Dexter - The Right Ending

Note to readers: If you've watched the Showtime Drama, Dexter, and you're already familiar with the cast and how it ended, please skip the intro and start reading after the double line. If not, let me provide some background. The show lasted for eight seasons so it will take a while to provide the needed detail. If you're a fan, you may find my timeline out of sync with the real show. My apologies to the purists, but this is how I'd like to have seen things end.

One additional note. The guy who played Dexter, Michael C. Hall and the woman who played Debra, Jennifer Carpenter, were married in real life for a couple of years while the show was being aired.

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Supporting Cast:

Maria Laguerta: Miami Metro Police captain who is Debra's superior. She is the only person who believes Dexter is really a serial killer called "The Bay Harbor Butcher." She never gives up on this belief and at the end of Season 7 she finally has the proof she's waited six years to get. Debra kills her at the end of Season 7 when she is forced to choose between killing her or Dexter.

Joey Quinn: A hard-drinking Miami Metro Police detective whose marriage proposal to Debra was rejected. She later professed her love for him in the final season.

Angel Batista: Miami Metro Police Detective Sergeant. Debra was promoted to Lieutenant over him for internal, political reasons, but like everything else, Angel takes it in stride and supports her as much as possible.

Harrison Morgan: Dexter's five-year old son. His mother, Rita, was killed by a serial killer named Trinity around the end of Season 2 leaving Dexter to raise the boy on his own. Through Harrison we learn Dexter is capable of loving someone else.

Vince Masuka: A true pervert who is Dexter's fellow lab geek.

Jamie Batista: Harrison's nanny and Angel's younger sister who gets romantically involved with Joey Quinn.

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Why I'm writing the story:

The ending to Dexter has been rated the worst in the history of television series several times. Many fans were okay with how it ended; some even insist it was the only possible way it could have happened. But most, like me, were either strongly disappointed or downright disgusted with it as it left us hanging and completely unsatisfied. It just didn't make sense. In stark contrast, many people, myself included, thought the ending to Breaking Bad was the best in television history. A minority thought it was too canned and too sterile leaving no loose ends. This is my attempt to provide an ending that seems much more logical and satisfying. Again, purists won't much care for it, but c'est la vie. :-)

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Background Summary:

"Dexter Morgan, Miami Metro Police Department blood spatter analyst, has a double life. When he's not helping the homicide division solving murders, he spends his time hunting and killing bad guys that slip through the justice system. He spends his sun-drenched days solving crimes - and moonlit nights committing them. But not to worry, our cool-blooded Dexter doesn't kill just anyone. He reserves his homicidal hobbies to taking only the lives of other killers."

For those who need even more info, here are the details:

When Dexter Morgan was three, he watched as his mother was brutally murdered in front of him inside a cargo container. She was dismembered with a chainsaw and the event scarred him for life. A caring police officer named Harry Morgan, found the boy and later adopted him. Harry knew this traumatic event had created in him what Dexter later called his "Dark Passenger" that drove him to kill until his lust for blood was temporarily satisfied until the need to kill arose again.

Harry was afraid Dexter's demons would land him in Florida's electric chair so he created a Code by which Dexter lived. He could kill, thus satisfying his need to do so, but he could only kill those he knew to be guilty through thorough research and vetting and who had escaped the criminal justice system. As you might expect, there were exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, Dexter did indeed try to live by the Code. As a sociopath, unable to feel what others felt, the Code and Harry's teachings helped him fit in during various social situations where he would have otherwise stood out like a sore thumb. It was a survival mechanism, pure and simple.

Harry also had a biological daughter named Debra who, like Dexter, went to work for the Miami Metro Police Department. Unlike Dexter, a blood spatter analyst, Debra Morgan was an extremely foul-mouthed police officer who was later promoted to detective and then to lieutenant. As they grew up, Harry favored Dexter and excluded her to the point that it cause Debra to have trust issues with men. As a result, she had relationships with some very unlikely guys to include a pot-smoking police informant, a serial killer (who, as it turns out, was Dexter's older blood brother who had also seen their mother murdered, but who wasn't adopted by Harry because he was 'too old to save') an FBI agent thirty years her senior, and a hard-drinking fellow detective.

At one point in Season 6, Deb tells her police-department therapist the only man she's ever really trusted is Dexter. After some back and forth, the therapist asks her if there might be something more than just trust to her feelings. She is initially revolted by the comment, but when she's reminded Dexter isn't really her biological brother, she must grapple with these new feelings.

Debra has no idea what Dexter does in spite of the many clues a good detective should have noticed and pieced together over the years. Deb's love for Dexter blinds her to all of them so until the final episode of Season 6, when she sees him kill a man he has meticulously prepared to kill on an altar in a church, she is clueless about his Dark Passenger.

Prior to that, she see's him only as her protector, her hero, and her quirky big brother. As a result, even after she learns his deepest, darkest secret when she sees him kill a serial killer who's been terrorizing Miami, she can't bring herself to turn him in even though she is now a police lieutenant. She struggles to accept this newly-discovered side of her hero-bother, but doing so tears her up inside. Dexter later dispatches a man who intended to kill Debra and although she doesn't approve of what he does, she tells him that Dexter's killing him made her feel 'good.'

During a particularly heated exchange in Season 7, Deb finally blurts out that minutes before learning Dexter's secret in the church, she'd planned to tell him she not only loved him but was in love with him. Dexter doesn't have much to say about the comment and the writers never explored that possibility. Instead, they had him fall in love with another serial killer, a beautiful blonde woman named Hannah McKay. Hannah taught Dexter, a sociopath, he could feel emotion for another woman. He'd already learned he had the capacity to love when his first wife, Rita, gave birth to their son, Harrison. (Rita was killed by guess what? Yep, a serial killer around the end of Season 2.)

The series ended with Debra abandoning her feelings for Dexter and declaring her love for Joey, Quinn, the hard-drinking fellow detective she'd once loved but fallen out with. Tragically, Debra dies in a local hospital after being shot. Dexter buried her body at sea during a hurricane then the scene inexplicably cut to him being a logger in Portland, Oregon, the place he had once said a lot of people end up and the series is over. WTF?

So, for most of us, the ending was both illogical and wholly unsatisfying, thus the reason for calling it the worst ending—ever. This is how I would have wrapped up the series. ymmv.

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"I love you too, Deb."

"You do? I've never heard you say it out loud before. You really do love me?"

"Of course I do. You're my sister."

"Is that how you still see me? After all these years? I'm still just your little sister? Really, Dex?"

"I don't know what else to say. You are my sister, right?" Not sure what else to say but sensing he should say something, Dexter blurted out, "You're also a good cop and a good detective." He paused and had that goofy look he always gets in any social situation where he's not sure how a normal person should respond. "Can you help me out here? How am I doing?"

Debra just grunted and walked away. Her therapist was even more fucked up than her she told herself. "In love with Dexter, my ass," she said under her breath as she went into her room in the apartment they'd shared since her last romance ended in disaster. She shut the door and wondered why she even bothered trying to talk to him about anything involving feelings. Sociopaths don't have feelings. They can't empathize. And Dexter is a sociopath, right?

Yet every time she watched her brother play with or care for her nephew Harrison, she knew that wasn't true. Dexter was a killer, but he wasn't a sociopath. He couldn't be. He loved his son and he showed it by making sacrifices for him. No true sociopath could do that. And he loved her. She knew he did. He was just too fucking stupid to know he might also be in love with her. Okay, he wasn't stupid. In fact, Dexter was one of the smartest people she knew. He just had no real experience with sharing his feelings—feelings she knew he had them. Hell, she saw them nearly every day when he interacted with his son. Then again, what difference did it really make? This whole idea of being in love with someone who was raised as your brother—even if he wasn't biologically related—was as fucked up as every other relationship she'd ever had.

Deb sat there and recounted the men she'd let in and it made her shudder. The first turned out to be a serial killer called 'The Icetruck Killer.' She remembered how he'd groomed her and strung her along until she fell hard for him. The highlight of the relationship came when he proposed to her and she'd said 'yes.' That was immediately replaced with the anger and shame she felt when he kidnapped her and used her to lure Dexter to her location. He was going to kill her, for fuck's sake and yet she'd just accepted his marriage proposal. Great detective my ass. Oh, and the added bonus was he was Dexter's biological brother! Yeah, that was a great choice, Deb!

Then there was Joey's CI or confidential informant who was dope-smoking musician with very little ambition. "Good work there, too, she thought to herself.

Ah, but it didn't end there, either! No, Debra Morgan had fallen in love with an FBI agent twice her age. Had he not been gunned down in his search for another serial killer named Trinity, she'd have married him. "I'd have married my own fucking father," she said out loud as the verbal self-flagellation continued.

"And now I'm love with my mother-fucking brother—a serial killer for Christ's sake! Jesus Christ on a fucking stick! I am one fucked up bitch," she told herself before she went to sleep.

The next day, Debra got word that another murder suspect had kidnapped another victim whom he was likely terrorizing. This was his MO. He would befriend a woman, invite her or take her by force to his place, then spend the evening 'hunting' her as she tried to elude him. In the end, he would kill her but not before making her live through hours of hell on earth first. If she could just find his location, she could stop him.

She had uniforms out looking for this sick bastard when she remembered something from an earlier case. Without telling anyone where she was going, she headed to the location where she thought he just might be. Thirty minutes later, her suspicions were confirmed when she entered the three-story house with her service weapon drawn. Music was blaring and strobe lights were flashing. It was utterly disorienting but he was here and she was ready for him.

Moments later, she heard the woman's screams over the music. Without backup, she went inside and began searching for this sick fuck. She had to show Dexter the system worked; that she could arrest this guy, see him tried and sent to prison for life. No matter how noble his motives, she couldn't allow her avenging sibling to do what he did again and she would prove to him her way was better.

As she felt her way along the walls of the first hall, she could tell the screams were above her. She moved forward until she found the staircase then slowly made her way up and up until she was on the third floor. The screams were louder and she knew the woman and her tormentor were close by. That's when she saw the woman run from one room across the hall to another. Her screams momentarily startled Debra who didn't duck back behind the wall as the huge man chasing her and wielding an axe saw her.

Debra fired but the man was wearing a bulletproof vest. He was slowed but his attack wasn't stopped. She turned and ran but the strobe lights so disoriented her that she fell and dropped her weapon. In that same instant she felt his massive hand on the back of her neck pulling her up by her hair. He was wearing some kind of mask, but she knew it was him and she also knew she had only moments left to live.

That's when he appeared. Out of nowhere, Dexter walked up behind this giant of a man and struck him with a baseball bat. Stunned, the man released Debra then ran for the nearest window. As Dexter gave chase, Debra called in the incident and within minutes, the man was apprehended and in handcuffs. She had him dead to rights and now Dexter would have to admit the system did indeed work.

Debra's confidence was shattered the next day when Captain Laguerta showed her a video of the man's arrest. The video clearly showed he never acknowledged his Miranda Rights and a judge was letting him go free. Beside herself with anger and frustration, Debra vowed to get him again and this time make it stick.

Dexter had other ideas. He knew where the man worked. He was, ironically enough, a gravedigger, and Dexter Morgan was going to show his sister that sometimes the only way to get justice was to do things his way. He asked Debra to go with him but he convinced her to remain in the car while he checked on something.

It was getting dark as this hulk of a man was digging his final grave of the day. When Dexter approached him the man laughed. "Well, well. If it isn't the little chick-cop's brother. What's the 'blood guy' expect to do here? Get himself arrested for harassment? Don't you know they let me out? I'm an innocent man," he said as he jumped off of his backhoe and towered over Dexter.

"No, I don't intend to harass you," Dexter told him calmly. "I just wanted to show you something."

"Show me something? Show me what?"

Dexter stuck the needle in the man's neck so quickly he didn't see or feel a thing before he collapsed. When he awoke several hours later, he was disoriented and groggy. His eyes opened and as he looked around, he saw the pictures of the women he'd killed hanging on the wall beside him. He tried to move, but he was bound so securely by the sheets of plastic wrapped around his body he couldn't.

"What the fuck is going on here?" the man demanded to know.

"I told you I wanted to show you something," Dexter replied. "See?" he asked as he pointed to the pictures. "Remember them?"

"You can't prove that," the man spat.

Dexter turned up the volume of gas in the crematorium. As the flames raged, he said, "I don't have to prove anything. That's the advantage of doing things my way. You and I both know what you did. I'm just making sure the holes in the system get filled."

That's when the man realized exactly where he was. His body was laying on a gurney on a roller and he was about to be cremated alive for his crimes. The man began screaming and pleading for his life but none of that ever moved Dexter.

"Cry all you like," he told him as he pushed his feet closer to the flames. "I'm going to show you the same mercy you showed each of these women you killed."

As the man's feet caught fire, he screamed for his life. Dexter paused then gave the gurney a shove.

When he returned to hi SUV, Debra asked him if he found what he was looking for. "I did," he said. "She that black smoke from the crematorium?"

"Yes," she said her voice shaky with the realization Dexter had just taken justice into his own hands—again.

"That's him. That's the guy they let walk today."

Debra was unable to stop looking as the thick, black, greasy smoke curled up into the night sky. "Jesus, Dex. Did you..."

"That's what I do, Deb. I make the world a safer place for people like you." He watched her watching the smoke then said, "How does it make you feel?"

She tilted her head to be able to see the wisps of smoke going ever higher. Her one-word answer was, "Good."

Once again, Dexter had saved her life. He'd also saved the lives of God-only-knows how many other women this asshole would have killed because he'd walked on a technicality. She knew Dexter needed to kill, but this was different. This time he'd killed...for her. The thought made her shudder, but it also evoked other, more complicated feelings. Feelings she'd had more frequently since the day she first realized her therapist might have a point.

Deb was on the treadmill when Dexter strolled out of the bedroom. "How long you been on that thing this time?" he asked as he went to get a cup of coffee.

"An hour maybe. Why?"

"Just curious," he told her.

"What do you see in her?" she asked him. She looked down and saw she'd been running for an hour and nine minutes.

"Hannah?"

"Yes, Hannah, unless you're also dating someone else."

"I dunno. She gets me. I don't have to hide who am around her."

Deb hit 'end' and the treadmill started winding down. "You don't have to hide who you are around me either, you know," she said defensively.

"Oh, really? Then why are you constantly trying to change me, Deb? I'll answer that for you. It's because you know who I am but you don't approve. Hannah knows who I am and she's just fine with that."

"I guess she must good in bed then, right?" she asked as she toweled off.

"I wouldn't know. We haven't gotten that far yet," he answered as he sipped his coffee. "You want a cup?"

"Jesus, Dexter. I just finished running eight miles. Coffee would make me puke."

"What's really going on, Deb? You're hiding something from me. I can tell."

"Oh, now that's rich! I'm the one hiding something from you? Are you fucking shittin' me, Dexter? How many years were you...killing people, for God's sake...before you told me? Oh, wait! You didn't tell me. I walked into that church and saw you put a knife in that guy's chest. The guy you had wrapped in plastic on the altar for Christ's sake. Oh, yeah, and I went and bought two gallons of gasoline so you could burn the evidence and cover up the crime. Jesus, Dex! I'm as guilty as you are, but I'm not the one hiding anything here."

"As I said, Hannah doesn't care about what I do. She doesn't spend her life hand wringing over my Dark Passenger. That's the difference."

"I'm a police officer for fuck's sake, Dexter! I can't just watch you murder someone in cold blood then pat you on the back for it and not feel the way I feel. Why can't you understand that?" she pleaded.

"I do understand that. I get it. The point here Deb, is that you don't understand or accept me for who I am. You don't seem to get that I'm never going to change. This is who I am and this is who I'll always be and let's be honest here. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be here having this conversation with me. You'd be another one of that psycho's victims and I'd be attending your memorial service."

"I know. I know," she said as she paced back and forth. "That's why this is so fucked up! I hate what you do but I'm so...grateful you do it." She stopped pacing, looked at Dexter and said, "It's just that I don't trust her."