Major spoilers ahead for both Dexter and Dexter: New Blood, for those who still haven’t watched either of them.
I want to talk about the show Dexter, a piece of media that was on-track to be one of the greats alongside Breaking Bad (*cough* and the first two seasons of The Walking Dead), and then somehow shark-jumped in a lot of bad ways in its latter half (Dexter gets away with causing the murder of the police Chief, his sister finds out who he really is, but never f##king tells anyone, and then she DIES).
And then came back again for redemption, and only made a half-shark jump.
Either way you look at it, both of the writers gave us an ending they thought we wanted. An ending they definitely wanted, but I think it may be off-base to say that fans of the show wanted Dexter to suddenly get away in the middle of a hurricane and become a lumberjack. Or, that we wanted Dexter to be on the cusp of being reunited with his original unit from Miami, only to be arrested … and then killed abruptly before that happens (it wasn’t the worst ending, but it was abrupt, and deflating).
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that a lot of people, despite knowing that what he did was generally good for mankind, that those actions that were definitely crimes, should have seen the light of day, in the court of law. It would have been a magnificent full-circle. It would have finally put an actual face to the Bay Harbor Butcher. And seeing the reactions and how his former team DEALT with that, and what happened AFTER. That’s the ending that never came, and it’s how it should have ended, for the love of god.
And now they’re apparently working on a prequel show that explores Dexter’s life before the events leading up to the first season of the original, and Doakes, the serial killer bloodhound.
But maybe I’m the one who’s off-base. Maybe a majority of people really enjoyed seeing Batista suddenly find out that the person he was chasing for a decade was right next to him the entire time. Only for all of it to fall flat, just like Dexter did, with a bullet in him.
I get it. It was actually a good ending to the entire series. But it was also an unfair tease that didn’t deliver. Thanks for telling me that Batista now knows who Dexter is, and then ending the show, never to ever revisit that. Ever. Again.
Thank you. For real. It’s 2024, and I’m still thinking about shows from 2008 because they’re over, and they’re never coming back.
Well, at least Shepard’s coming back in Mass Effect 4.
Right?
Right?
Maybe though, I put too much energy into shows that didn’t deliver. Maybe it’s time I finally watch Twin Peaks. Surely that won’t disappoint, right? I don’t know much about it, but I’m sure, as a lover of the surreal and the liminal, it’s probably pretty cool, at least.
Or I could just keep rewatching Dexter and Breaking Bad until I’m dead.
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