Inspired by the “LOST” thread. Better ideas for a series finale.
Dex and Deb travel upstate and mock a fat man being mugged. They are arrested for failing to help their fellow man and in the ensuing trial, prosecutors round up a broad range of characters from all preceding seasons and the truth about Dex’s serial murdering comes out. In the last scene, we see both loveable misfits start their jail terms.
Honestly, anything will do.
I’ll put this in a spoiler box to satisfy anyone still waiting to watch the final episode.
[SPOILER]I think the biggest objection anyone had to the finale is that it ended with Dexter Morgan still alive, apparently having survived sailing right into the path of a hurricane, and living as a lumberjack in the Northwest. The AV Club reported that Showtime insisted on an ending with the character still alive, because they wanted the option to continue the character, perhaps in another series or movie.
But I’d have preferred an ending in which he embraced fatherhood and went off with Harrison to live life as a normal, non-murderous single dad.[/SPOILER]
I was actually OK with it. The series had gotten progressively darker and in order to not Disney-fy the ending, it really did need to end on a tragic note. For that reason, I did feel like someone important needed to die, and Deb fit the bill. I suppose you could argue that part of the whole series’ arc was about Dexter’s growing sense of empathy and responsibility and his ability to actually take selfless actions, and so his abandonment of Hannah and Harrison made sense in that light, but I just didn’t quite believe that he’d give up the true companionship that he’s been seeking through the entire series. That said, if he’d just committed suicide, I think I’d have been even more turned off.
I guess spoilers are implied in the title, but maybe a passing mod will add an explicit warning? Since the entire point of the thread is to talk about the events at the end of the series, I mean.
Pretty much, yeah.
Deb spent her whole life struggling then becomes the ultimate victim while Dex gets away scot free and they clearly left it open for another season/movie. They wussed out. We had conflict, some character arcs, but no resolution.
IMO, it should have been the opposite. The last season should have been about Deb finally breaking free of Dex’s hold and Dex getting caught. How he get’s caught, who catches him, what happens after he gets caught (runs/escapes, trial/jail) and when it happens in the season, I’ll leave up to the writers, but as written, the ending was very unsatisfying, and that was after a crappy last season.
I would have liked to see him get caught and see the reaction of all the people who knew him. And a trial.
Any ending where he doesn’t abandon his child in the hands of an unrepentant serial killer.
The problem with the show is the creators who took over bought into the idea that Dexter was some kind of vigilante hero when even the show itself in the early seasons went out of its way to say no he isn’t. He is a murderer whose father loved him so much he tried to point him in a direction that would do the least damage to society.
The show should have ended with Deb either killing Dexter or bringing him in and her becoming a whole and complete person instead of just leaning on her brother.
This is what bothered me the most. Hannah had demonstrated that she’s willing to kill people who are either inconvenient to her or in order to get something she wants. I couldn’t buy that Dexter was willing to leave Harrison in the care of Hannah. But the last few seasons were kind of a mess and I cared not at all for the introduction of Dr. Vogel.
Best ending: Dexter realizes how much his father screwed him over by encouraging him to indulge in his darker impulses instead of getting him proper help. Even after the deaths of Rita and Deb he realizes that he’s built solid relationships with his coworkers and his children and has no need to kill any more. Or, if it must be a tragic ending, have him get caught or killed and as he’s dying or being carted away to prison realize that what he’s going to miss the most is his family/friends rather than the murders.
The season before when his sister had to choose between shooting La Guerta and Dexter, Dexter should have given up and surrendered to La Guerta to show his love for his sister was greater than his own freedom/life.
This.
But that ending would’ve had to throw out all of the over-simplified psychobabble about “dark passengers” and acknowledge that mental illness is a real thing that can’t be ignored or “refocused” in “positive” directions.
But that was the show’s problem in conception – in execution the problem was that they had NO IDEA what to do with the supporting cast beyond portraying them as the most incompetent professional team since the staff of Stalag 13. All attempts to create lives for these characters seemed to involve pulling ideas out of a hat and then dropping them like a hot rock the next season as we lurch into a new direction. Is this cop corrupt? Are these two having a relationship? Does this cop have good intentions or bad?
Vince Gilligan knew where Walter White would end up, if not how he would arrive there, from episode 1. He famously said that he and the writers loved to write themselves into corners to see how they could extricate themselves. I don’t know if Dexter’s problems relate more to how the show was originally conceived, Showtime’s influence on how the character was portrayed, turnover in showrunners, chemistry in the writers’ room, or what, but the execution over the years creates a legacy that a better ending could not have improved much upon.
Of course, that’s just my shitty opinion…
I honestly thought that was where they were headed for during the first two seasons. Especially when it became clear that Dexter could care about other people like Rita or her children for reasons other than their usefulness in disguising his true nature.
I’ll cut them some slack with that. At the very least it meant that if a storyline wasn’t working or they had nothing else to say they could just drop it between seasons, give some throwaway explanation for why it didn’t work, and then move on. See Angel and LaGuerta’s marriage and subsequent off season divorce. The B story for the secondary characters that really sticks out like sore thumb is Vince Masuka’s surprise daughter. Holy shit was that ever unnecessary. Did the actor threaten to leave unless he was given more screen time or something?
Heck, I’d’ve been okay with a twenty-year flash forward, to an older Dexter that is increasingly unable to maintain his “normal” facade (recall a scene during the Trinity story arc where John Lithgow sat down with a family of strangers at a diner and started talking about his dead sister or something, to the family’s horror, and had no idea this was inappropriate). An adult Harrison, by this time aware of Dexter’s activities, kills Dexter in a manner suggesting an accident or suicide. Harrison gets the voice-over narration at this point, and it ends with a close-up of him at Dexter’s funeral:
Harrison (v.o.) "I’m my father’s son. I could carry on my father’s work - he taught me how - but I don’t feel the same need that he did.
[Dexter as a young man appears in “ghost” form beside Harrison, as Harry appeared to Dexter]
Dexter-ghost: If you’re careful, you can… [voice and image fade out]
Harrison (v.o.) : I’ll travel alone for now, no dark passenger beside me.
[fade out]
I would have preferred him getting caught OR continuing doing what he always did (with Deb being alive in both cases). This “wanting it both ways” feeling I got from the finale was so disappointing. He wasn’t jailed, but he wasn’t regular Dexter. Yawn.
Plus it was just done terribly. If they could have written what happened better, that might have been good enough too. It ruined the whole show for me so much I can’t even watch reruns, I get so angry.
Deb should have lived and either been the one to kill Dexter or the one to turn him him. After LaGuerta- the story arc should have been one of her redemption. Dexter, IMHO, was beyond redemption.
I would have preferred he lose the desire to kill and slip into a normal life. After suffering through my wife and daughter watching Toddlers and Tiaras I wanted the last season to go something like this:
The parent of a girl at Harrison’s preschool asks Dexter if Harrison can be her daughter’s escort for a pageant. Dexter is so appalled at what goes on that he starts investigating the organizers of the shows, discovers it’s even worse than it looks on the surface, and starts going after them. After taking out the top leadership, putting the entire industry out of business Dexter realizes his work is finished and he no longer needs to kill.
Being killed or ending up locked in a high security mental hospital would have made a satisfying ending as well.
I didn’t like that they killed Deb but after she killed LaGuerta she was basically on borrowed time. Angel should have figured out it was Dexter, went after him for killing fellow officers Doakes and LaGuerta, only to find out that he not only didn’t kill either of them, but actually dispatched Doakes’ killer himself. Harrison should have ended up with Rita’s parents.
It amazed me that virtually no one, except LaGuerta, who tumbled to Dexter’s secret connected him to the “Bay Harbor Butcher” killings. I mean, c’mon, how likely is it that you’d have two serial killers working in the same unit?
Doakes did figure out it was him and even though Chief Matthews claimed he didn’t believe LaGuearta, I feel like (as in I don’t remember it that well) he was just partially protecting Dexter (his friend’s kid) and partially just trying to stay out of it and keep a closed case closed. IIRC, accusing Dexter would mean him coming out of retirement, at least partially.
They very strongly hinted that Quinn figured it out at the end. Batista was clueless as always though 
Lose the entire final season.
Trinity kills Dexter and thus ends the series:
Dexter comes home to find Rita in the tub, and he goes after Trinity, only Trinity gets the better of Dexter, and he dies on the table wrapped in plastic, the same way Dexter killed so many before him. With Dexter and Rita are both gone, Deb raises Harrison.
In a montage of flash forwards, we see Harrison growing up, going to school, doing normal little boy things. We see Deb become happy and content raising Harrison. Sad that her brother is gone ( remember this is before she found out he was a killer) but moving forward with her life. Becoming an honored detective, even getting promoted. Harrison starts high school and all seems well…
'Til one evening when Deb arrives home. The house is quiet, empty and dark. She calls out to Harrison but there’s no answer. Looking out the back window, she sees a light on in the shed…
Deb opens the shed door and finds Harrison. He’s standing over a dead animal with a knife in his hand. Eyes glazed over, almost in a trance like state. The floor of the shed has a trap door, which is opened to reveal a hidden bunker, filled with dozens of butchered parts of dead animals.
As the camera pans back up, we see Harrison again, with Dexter right next to him, talking to Harrison about controlling his urges and only killing for good reasons, the same way Harry used to talk to Dexter.
And a new chapter of Dexter’s Dark Passenger begins…