Showtime announced the order of a ten-episode revival season of Dexter, which many fans would like to see used as an opportunity to redeem the series finale.
The final episode of Season 8 received a lot of negative feedback from both viewers and critics. There were a variety of directions the writers could have explored for the ending of the series, and seemingly they chose to pursue the worst one.
In the finale, Dexter (Michael C. Hall) and his serial killer girlfriend Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski) are trying to flee to Argentina with his son, Harrison (Jadon Wells). But when Dexter's sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) slipped into a coma, Dexter convinced himself that he was the problem in his loved ones' lives and that they can never be safe with him. In an effort to save his remaining loved ones, he took Deb’s vegetative body from the hospital and dropped her into the ocean, then drove his boat directly into a hurricane.
After wreckage of the boat is found, Hannah concluded that he is dead. Dexter's suicide attempt, however, was unsuccessful; the final scene of Season 8 reveals he is very much alive and working in some logging job in the middle of nowhere. He could have very conceivably made it to Argentina, but instead he abandoned his young son to be raised alone by his mourning girlfriend.
Needless to say, people were very unhappy with the ending of the popular crime drama. Dexter's character had shown a lot of development over the course of the series. He's introduced as a heartless shell of a person who only adheres to a code of conduct/self preservation, and only understands humanity from a distance. Over eight seasons, he learns what it means to truly be human: to care, to hurt and to love.
Fans had already watched Dexter lose everything when his wife Rita (Julie Benz) was murdered in Season 4, and he was left to pick up the pieces with his now-motherless son. When Hannah came into the picture, fans once again witnessed Dexter rebuilding himself and his humanity. Instead of getting the pay-off with Hannah that he'd been denied with Rita, viewers felt deprived of that natural conclusion when Dexter chose to hide himself from the world in lieu of joining his family. The new episodes of Dexter can pave a path for the broken psychopath back to humanity and back to a family that he was always meant to have.
The Dexter reboot also presents a chance to give the characters at Miami Metro Homicide a proper conclusion. One of the hardest things to redeem will likely be killing off Deb. While bringing her back into the reboot will take some creative write-arounds, fans may be willing to suspend some belief for the sake of including Jennifer Carpenter in the new season. Whether it be that Deb wasn’t really dead and somehow survived the hurricane or perhaps appears to Dexter in his mind like his father did, hopefully Dexter’s sister will be joining the new episodes.
Even though the previous ending to the series left people with a bad taste in their mouths, fans still seem to be craving more Dexter. The new reboot has the ability to take the terrible series finale from Season 8 and transform it into a titillating cliffhanger from which to dive into Season 9.
Created by Clyde Phillips and starring Michael C. Hall, Showtime's Dexter limited series does not yet have a release date.