Five Endings to Dexter that Would Have Been Better than the One We Got

Dexter was one of our favorite shows. We even loved the Lumen season. It was season six that dropped the ball, but season seven caught it again. Then season eight took a knife and POPPED the ball. The final episodes were so bad that we can’t in good conscience recommend the show anymore. It taints the entire thing. 

The only way we can make people watch it is to turn off the show before the last season and say, “I don’t have those DVDs, but here’s how it ends” and make something up. Here are our options. Sound off with your own if you have other thoughts:

1. Dexter and Deb are busy hating each other. Dexter leaves the country, but Deb gets a hold of Harrison so Dexter can’t take him. The second half of the season: a time jump. Harrison is ten and is showing signs of a Dark Passenger. Dexter comes back into the country at Deb’s request to help Harrison the way his father helped him. After a little bit of that, Dexter is arrested. Death penalty.
2. The same ending, only Dexter dies and doesn’t become a lumberjack

BUT, we hear that Showtime wouldn’t let the writers kill Dexter (we guess they had no problem with Deb, arguably the heart of the show, dying…weird), although he absolutely needed to die. Still, there were options

1. The way the show was going at the perfectly tolerable beginning of the final season, Deb hated Dexter and even tried to kill him. The show should have gone all the way with that. Rather than salvage the relationship, a season-long arc of Deb hunting Dexter, ending in a bloody climax that killed one or both of them, would have been much more exciting. It might even have been more true to the characters. 
2. Dexter abandons the code completely, goes off the rails, and starts killing whoever he wants. In season seven, he abandoned the code for a kill. Hannah had a lot to do with that. One problem with most of Dexter’s run is that Dexter has a conscience and feels bad for things like Rita’s death and Deb’s trauma. Sociopaths. Don’t. Feel. Bad. It was all psychologically unbelievable. It would have been more fitting to have Dexter just become a real serial killer. Then someone like Batista could have shot him. Instead, the show wimped out by making him a normal family man vigilante who was capable of some very normal love. That would have been fine…but that’s not the idea of the show. Stick with your idea. 
3. Dexter and Deb are busy hating each other, but they have to team up to protect themselves and Harrison when Hannah returns. Hannah kills Deb; Dexter kills Hannah. Dexter gets blamed and has to run with Harrison. He gets out of the country. In his new country, Dexter starts hunting again. 

As things stand, we got a boring season, a cop-out on what the show was setting up with Deb, and the worst possible ending to the series in the finale. Actually, the show could have done worse. It could have had Deb and Dexter have sex before she died. The show flirted with that, but decided that would be really stupid. Then, it decided to do the second most stupid idea.

UGHHHH

Season eight half one grade: B

Season eight half two and finale grade: F