Dexter: Season Five Review

Well, that was a colossally disappointing season finale.

It wasn’t just the lack of a bloody twist, like the one that ended the last season of Dexter—it would be unfair to expect them to top Rita’s murder every year—but that everything ended so neatly and so predictably for a show that seemed to be getting away from its neat and predictable tendencies.

Dexter: Season Four Review

WARNING: This post contains massive amounts of spoilers.

Well done, Dexter. You made me eat my words.

All season long, I had been saying that Dexter, while entertaining and still one of the best shows on television, was in danger of growing stale. The show needed to introduce a game-changing twist to enliven the series. Well, they did, and it was devastating.

The final episode was, for most of its duration, more or less what any viewer would have expected: With Dexter’s real identity finally revealed to Trinity, the cat-and-mouse game between the two of them finally turns into an outright chase, with Trinity/Arthur Mitchell trying to escape Miami before Dexter can catch him. Dexter cleverly (and luckily) circumvents many obstacles, ultimately getting Trinity on his table. In their final scene together, Dexter resolves not to be the plague on his family that Arthur Mitchell was.

And then Dexter returned home to find Rita murdered in the bathtub* and, even more disturbingly, his son Harrison sitting in a pool of his mother’s blood, in an almost exact replica of Dexter’s own memory.