Sabrin Doski
Dexter is one of America’s most-watched drama TV series on Showtime Network. It is adapted from the Darkly Dreaming Dexter novel by Jeff Lindsay. However, the final episode of Dexter: New Blood, which was streamed on 10 January 2022, came rather as a huge let-down for Dexter fans who considered the finale as being written in a rushed, inconsistent, and poor manner.
Spoilers ahead!
Despite the amazing cinematography performance from Michael C. Hall, Jack Alcott, and the rest of the actors and actresses throughout season nine, the final of New Blood shattered the iconic image the show effortlessly engraved in viewers’ minds for nearly 15 years since the very first episode of the TV series streamed in 2006.
The second scene of the final episode showed Dexter returning to the remnants of his house which was burnt down by Kurt Caldwell. Dexter reminisces about all the good people in Iron Lake who were the reason that made him continue to live there, including ‘Logan’ (played well by Alano Miller), who is a good policeman and high school coach. To viewers’ great surprise, in one of the scenes of the finale, Logan gets killed by Dexter during his prison breakout! This scene faced backlash from the fans who agree that Dexter’s dark passenger would never murder good people. In all fairness, this was an awful break of Dexter’s kill code and can be regarded as the first misstep of the brilliant writer of New Blood, who has delighted the fans for the exquisite writing of 9 seasons of the show – except for the finale!
The second misstep was when the writer tried to portray Dexter’s death at the hands of Harrison as an act of love! Fans were not satisfied with that idea – particularly, the sudden change in Dexter and Harrison’s characters who finally got that father-son bonding the few episodes before the final. How it is possibly sensible to cause what was just starting to develop into a close bond between the two characters to come to an abrupt end within such a short timespan? Dexter and Harrison were not even given the chance to have conversations about their lives throughout nearly 8 episodes of New Blood. Dexter fans deserved to see the two of them connect more.
The third misstep was probably that Angela and Batista never got a proper encounter with Dexter after the sudden and quick discovery that Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher (BHB). This has led the viewers to wonder about the point of bringing back Batista into the show if there was no chance of them interacting at all! The lack of confrontation has made the revival of Batista’s character futile, and it overall made little contribution to the storyline in the new season.
Even though the last episode faced fan backlash, the Dexter: New Blood Wrap-up Podcast released on 11 January failed to adequately address Dexter fans’ many inquiries about the finale. This has also caused distress among the fans who truly deserved an explanation for all of the questions and loose ends.
The other unsurprising let-down came when Showtime announced that Dexter: New Blood will be released on DVD. Dexter fans felt betrayed, after all the anticipation for the thrilling announcement that was promised to them days before streaming the last episode!
At the present time, fans are not quite certain that they want to relive the disappointment.
Dexter fans are left up in arms by the poorly-received ending of the show. Nevertheless, they are still optimistic that another chance will be given to revive the show to turn the anticlimactic ending of the last episode into a twist for another brilliant season that includes the revival of Dexter and offers answers to the plot holes and unanswered questions by viewers.
Featured image courtesy of Possessed Photography on Unsplash. No changes or alterations were made to this image. Image license found here.
