Dexter: New Blood season 1 finale: Did Dexter Morgan really have to die?

As we reflect now on the shocking Dexter: New Blood season 1 finale, there’s absolutely a lot on our mind. One of the biggest fundamental questions, though, is this: Did Dexter Morgan really have to die. Was there another way that this story could have been told?

We certainly think there are multiple ways things could have gone, but having Harrison take out the character was not justice in its fullest. Instead, they could have made a move where he was arrested and actually faced the death penalty in Florida, something that really made him face every single bad thing that he did.

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Speaking in a new interview with TVLine, showrunner Clyde Phillips makes it clear that from his vantage point, he knew that Dexter had to die, but also that Harrison had to be the one to do it:

There were no other endings discussed. We always knew that it was always going to be Harrison taking out his father. How he got there was the product of 10 great writers in a writing room for a year and a half coming up with all the nuance and all the psychology of it. It’s a very brutal and intimate moment when this happens, but I think it ends the way it has to end.

There’s a certain inevitability to this. Harrison is very damaged. Living with a serial killer in Argentina. She dies … He broke that wrestler’s arm, he slashed the school shooter with a razor blade and lied about it. He was in the room watching his father kill Kurt. He saw all the death around him in Kurt’s tomb. He joined up with his father to incinerating Kurt. He’s not without his darkness.

All of this may be true, but the big question we have coming out of the finale is quite simple: Why would Harrison kill his father when he would have been arrested anyway? He hasn’t been a killer in the same way, and his last-minute turn felt truly that: A little too rushed for the story we’ve seen.

What did you think about the events of the Dexter: New Blood season 1 finale?

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