When it comes to spinoffs, modern TV networks seem to have an endless appetite. We’ve gotten expansions of the mythology of Game of Thrones, an endless onslaught of side quests for The Walking Dead, and even recently waved good-bye to the enigma that was Young Sheldon. So it’s no surprise that Dexter, a crowning achievement for Showtime, is getting two more series in the franchise: Dexter: Original Sin, which looks at Dexter’s killin’ days as a 20-something who’s also just getting used to his day job as blood-spatter analyst, and Dexter: Resurrection, which is a continuation of a story line that has already ended twice (the latest ending seemed to pretty conclusively kill him off, too!).
As the Dexter empire sets itself to conquering new blood-stained shores, it’s time to look back at the installments that have made the franchise worth returning to over the years. Even the show’s most dedicated fans will likely admit that it’s been a fairly bumpy ride. But just as the series had the capability to devolve into utter cartoonishness, when all of its elements came together, it could deliver some outstanding results. Dexter is far from a relic of the aughts — it bore consistently solid performances, a bevy of intensely memorable story lines, and relished in its own grisly vibes. It’s a kind of efficacy that was very clear during the time that most of its audience recalls with fondness: the very beginning.
“Dexter†(Season 1, Episode 1)
As Showtime muscled in on the Prestige TV wave that HBO had all but created, Dexter would soon become their golden child. And it’s apparent from the beginning what ripe material they were working with. The show is atmospheric, the casting is excellent, the writing is occasionally inspired (this would be the show’s most wildly fluctuating aspect) and the hook is a once-in-a-lifetime elevator pitch: What if there was a serial killer, but he only killed bad guys? With an effortlessly watchable Michael C. Hall at the forefront, it unsurprisingly became one of the defining shows of the era.
What is most surprising about watching the debut episode, though, is how many tones the series is playing with. It’s both extremely dark (“Look or I’ll cut your eyelids right off your face,†Dexter tells a soon-to-be victim in what looks like a basement from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and oddly campy (“Just like me … empty inside,†his constant internal narration states as he gazes at an empty box of donuts). And though these two aspects will shift in prominence back and forth as the show goes on, they will be present for its entire run.
“Seeing Red†(Season 1, Episode 10)
Though it would never approach the level of, for example, Hannibal, Dexter would often try to find beauty in its parade of grotesqueries. “Seeing Red,†in which Dexter is led to (and promptly faints in) a room that contains a veritable pool of blood, is one of those moments. It’s a great set piece, one that the series would rarely match again.
Season 1’s main arc concerned finding the “Ice Truck Killer,†a man that also turned out to be Dexter’s brother. As such, the first season also revolved around Dexter trying to figure out where he came from. Collapsing in all of that red provides the trigger for his repressed memories — he watched his mother get slaughtered in a shipping container and he sat in her blood for days. In combining a memorable scene of gore with an adeptly revealed backstory, Dexter proved that it could be both a cartoonishly violent exercise in antiheroism and a gripping personal drama. Sadly, it wouldn’t always be working with material of this caliber.
“Born Free†(Season 1, Episode 12)
The finale of the first season, in which Dexter kills his own brother and thus saves his adopted sister Debra (whom his brother had dated and planned to murder) could’ve been the end of the show itself. In fact, the concluding moment shows Dexter in a dream sequence where he’s surrounded by people cheering for him and his actions as he mulls over whether his deeds have made him a good person. Of course, in retrospect, that audience is obviously the viewers of the show itself. Whoo, Dexter! You kill people but, like, in a cool way!
Though the show would go on for eight seasons, its emotional themes never really evolved past the ending of the first season. Sure, the chess pieces get moved around and new characters question him and how he can relate to others, but in the first season, where Dexter is forced to confront his feelings about himself, his origins, his “blood†family and his found family, you get a pretty good treatise on what the show has to offer. There would be better seasons (with more explosively entertaining episodes) but Dexter would never tell as cohesive a story as this again.
“Resistance Is Futile†(Season 2, Episode 9)
If there is one major difference between seasons one and two, it’s that two mostly finds Dexter playing defense. The dumping ground at the bottom of the ocean where he deposited most of his victims has been uncovered, and expert FBI agent Frank Lundy (played by the charming Keith Carradine) is set to find this “Bay Harbor Butcher.†Meanwhile, Dexter’s own co-worker in the Miami Police Department, the surly James Doakes, is tightening the screws in his grudge against Dexter. And that’s not even counting Dexter’s new love interest, Lila, who has a prying fascination with Dexter’s dark side and his previous girlfriend/eventual wife, Rita, who mainly just wants Dexter to stop being such a secretive weirdo.
This episode is the best example of these elements all coming together. And its finish, in which Doakes finally discovers that his self-made workplace nemesis Dexter is the killer that he’s expected all along, makes for a satisfying payoff to a subplot that’s been in the works since the first episode. Common fan wisdom says that Dexter peaked in its first half, and by seeing how well it juggles all of its different throughlines here, it’s hard to disagree.
“The British Invasion†(Season 2, Episode 12)
One interesting thing about Dexter is that season finales often feel like concrete ways to end the show entirely, especially in the first half. Dexter rarely rushed to get to the finish line during these glory days — rather, it would actively begin to tie things up with a few episodes to spare, allowing the true emotional climax some breathing room. Here, the slate is wiped clean so that we get time to say goodbye to Doakes, Lundy and Dexter’s glorious deranged ex, Lila, who absconds to Europe (only to be pursued by Dexter in the closing moments of the episode).
If there’s another reason that the end of season two provided another legitimate reason to roll credits on the whole Dexter thing, it’s the fact that by the end, he’s affirmed a new “code†for himself. Forever haunted by the specter of his Dad, a former cop who discovered Dexter’s burgeoning psychopathy and trained him to use it for “good,†Dexter decides to go his own way here and try to live by his own rules. Does he deliver on his promise in the third season and beyond? Noooooot quite. “New†Dexter is a lot like the old Dexter. But at least, at the time, it felt like it was working toward something special here.
“Hungry Man†(Season 4, Episode 9)
The third season of Dexter is serviceable but unremarkable, as it mostly plays with a redux of the major themes of season two: What if Dexter became close to someone who accepted him, but this time it’s an unstable dude rather than a girlfriend? Season four, though, despite its abundance of plot lines that don’t really go anywhere interesting, is remembered as perhaps the highlight of the entire franchise. And that’s predominantly due to John Lithgow’s Emmy-winning performance as Arthur Mitchell aka the Trinity Killer, who is essentially the Dexter version of the BTK killer.
Taking advantage of something rarely seen outside of his roles in Brian De Palma films, Dexter turns Lithgow’s aw-shucks persona into a mask for something truly terrifying. And in “Hungry Man,†we get to see his home life, one where he keeps his entire family in a state of paranoid despair. Dexter, so focused as it was on the titular killer’s relationships, rarely allowed such an in-depth glance at what it was like for the other families of the many, many monsters that inhabited Miami. But the tense Thanksgiving dinner in “Hungry Man†gives us a peek and makes the audience glad that we’re stuck with goofy, milquetoast Dexter Morgan.
“Hello, Dexter Morgan†(Season 4, Episode 11)
Though many would likely opt to put the fourth season finale “The Getaway†on a list of the most essential episodes, it’s actually not that well-constructed (though it features a parade of big moments like Trinity’s death, the reveal that Trinity murdered Dexter’s wife Rita, and the discovery of Dexter’s son sitting in a pool of his own mother’s blood, thus continuing the family cycle). In comparison, the cat and mouse antics of the previous episode, “Hello, Dexter Morgan†are much more gripping. It also grants one of the rare moments that we ever really, truly fear for Dexter.
Dexter’s main advantage is that he’s cautious and plays things carefully, avoiding the emotional pitfalls and irrational patterns of his rival murderers. But he’s never been toe-to-toe with someone like Trinity, who has been concealing himself for decades. Trinity stalks Dexter to his office in the police headquarters and (in a sequence that makes John Lithgow look roughly 19-feet-tall) cuts Dexter down to size. It’s an iconic moment in the show, as, for the first and perhaps only time in the series, Dexter meets his match.
“Nebraska†(Season 6, Episode 7)
After Rita’s death at the end of Season Four, Season Five was a solid effort that did little more than rearrange the furniture of the show (though it does feature an absolutely fantastic guest role with Robocop star Peter Weller playing a crooked cop). However, it’s a masterpiece in comparison to the sixth season, which is one misguided plot (the twist involving its main antagonist can be seen from a mile away) after another (Deb falling in love with her adopted brother Dexter is an infamously bizarre tangent that thankfully gets dropped within a few episodes).
Its only real peak is when it literally drives away from the main storyline entirely, as Dexter (and his deceased, serial killer brother playing the Devil on his shoulder) take a brotherly road trip to check in on the remnants of Trinity’s family. Despite the sheer number of killers in the show and the countless families that were undoubtedly ruined, we rarely get to see the personal impact left behind. And if “Nebraska†is any indication, things aren’t going well for anyone. Here, we see a family that’s been torn apart, as Trinity’s son is forced to kill his own angrily obsessed mother (who recently drove her daughter to suicide). A rightfully poignant episode in a season that fell drastically out of step with itself.
“Are You … ?†(Season 7, Episode 1)
After a haphazard sixth season, the course correction of season seven is deeply refreshing. It manages to stay focused on what is obviously the most pressing narrative of the series to date — Deb discovering that Dexter is the Bay Harbor Butcher. And though there are a few hiccups along the way (the writers introduce the late, great Ray Stevenson as a threatening Ukrainian mobster but never quite manage to make the plot feel worthy of the performance), season seven feels like an appropriately driven follow-up to the early years of the show.
“Are You … ?†also represents another of season seven’s best aspects: The characters, most of whom are apparently noteworthy detectives, are actually smart. Yes, the show is called “Dexter,†and so everyone gets to slip on the requisite banana peels in order to continue being blind to the fact that he’s a serial killer. But in the span of one episode, Deb goes from unwittingly helping Dexter clean up one of his own crime scenes to confronting him about a lifetime of his work. In Dexter time, that’s essentially pressing fast forward. But it’s wonderful to see someone like Deb not be treated like a total buffoon.
“Surprise, Motherfucker†(Season 7, Episode 12)
In terms of providing closure for the series, season seven is more satisfying than the real final season. Though it would kill off Deb, send Dexter’s son off to live with Dexter’s latest weird girlfriend, and end with Dexter living alone and working at a lumber company, as a whole, season eight makes no reliable efforts to wrap up Dexter’s story. It kills time until it’s allowed to hit the aforementioned bullet points and calls it a day. Meanwhile, season seven’s “Surprise Motherfucker,†which shows Dexter’s previously devoted police boss Maria LaGuerta finally turning on him and Deb being forced to choose between Dexter and LaGuerta (who stands for the normal life she could have) brings the show to a proper head.
Featuring a few flashbacks with the deceased James Doakes (whose season-one line “Surprise, Motherfucker†had been embraced as a meme by this point), season seven is a season finale that joins the long line of Dexter finales that could’ve ended the entire show. And though it doesn’t punish Dexter for his crimes or kill him off, it’s the last time the original series felt like it had a grip on its own thematic potency. Everything after would be a fall from grace.
“The Family Businessâ€(New Blood Episode 9)
Well, not everything. If the sequel series, New Blood, was any indication, Dexter had a little bit left in the tank. But to access that fuel, it needed a complete change of scenery, an overhaul in the cast, and an entirely new dynamic to work with. New Blood is a fun time, one that balances the macabre and the camp that was so evident in the first episode of the original series. And rather than simply be “Dexter with sweaters,†it forces him to try to wrangle in his own son’s murderous urges, a job that causes him to reflect on the morality of his own.
The final two episodes provide a sort of capsule story, even as they build on the show as a whole. Dexter introduces his son, Harrison, to his “code†and the son, who idolizes Dexter, becomes a pseudo-protege for a bit. “The Family Business†feels like a pilot in a way, one where Dexter and his brood seem bound to go off on a Batman & Robin-style adventure to administer twisted justice to the world. But of course, this is Dexter, meaning that it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.
“Sins Of The Father†(New Blood Episode 10)
What do you do with Dexter? Does he get to go free? Rot in jail? Perish? And if it’s the last thing, who gets to do him in? These are questions that the show feels like it wrestled with from the beginning and, until the end of New Blood, could never really settle on. But “Sins of the Father†is likely the best conclusion that the franchise could have at this point — he learns that what he’s done is flawed and that he likely deserves death, one provided by his own son Harrison.
Harrison shooting Dexter, an act that Dexter actively supports as both atonement for his kid and a lifetime of questionable decisions, doesn’t come out of nowhere. “Sins Of The Father†provides little hope that the two will ride off into the sunset. But it is a bit shocking in its sense of finality. Dexter always seemed intent on providing wiggle room for its star to escape and loopholes for him to prove to himself that he wasn’t as big of a monster as the killers without their names in the title. New Blood allows all of that to evaporate, meaning that regardless of what the upcoming spinoffs provide, there is a concrete point in history when Showtime made its peace with the end of Dexter Morgan.