16 years ago today, everything changed for fans of Dexter as well as the titular serial killer himself. There are few shows that pack the thrills that Dexter does. It combines the drama that comes from a dual-identity superhero story with a serial killer thriller. It’s one of a kind, which is why it has retained its popularity for nearly 20 years and continued to find new audiences. However, there is one season of the show that has managed to really captivate everyone, even those who don’t hold Dexter in high regard.
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Dexter Season 4 is widely regarded as the best season of the show, thanks to its sharp and twisty writing, brilliant performances from both John Lithgow and Michael C. Hall, and an unforgettable ending. On December 13th, 2009, Showtime aired the finale that would change the series forever.
Dexter‘s Season 4 Finale Shocked the World
Following a jaw-dropping and iconic cliffhanger finale from the prior episode, Dexter and Arthur Mitchell are engaged in a standoff. The walls have come tumbling down for our charming anti-hero. Mitchell knows that the affable Kyle Butler is a cover for something else entirely, though he’s not quite certain what Dexter’s true intentions are. Nevertheless, Mitchell throws the gauntlet down in the middle of Miami Metro, threatening to hurt Dexter’s family if he crosses him once more. However, Dexter isn’t one to surrender.
From here, everything unravels further as Dexter tries to keep a balance between his family life and his vigilantism. As he chases Mitchell through traffic, he takes a phone call from Rita, who proposes a romantic belated honeymoon. He’s spinning all of these plates, trying to have it all, but it just creates more problems. His distracted driving leads to him sideswiping a car, which then leads to him being arrested after quietly neutralizing Trinity.
The entire season, Dexter has been grappling with this balancing act, even going as far as having two Thanksgiving dinners so he could spend extra time with Mitchell. He has had the opportunity to kill Arthur several times or even give him over to the police, but he keeps hoping that there’s juice to be squeezed. Something to be learned.
Everything that Dexter can learn exists in his own home. Rita serves as this beacon of light to his darkness; her radiant blonde hair and bubbly personality are perfect visualizations of this. Despite all of the horrible things that have happened to her and the drama that has surrounded her relationship with Dexter, she still believes in her husband. And he believes she is the key to unlocking his humanity. His own child is proof he’s capable of creating happy, healthy life, not just taking it. Once he realizes that there’s nothing to gain from Trinity, it’s too late.
After taking Trinity down once and for all, establishing that they’re two different kinds of predators, Dexter takes a breather. He basks in the gentle moonlight, thinking only about his family and the life he wants for himself. One that isn’t dominated by his Dark Passenger. He heads home and grabs his bag, ready to head out for his honeymoon… but first, he tries to call Rita, who is supposed to be at their destination already. Her phone rings from inside the house before a chilling cry echoes throughout the house.
Dexter rushes into the bathroom to find a weeping baby Harrison bathing in his own mother’s blood on the floor. Rita lies motionless in the bathtub, overflowing with blood. Dexter reaches out, trying to find a pulse that isn’t there. That glowing light that once soothed Dexter and her children has been excessively drained from her body. Trinity beat Dexter, not only by killing his wife, but also by altering the course of his son’s life for good. They’ve both been born in blood, bearing witness to the brutal deaths of their mothers at a young age.
In a cruel twist of fate, it also means that this is one of the few times in the show Dexter has to really reckon with that humanity. Everything Dexter tried to prevent has come to fruition, and now, his armor is back on. It’s not unlike the moment when James Bond loses Vesper in Casino Royale. It’s a moment that shatters every ounce of hope the character has and causes them to put every wall up in order to never have to feel this deep pain again. These losses and failings are as human as it gets, because being human means you will sometimes sink to unimaginable lows.
This ending is one of the most poetic, full-circle moments in a TV show. Some have even argued that it should’ve been the ending for the entire show because of how perfect it is. Instead, it became the bedrock for everything that came after it, creating a 15+ year ripple effect.
Dexter‘s Season 4 Finale Remains the Peak of the Show
It’s widely believed Dexter‘s quality took a big hit after this. That’s in part because showrunner Clyde Phillips departed the series after Season 4, but it’s also because the writers struggled to find another compelling way to challenge Dexter. They eventually kind of got there by having Deb find out the truth, but there was no villain that could measure up to Trinity. No one could deal that same amount of damage, and certainly not in a way that felt as dramatic Rita’s death.
Rita’s death also removed the slice-of-life moments that gave the series some levity. After this, there were no more mornings where Dexter tried to cook breakfast with the kids, no domestic spats while Dexter was stressed over a killer he was trying to take down, and no more people to look up to Dexter. In Season 4, Episode 10, Cody tells everyone at Thanksgiving dinner that he’s thankful for Dexter. It’s a sweet and tender moment that highlights the difference between Dexter and Trinity, but it’s also one of the last times we get something like this.
The ending to Season 4 took a lot of pieces off the board, which radically shook up not only the story but the way the show felt, too. While Rita’s death was the right move, it was also one that created a ton of challenges and changed the series in irreversible ways.
How Dexter‘s Season 4 Finale Changed Everything
On top of setting an unreasonably high bar for subsequent seasons, it also set the stage for the rest of the show. After Dexter gets Trinity on his table, he debates with him over whether or not his Dark Passenger can actually be controlled. Mitchell says it’s not possible and Dexter wonders what the alternative is: “Leave, disappear, fake my own death, and start over again?” Mitchell replies very simply: “No. You’ll still be you.”
It’s some masterful foreshadowing for the series finale of Dexter, where Dexter fakes his own death by crashing his boat into a hurricane. His survival isn’t sheer luck; it’s planned. It’s revealed in a single line in Season 8 that his boat has an inflatable life raft. He then eventually isolates himself in Iron Lake, New York, abstaining from murder… but that urge still lurks under the skin. Eventually, he can’t help but kill again. In time, Arthur Mitchell is proven right, Dexter will always be Dexter, even if he tries to run from that idea.
That leads us to Dexter: New Blood, where Harrison turns up in Iron Lake looking for his long-lost father. Despite reassurances from a therapist that Harrison would turn out fine, he has violent urges, too. Not only that, but he brandishes a switchblade, the same weapon that was used to kill his mother. He is haunted by blurry and vague memories of his mother being sliced open in front of him. Once again, one of Dexter’s worst fears has come true, and it’s a direct result of Trinity. His son might be just like him.
Dexter: Resurrection comes to the conclusion that Harrison is able to grow past this and not become a serial killer, but Trinity’s presence still looms. Trinity haunts Dexter while he’s in a coma, taunting him about how his desire to have it all ultimately led him to being shot by his own son.
The finale of Season 4 changed Dexter forever, for better and worse, in many ways. Without it, though, we probably wouldn’t have New Blood and Resurrection. That ending allowed for such rich future storytelling, almost like it was planting a seed and we’d have to wait for it to grow. It’s a narrative thread that tore Dexter and Harrison apart, but also brought them back together in the end. There aren’t many shows that have a moment that is still having an effect almost 20 years later, and that’s why it remains one of the best season finales out there.
What do you think of the Dexter Season 4 finale? Let me know in the comments and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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