A lumberjack. A lumberjack! Unlike what Monty Python would say, a lumberjack is not okay. At least when it came to the series finale of Dexter, which did not see the titular character murdered, or in jail, or back in Miami on the Slice Of Life, but as a lumberjack. But, my co-host Allison Piwowarski and I discovered in our latest episode of TV. Watch. Repeat., you can blame Showtime's edict to not kill Dexter... and original showrunner Clyde Phillips departure from the series after Season 4. (Don't worry: he's back for Dexter: New Blood.)
Had Phillips stuck around and had his way, we would have gotten a different ending — one that would make any viewer question the entirety of what they watched on screen. As he told E! Online in 2013:
"In the very last scene of the series, Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, 'Oh, it was a dream.' And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, 'No, it's not a dream.' Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They're just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery.
"And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible killing, Doakes who he's arguably responsible for, Rita, who he's arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.
"That's what I envisioned for the ending of Dexter. That everything we've seen over the past eight seasons has happened in the several seconds from the time they start Dexter's execution to the time they finish the execution and he dies. Literally, his life flashed before his eyes as he was about to die. I think it would have been a great, epic, very satisfying conclusion."
The entirety of Dexter being told through a wholly unreliable narrator? Bigger twist than Rita's death.
But we found out a lot more about the returning Showtime series, including the intense way Michael C. Hall prepared for the role, who might have played Deb, and how Dexter might intersect with the Buffy universe.
So grab your henley, and enjoy our latest episode of TV. Watch. Repeat. on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to check out our daily pop culture podcast, Pop Chaser, for all your entertainment headline needs!
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