Dexter is one of those shows that has become entirely defined by its bad finale (or not), even more than Game Of Thrones or How I Met Your Mother, so it’s hardly surprising that pretty much all of the talk surrounding Showtime’s upcoming Dexter revival has actually been about the end of the show’s original run. Showrunner Clyde Phillips, who is returning for the revival, said in October that the revival won’t “undo” the finale but instead will serve as an opportunity to get it “right” and make “a second finale.” For those who missed it last time and have somehow avoided all of the online complaining, Dexter originally ended with everyone’s favorite serial killer hiding away in the wilderness as a lumberjack, with the whole thing being pretty unsatisfying.
Now, Dexter himself—Michael C. Hall—has shared his own take on why he finally agreed to do a Dexter revival. Speaking with The Daily Beast, Hall said that the pitch for this revival was “intriguing in a way that it wasn’t before,” and apparently brings something new to the Dexter canon based on how long it’s been since the show originally ended. He also notes that he, like a lot of people, has wondered what Dexter would be up to these days and acknowledges that a lot of the criticisms of the finale were valid. The Daily Beast then brings up the excellent Six Feet Under finale, which Hall was also in, prompting him to point out that he’s “dabbled in the extremes of ‘extremely satisfying’ and ‘extremely dissatisfying’ television finales,” so it seems like he’s pretty comfortable with honestly addressing how the end of Dexter was received. He also used variations of “extreme” three times in that sentence, which is making us wonder if Dexter should be a snowboarder in the revival instead of a lumberjack.
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They destroyed Deb. And if they’re not undoing that I’m not interested. They had gold there, and they blew it by having her fall in love with her brother and become a killer herself. What SHOULD have been: Deb slowly suspects Dexter is the killer, and we watch her becoming more certain and struggle over what to do about it, while Dexter slowly realizes his sister knows, and his struggle. I mean, how they didn’t know that, I will never understand.
They should call the revival Dexter Sinister as he moves into a new career as a (serial-killing) historian of heraldry.
“Dexter: 2nd rate Jessica Fletcher”
Both are characters you don’t want to go on vacation with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinister_Dexter
As long as Scott Buck stays the hell away from this I’ll give it a shot. Seriously, fuck that dude.
Scott Bakula can stay away too. He knows why.
He never leaped home. 🙁 And Scotty disintegrated his dog.
Look, it’s clearly a bad pseudonym for Dracula. Has anyone ever seen him in direct sunlight?
I prefer to think the proper ending for Dexter is that he’s really an alcoholic alien who’s desperate to return to his home planet.
He also does a decent Bowie impersonation.
🎶 This is Dexter to Dexter, can you hear me out there, man? 🎶
Will C. Michael Hall have to learn to play guitar left-handed?
In the new finale he winds up as the manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska.
I thought he got a job at Baskin Robbins, but then get fired.. because Baskin Robbins always finds out.
Speaking of which, I wonder if Better Call Saul will be returning anytime soon.
Lalo is still limping towards the new season.
Great idea. We can have Dexter vs. Saul as rival pastry franchise owners who get into an ever-escalating feud over some initially-trivial conflict. You’d think Dexter would have the upper hand as he’s willing to go brutally homicidal, but then Saul has rat bastard cunning on his side.
Plus at this time Saul still has Mike to help him out.
If Dexter ends up killing Saul Goodman, I will retroactively withdraw any and all criticism of Dexter. Because that’d be just plain batshit enough to kinda sorta work.
The problem wasn’t just the finale though. It was the entirety of the last four seasons.
Somehow people forget that the show was terrible for a long, long time. It was a bad show much longer than it was a good show.
I would go so far as to say it was ALWAYS terrible, even at its alleged peak. The monologues about his ‘dark passenger’ were cheesy as hell from the get go. Imagine going from Six Feet Under scripts to this mess.
At its best, Dexter was entertaining trash, even in the first four “good” seasons. But it came out at a time when any show with decent production values got labelled prestige television.
I think the reason I managed to get enjoyment from the entire series was that I recognized it as “entertaining trash” right from the start. I loved the Doomsday season precisely because it was batshit nonsense.I have nothing good to say about the end of the series.
I recently re-watched the first 4 seasons. It is definitely way more cheesy than I remember it being, but I actually still really enjoyed the re-watch. The show has this weird, almost campy energy that I didn’t appreciate the first time around.
I would go so far as to say it was ALWAYS terrible, even at its alleged peak.
The monologues about his ‘dark passenger’ were cheesy as hell from the
get go. To me it was just glorious pulp rather than smart prestige TV. It was positioned initially as a competitor of Breaking Bad and Mad Men, but it was really just a propulsive, lurid show with a decent budget and a good hook. Whether that makes it “terrible” is up to the individual’s tastes, I reckon. But I think it’s undeniable that the qualities that made people like it were almost all weakened or removed after season 4.
I liked 5, though I imagine I’m in the minority on that one. 7 was also good except for the thankfully brief near-tryst with Deb. 6 and 8 were awful.
Luckily the showrunner from the first 4 seasons is doing the revival.
Yeah everyone harps on the ending, not undeservedly, but how the hell else were they going to wrap things up considering the prior 2 or 3 seasons? They had already established that whatever obstacles they put up for Dexter didn’t mean anything. So if nothing mattered, of course the results were going to be half-assed.
please don’t let it be “Rita’s death never happened,” which I wouldn’t necessarily mind but what a cop-out.also, re: his confidence in the revival—what else would he say? “I’m 3 episodes in and so far it’s meh?” I’m just not super-optimistic about the whole endeavor. The only “revival” I’ve moderately enjoyed since they became a thing was Will & Grace and that enjoyment lasted less than a season.
God I still remember watching the idiotic final season back-to-back with Breaking Bad.
Agreed. After the Trinity story arc ended the show dramatically declined.
The original 24 series finale wasn’t bad, but I thought the revival season improved upon it.
I will never go finish Six Feet Under, so I wouldn’t mind if someone wanted to spoil the satisfying ending of it for me.
Sir, this is an Arby’s drive-thru.
Just watch it.
Eh, it still reminds me too much of 25th Hour, which I found far more impactful.
Why?
I was finding it depressing anyway, but then my Mom died and I just couldn’t go on with it.
Same, minus the personal death in the family. It was just too much concentrated misery.That said, yeah, just watch the final scene. You know the characters, so it’ll make sense.
You should really finish it, totally worth it.
In this version, Dexter becomes a scientist and gets a lab.
And Deb gets braces and changes her name to Dee Dee.
Book-Debra IS a blonde…
Sweet Dee Dee for some Philly crossover episodes.
“Check out this lab coat, guys! It really lets your ass breathe!”“Oh Goddammit, Frank! You’re supposed to wear clothes with it- CHARLIE! THAT CHEESE IS FOR AN EXPERIMENT!”“Why does Cricket get to eat it?!”“Because he’s part of the experiment too!”“Wait, what?! You didn’t say anything about an experiment! You just told me you had free food!”
I’m totally up for this, and all the possible kookiness, like conversations with Dead Deb where she maybe apologizes for making things weird. Also, if the rumor is true – John Cusack? Yes please!
Just make it another Skittles based musical event and call it a night.
They could have had Dexter’s dad come home from his job as a janitor in the ME’s building, particularly the autopsy lab, to find an autistic kid playing with an Operation game and give him a liquid globe with a cabin cruiser in it and the blue wave liquid sloshing about. And maybe a dolphin.
if that’s a recent picture he might want to hit a tanning bed or something because he looks rough.
Going a few rounds with cancer will do that to you. 🙁
yeah I thought about him having cancer but that was 10 years ago, and this looks more recent than that. I remember when he got treated for lymphoma he lost his hair but otherwise looked amazingly good for what he was going through (I thought).
He looks like a guy who would be satisfied with the original ending of Dexter.
the revival won’t “undo” the finale but instead will serve as an opportunity to get it “right” and make “a second finale.” Nah, you go right ahead and undo it. Seriously. Just pretend it never fucking happened. It isn’t as if the show didn’t make a habit of insulting the audience’s intelligence in more egregious ways.
Dexter: (V/O) Maybe I should get an enchilada
Ghost Harry in backseat, seen in rearview mirror: Maybe you should get an enchilada, Dex.
Dexter: (V/O) The Code of Harry involves enchiladas.
(Flashback clip of redheaded kid eating an enchilada)In the end Dexter gave us “surprise motherfucker” and “hello whore” so at least there was that.
Killing off Doakes was one of the worst decisions they made.
I’m a rare viewer who loved the finale. We get red herringed into thinking he’s sailing into the hurricane, because the villain’s death is part of The American Way. Then we see something better for a villain: a fate worse than death. He’s not “hiding out”, he’s suffering a purgatory in the wilderness. It’s exactly what he deserves.