Earlier today I wrote a fairly long article grading the seasons of Dexter. Now let’s look exclusively at the series finale with a recap/review. [Spoilers ahead.]
What Happened: The episode started with Deborah seemingly fine after a shot to the shoulder from the season’s “Big Bad,” the Brain Surgeon a.k.a. Dr. Vogel’s son a.k.a. Oliver Saxon (arguably the weakest season-long villain the show has ever had). Dexter was headed to the Miami-Dade airport with his son Harrison, so they could fly with his fugitive girlfriend Hannah to Rio on their way to Argentina. While at the airport, Hannah discovered Deborah’s former P.I. boss Elway (Sean Patrick Flannery, back from the dead) with his eye on the runway. To escape, Dexter gets airport security on Elway, and he, Harrison, and Hannah agree to find another way to leave Miami as a hurricane is only hours away from hitting. Dexter gets word of Deborah’s shooting, and agrees to let Hannah/Harrison go on without him while he takes care of Deborah, but he’ll catch up with them later. In their final hug, Harrison whispers to Dexter “I love Hannah.” This is supposed to be the audience’s cue that Harrison would be just fine with Hannah (a serial poisoner who kills almost every man she comes into contact with) as a mother, and that it’s okay if he’s separated from Dexter.
While at the hospital, Dexter has a moving conversation with Deborah while flashing back to Harrison’s birth. Saxon gets a vet to patch up his gunshot wound, and heads to the hospital to finish off Deborah. Dexter catches onto him, and right as they’re about to have their fateful confrontation, Angel shows up to arrest Saxon. Unfortunately, Dexter is told that Deborah had some kind-of blood clot post-surgery that caused a stroke and she’ll spend the rest of her life as a vegetable. He goes to the police station to administer a “gun shot residue” test to Saxon, but tricks him into trying to kill Dexter with a pen so that he could use that same pen to kill Saxon and make it look like self-defense.
Elway finds Hannah on a bus headed for Daytona, but she drugs him just long enough to escape with Harrison. Dexter goes back to the hospital for his “final kill” of unplugging Deborah’s life support. As all the patients are being moved from the hospital due to the hurricane, Dexter takes Deborah’s body out on his boat, and sinks her into the ocean the way he does all his victims. Then he has an emotional final convo with Hannah/Harrison, and says he’ll be joining them soon before driving his boat into the eye of the hurricane since he believes they’ll be better off without him. Dexter’s boat is later discovered in pieces and he’s believed to be dead (Hannah reads this online while sitting at a cafe with Harrison), but a flash forward shows him with some gnarly beard driving a logging truck. The final shot is him completely alone staring at the camera.
Review: First of all, how did Dexter get cell phone service miles off the coast with a hurricane right behind him? [I can’t even get service at the mall.] Why did he think it would be poetic to dump Deborah in the same spot he’s dumped hundreds of murderers? Why did he kill her at all when she was just put in a coma hours before? How could the doctors say definitively that she wouldn’t recover when her condition had changed so rapidly in only an hour? Why did Saxon say nothing about Dexter’s murderous ways when it might have been the only thing that could save him? How in the hell did he survive driving a motorboat straight into a hurricane? The hurricane smashed his boat, but Dexter was able to swim back to shore? How cheap was the Showtime budget for that CGI hurricane, because that thing was pitiful looking?
“Dexter” has long been a show that could use a strong dose of common sense, and the finale took more than a few shortcuts to tie up all loose ends. From a narrative standpoint, I can’t say it was an entirely successfully finale as it mostly ignored the supporting cast (there’s no forward growth or ending for Mazuka and Angel, and why break-up Quinn/Jamie if you’re just going to kill Deborah an episode later?) and perhaps made Hannah into an awfully big character for someone who wasn’t introduced until season 7. [She’s never taken care of anything without killing it eventually, Dexter would really let his son be raised by her single-handedly?] I like the character a lot, but I’m not quite sure Dexter would really fake his own death to “save” his son from his destructive influence but allow his son to be raised by another serial killer. It’s that kind-of wonky logic that probably let the producers of the show think that a Mountain Man Dexter in a solitary existence ending would really deliver the goods.
Oh well, the show had a nice run, and even if this finale (and really the whole final season) was a disappointment overall, I don’t think it tarnishes the show’s legacy too bad.
Grade for final season: C+…Grade for finale: C+…Grade for Series: B