an effective nemesis to Dexter
and instead started to focus on creating different villains
to drive narrative.
Dexter isn't interesting because of some Batman-esque gallery
of rogues.
Dexter is interesting because he is a psychopathic highly
dangerous serial killer whose decisions directly
impact the people who care about him the most.
Without a deep character exploration
to support its story, the new showrunner, Scott Buck,
began flailing for ideas to challenge
the primary characters of the story.
The choices made for these characters in the show's
later seasons feels more like someone throwing darts
at a board of terrible ideas and then landing on "Dexter's
sister falls in love with him."
I went to the church that night that you
killed Travis Marshall to tell you that I'm in love with you.
Slowly but surely, the structure of Dexter
began to fold in on itself, and instead of giving audiences
some rhyming moments to the show's thematic core elements,
the decision was made to have Dexter
drive his boat into a hurricane, only to survive and become
a lumberjack.
Which is important because it links Dexter back
to absolutely nothing that has ever happened
in the history of the show.
This ending enraged fans.
And up until 2022, it was largely
considered as one of the worst series finales
in the history of television.
Fans were left with an incredibly sour taste
in their mouths.
They wanted it fixed.
They deserved more, and they would get more.
In October of 2020, Showtime announced
that Dexter would be returning for at least one more
season with Dexter: New Blood.
Returning with it were Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter,
David Zayas, and most importantly,
the show's original showrunner, Clyde Phillips.
Fans were cautiously optimistic and slowly began
returning to the franchise as positive word of mouth
began circulating the internet.
Dexter: New Blood was by no means perfect,
but despite a few odd character behaviors and minor plot holes,
does a fairly decent job of cleaning up
the mess made by the previous attempt at closing the show.
They really stretch out our belief
as to how rusty Dexter is.
He makes some uncharacteristically dumb
choices and everyone seems to be one Google image
search away from catching him.
The addition of Dexter having to deal
with the reappearance of the son he abandoned
had some nice rich personal stakes for his character,
and it really seemed like Dexter was back
to peak form in almost every way.
How many times have you done this?
In the hundreds.
Holy [BLEEP].
Everything was set for Dexter to finally face consequences
for all of his crimes.
The season finale had everyone on the edge of their seat
as Dexter was arrested and in jail for the first time ever.
He was about to come face to face with Detective Angel
Batista and get extradited to Miami to stand trial
for the murders of hundreds of people.
It seemed like the show was setting itself up
for a really wild tenth season until--
[GUNSHOT] --the last five minutes
of the episode when he is shot in the heart by his own son.
After that, the show just kind of ends.
It was honestly quite deflating.
But it's also remarkable in the sense
that Dexter was somehow able to do an even worse job
at wrapping up his character than having him
drive a boat into a hurricane.
Dexter needed to be caught, he needed to stand trial,
and he probably needed to be executed for his crimes.
This is especially frustrating when you consider the fact
that Clyde Phillips had previously gone on record
and stated what his idea for a Dexter finale would be.
In an interview with E Online, Phillips
stated that he originally intended
for Dexter's ending to come with him dying on a metal slab
and receiving a lethal injection and being confronted
by the visions of everyone.
He has ever had a hand in killing.
So why not just end the show this way?
Why shoot Dexter in the chest and then
set up an uninteresting spinoff about his son?
The ending of Dexter: New Blood has
prompted a lot of speculation from fans
as to whether or not Dexter is actually dead.
Unfortunately, Clyde Phillips put these ideas to rest
in a recent interview stating that he
has too much respect for the audience
to dupe them like that.
But if your loyal fan base hates your ending
to the point of deluding themselves
into thinking that it isn't real,
maybe you didn't treat them with the respect
they deserve after all.
Dexter: New Blood was able to regain
a disenfranchised audience's trust,
only to completely shatter it again in the last 10
minutes of the episode.
When characters don't get what they deserve,
it doesn't sit well with us at all.
In interviews, they called this ending divisive.
But it really goes beyond that.
This ending was too neat, too easy, and too uninteresting.
Audiences deserved better, and so did Dexter.
And well, that's it for this episode.
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And hey, thanks for watching Nerdstalgic.