Tonight’s the night. The Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 Finale is now streaming on Paramount + and will air Sunday evening on Showtime. The episode was directed by Marcos Siega (teleplay by Clyde Phillips with the story by Clyde Phillips, Alexandra Franklin and Marc Muszynski). If you haven’t seen “And Justice For All” yet, proceed with caution. This article will be filled with spoilers.
Loose Ends
While I can’t say that the Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 Finale was an all time great episode, it was certainly an effective conclusion to one of the best seasons in this franchise’s history. The strength of this season finale was that it conclusively wrapped up several plot lines and lingering questions, leaving just enough for us to want to return to this world in future seasons.
Dexter always did a great job of making each season feel self contained while allowing for some narrative rollover from year to year. That’s exactly what we got here. The “Boogeyman Social Club” is now defunct, but there are questions about Mia’s “suicide” that could allow for more story to be told there. We got a name for the identity of the New York Ripper, but it wasn’t a name I think anyone recognized. Even scouring the internet, I still haven’t found anyone who has a clue who Don Framt is. But for now at least, it’s the name associated with the New York Ripper and the likely villain for next season.
The Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 Finale opened with Dexter just as we left him last week, locked in Prater’s vault with Angel’s now dead body. Prater tells Charley that Dexter will die in three days with no water and seems downright jubilant over killing Angel. Dexter, inside the vault, is visited by the ghost of his brother Brian, who even in death is chastising Dexter for not running wild and free of a code. Hearing Dexter say that he was glad he killed Brian and shutting him out was another loose end tied up here: Dexter isn’t wavering on Harry’s code. While this season teased the idea that Dexter might let loose in NYC, that’s now definitively not the case.
Another loose end tied up was Harrison’s role in the show. There will be no more wondering if he’s like his father or not—he isn’t. Harrison is now firmly moving into the Deb role in the series. A good person full of emotional trauma who can help Dexter but isn’t him. I personally was glad for closure with this particular question. Dexter works best when he’s counterbalanced by a character he’s close with. It will be interesting to see how their relationship can grow and develop over future seasons.
RIP Prater
I don’t think it’s much of a shock for anyone to see Leon Prater wind up on the kill table. The great Peter Dinklage brought a lot to this season and will forever go down as an all time great “Big Bad.” Seeing how he went from gleeful over taking his first life to calculated villain when he held Harrison at gunpoint to whiny rich brat before he died is a testament to Dinklage as an actor. Dexter refusing to take some of Prater’s blood for a blood slide genuinely bothered Prater. Dexter saying he didn’t want to remember Prater was of interest since he took blood slides from the rest of Prater’s creepy gang.
But perhaps most important was all of the files Dexter found in the vault. Prater clearly kept tabs on everyone he encountered in his life. Keeping files on Charley is what pushed her to quit. (I’m not convinced that we’re fortunate enough to get another whole season with Uma Thurman, but narratively the door seems wide open for Charley’s return) While Dexter took many files with him when he made his grand escape, he notably did not take the file for the New York Ripper. One can’t help but wonder why? Did he leave the file so the police would have something to sink their teeth into or because he knew it was a fake? I’m sure in the time before Season 2 starts, online sleuths will dig into the name “Don Framt” and turn up some interesting ideas as to who this guy might be. But it does seem too convenient for us to get the name of this character without there being some kind of catch. Do we already know Don Framt, only under a different name? Or is Don a patsy?
Then there’s the issue of Mia’s “suicide.” Charley’s file indicates that she was in the jail around the same time Mia was found dead. This implies that Charley either killed Mia or helped her escape. I’m leaning towards the latter. Mia and Dexter’s story together felt like it was cut far too short. The chemistry between Michael C. Hall and Krysten Ritter was nothing short of brilliant and future seasons absolutely could be built around the two of them. More Lady Vengeance please.
Batista
Seeing how much Batista’s death impacted Dexter was absolutely noteworthy. It bothered Dexter more than anyone since Deb. The phone call from Quinn to Batista’s phone and voicemail urging him to come back home was a nice touch. It could either serve as an ending to the Miami Metro storyline or be an indication that next season Quinn is coming to NYC to see for himself what happened to Angel. While part of me wants the Miami Metro story to be done, there would be something poetic about Quinn coming to town. He was, after all, highly suspicious of Dexter in the original series, and his love of Deb could drive him to pursue this.
The Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 Finale several times found ways to acknowledge the murder of Batista, giving the character the huge sendoff he deserved. It made for a great touch and truly made this seem like a major event in Dexter’s life too. Angel was his best friend for many years. For Dexter to acknowledge this speaks to his evolution as a person.
Final Thoughts
Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 was absolutely a return to form for this series. This season is every bit as good as the first four seasons from the original show and the stage feels set for the series to continue. Dexter is free from external threats and internal questions of self. How things play out moving forward should be a lot less nostalgic, and that’s exciting too.
See you next season.