Who would've thought saying goodbye to a serial killer would be so hard? I'll miss you, Dexter.
Here are the thoughts I had while watching the satisfying finale to a great series:
The title was "Remember the Monsters?" Who is the monster -- Ellway? Hannah? Or, obviously, +Dexter
? Certainly not Deb, who's always hiding from the monsters, fighting them, and is the one who asks Dexter if he remembers them.
She has no faith in redemption, and thinks she'd have to "save a busload of nuns" to redeem herself. She recognizes that she's the one "responsible for [her] life." During the flashback to Harrison in the newborn nursery, she says to Dexter, "He has his whole fuckin' life to sleep." SPOILER ALERT: Soon Deb will sleep forever too, first in a coma, then forever in death. When Dexter finds out she's brain-dead and it will be a miracle if she revives, he says, "I've never seen a miracle." Like his sister, he doesn't believe in redemption.
Ellway, like the mosquito on Dexter's arm in the opening credits, is bothersome, injects a slight sting, but is easily swatted. Saxon, another monster, the last one Dexter battles, kidnaps a vet and has him stitch up his wound - apt, as Saxon is an animal.
The atmospherics, though heavy-handed (impending storm, thunder and lightning), fit the tumult in Dexter's head. In the end, just a slice of the "Slice of Life" is found. Hannah walks Harrison down a foreign street in her final scene, much like Hannibal Lector losing himself among a crowded, picturesque street at the end of Silence of the Lambs.
But this is not the final scene. We come upon Dexter again. He walks up to a new doorway, a different porch. How often we've seen him do this! How old is he? How much time has passed - months, years? He wears the "Dex look" he gave Deb many a time through the years. He's inscrutable, ageless. It's up to us, the viewers who have come to know him, to gauge whether or not he will ever contact Hannah and Harrison, what slice of life he'll choose for his future.
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