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Summary

  • Rita Morgan's murder in the Dexter Season 4 finale upset many fans due to reinforcing harmful TV tropes.
  • While many fans consider the Trinity arc to be one of Dexter's best, Rita's murder was a disappointment for viewers.
  • Rita's character was used as a tool for Dexter's growth, robbing her of agency, perpetuating victimhood and making her seem like more of an afterthought than a person.

Dexter's original series finale was famously controversial. However, several seasons before the serial killer drama's conclusion, another contentious ending rocked its audience. The events of the Dexter Season 4 finale aggravated more than a few viewers -- for understandable reasons. Dexter's kind-hearted wife Rita Morgan (née Bennett) was murdered by the most notorious villain ever to appear in the Showtime series.

Plenty of critics and viewers praised the episode, entitled "The Getaway." But many fans were upset with the message sent by Rita's death. And, to make matters worse, the reason why the series killed Rita off reinforced a harmful TV trope.

Who Was Rita Morgan and How Did She Impact Dexter?

First Appearance

Season 1, Episode 1, "Dexter;"

Last Appearance

Season 5, Episode 1, "My Bad"

Number of Appearances

49

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As part of Harry's Code, Dexter knew all along that he had to do his best to blend in with the world around him, even if he didn't emotionally feel like a part of society. When his sister Deb set him up with domestic abuse survivor, Rita Bennett, even Dexter thought it was a bad idea. He didn't have the time or inclination for a romantic relationship, but circling back to Harry's Code, as he often did, Dexter understood that keeping up appearances meant having normal relationships. His first date with Rita went about as well as expected, with Dexter using it as an opportunity to keep his eye on a target he was plotting to kill, and Rita being afraid of her own shadow after all she'd been through.

Despite a rocky start, the pair started to see one another regularly, and while he didn't have much interest, he found himself at times feeling comfortable around Rita. She was a good person, and her kids, Astor and Cody, really liked him. To round things out, she would make for a good alibi or character witness if Dexter's criminal activities were ever brought to light. Rita, for all intents and purposes, was Dexter's polar opposite. She was as innocent as she was naive, and despite having been through rough romantic relationships in her past, she was incredibly trusting early on, which was essentially her downfall. Rita was a very bad judge of character, which is not an excuse for her eventual murder.

Being with Rita brought a sense of balance to Dexter's Dark Passenger. Despite being a high-functioning psychopath, there were times he actually recognized that he didn't want to hurt or disappoint Rita. Unfortunately, given his nature, she was always in the path of darkness that surrounded him, and that eventually led to her brutal murder at the hands of a serial killer Dexter spent much of season 4 studying. Rita was a casualty of her own husband's psychotic behaviors, and while Dexter didn't kill her himself, his activities did lead to her death in the end.

Who Killed Rita In Dexter Season 4?

Arthur Mitchell confronting Dexter Morgan after discovering his true identity in Dexter Season 4
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After Dexter and Rita got married in the Season 3 finale, "Do You Take Dexter Morgan?", the fourth season launched with the couple facing the stresses of having a newborn in the house. The birth of their son, Harrison, saw the titular character stretched beyond his limits in the most frustrating way. Being a husband and father to a newborn was not just physically and mentally exhausting, but it was cutting into his late-night activities, and that made him anxious. The need to satisfy his Dark Urges was a means to keeping himself level-headed, but it became all but impossible to maintain his previous practices.

When Dexter's fascination with the Trinity Killer led him to discover the 30-year serial-killing veteran led a seemingly normal life, he wanted to understand how. Arthur Mitchell was married, a father of two, a deacon at his church and the leader of the home-building charity, Four Walls One Heart. Given the nature of his murderous history, Dexter wanted to understand how he balanced it all. Posing as Kyle Butler, a divorcee down on his luck and missing his family, Dexter infiltrated Arthur Mitchell's inner-circle, intent on understanding him before doing away with him once and for all. For a time, it worked, but the more time he spent with the Mitchells, the more the paint started to chip off, revealing that beyond simply being a serial killer, Arthur was a monster to his family.

When Arthur discovered Dexter's true identity, and his work with Miami Metro's Homicide division, Dexter and his family became a target. With Cody and Astor away with Rita's in-laws, Dexter convinced Rita to finally take their honeymoon. Unfortunately, the honeymoon was over before it started. As retribution, not only for Dexter sidelining Arthur's own murderous pursuits, but also to prove to Dexter he couldn't escape the killer inside him, Trinity killed Rita while Dexter was off taking care of a few last minute things.

The Trinity Killer Punished Dexter With Rita's Death

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After Dexter received a voicemail from Rita saying she forgot her identification and needed to return home to retrieve it, he frantically called her phone. In a surprise twist, it rang from her purse sitting on their table. It turned out that Rita never made it back to the airport.

Dexter heard Harrison wailing upstairs and followed his son's sounds to the bathroom. There he discovered Rita dead in a bathtub filled with water and blood, not unlike the Trinity Killer's other victims. The one major difference to Arthur Mitchell's other murders was the presence of Dexter and Rita's baby. Dexter finding Harrison, covered in his mother's blood and crying on the floor, mirrored Harry's finding of Dexter as a baby in the storage container.

Of course, by this time, Dexter had already captured and butchered the Trinity Killer, but his victory was fleeting. He actually began to wonder if seeing his mother die so violently wouldn't affect Harrison the same way it had for Dexter. As it turned out, despite being so young, Harrison confessed in Dexter: New Blood that he could vividly remember the details of his mother's murder. His memory even included a nude Arthur Mitchell emerging from the bath, covered in Rita's blood, and offering him comfort before leaving him alone with his dead mother's body for Dexter to find. Not only did this serve to shape Harrison's future character, but it also made Rita's already awful and pointless death that much more horrific for viewers.

Why Did Dexter's Showrunners Kill Off Rita's Character?

Rita often felt like more of a plot device than a fully realized character. She endured an unnecessary amount of pain during her four-season run, starting at the hands of her abusive ex-husband Paul. She then experienced the emotional turmoil that came with dating a serial killer who lived a double life, only to be murdered.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dexter executive producer Clyde Phillips explained the decision to kill Rita. "The story evolved and it kind of became inevitable. We knew that we had to do more than kill Trinity," he said. "It's a little bit of a corner that we paint ourselves into...We had to raise the bar to as high as possible."

Unfortunately, raising the bar to progress Dexter's storyline was a prime example of media's "Women in Refrigerators" trope, in which female characters are disproportionately maimed or killed simply to advance a male character's story arc. Rita was perpetually characterized by her victimhood from the moment she was introduced in Season 1. She was used as a tool for Dexter's growth and an instrument to cause him anguish. It's unfortunate that Rita's untimely demise robbed her of any agency, and treated her as an expendable plot device. Similarly, Debra Morgan met a similar end in the final season of the show, with Dexter's carrying his own sister's comatose body into the roiling ocean during a hurricane. Even though Dexter: New Blood tied up many dangling plot threads for Harrison and Dexter both, the poor handling of Rita's character remains one of the franchise's biggest failures.

Dexter-1
Dexter
TV-MA
Drama
Mystery

He's smart. He's lovable. He's Dexter Morgan, America's favorite serial killer, who spends his days solving crimes and nights committing them.

Release Date
October 1, 2006
Cast
Michael C. Hall , Jennifer Carpenter , David Zayas
Main Genre
Crime
Seasons
8 Seasons
Creator
James Manos Jr.
Producer
Robert Lloyd Lewis, Timothy Schlattmann, Lauren Gussis, Scott Reynolds, Arika Lisanne Mittman, Drew Z. Greenberg, Dennis Bishop
Production Company
The Colleton Company, John Goldwyn Productions, Clyde Phillips Productions, 801 Productions, Devilina Productions, Showtime Networks
Number of Episodes
96 Episodes
Network
Showtime
Streaming Service(s)
Paramount+ with Showtime