A year later and we’re still (sorta) talking about Showtime’s “Dexter” finale.
While executive producer Scott Buck continues to defend their decision to keep Dexter alive – it’s actually a pretty good argument – it doesn’t change the fact that it was disappointing.
Michael C. Hall, who played Dexter in the series, understands where fans are coming from. In speaking to The Daily Beast, he reveals that not only did he find it “not so savory,” but he also never actually watched it. Still, he does find it “fitting,” which is what Buck explains over and over.
“Liked it? I don’t think I even watched it,” he says of the finale, which aired last September. The once-gripping saga of the nerdy blood spatter analyst (spoiler alert) ended on a flabbergasting note, with the death of Dexter’s adoptive sister Debra; his self-exile from his kids, his job, and Miami; and his transition into a new career as…a lumberjack. Hall chooses his words carefully when discussing his feelings about that last episode. “I thought it was narratively satisfying—but it was not so savory.”
“I think the show had lost a certain amount of torque,” he says. “Just inherently because of how long we’d done it, because of the storytelling capital we’d spent, because our writers may have been gassed. Maybe some people wanted a more satisfying—maybe they wanted a happy ending for him, either a happy ending or a more definitive sense of closure. They wanted him to die or something, but I think the fact that he’s sort of exiled in a prison of his own making is, for my money, pretty fitting.”
Both Hall and Buck are completely right in assessing that the finale was “fitting” for Dexter, but it unfortunately doesn’t change the fact that it was ultimately disappointing. Still, as a fan of the series, the ride was insanely fun, and at least we always have the fourth season with John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer. Awesome stuff.
