I Was a Dexter Diehard, but This Bonkers Plot Twist Turned Me From Fan to Foe

The problem with many TV series compared to movies is that the end is always too far away and anything can happen along the way. Yes, history knows examples of TV series that started well and ended wonderfully. But there are disastrously few of them compared to projects that at some point sharply declined in quality. And this has happened even with very popular projects like Friends or The Office.

Sometimes we can pinpoint the exact moment when everything went wrong. For example, many people turned away from The Walking Dead when Negan killed a key character. And the same can be done with Dexter.

Dexter Has Lost It All After Season 4

Dexter started in 2006 when showrunner Clyde Phillips took Jeff Lindsay's novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, about a righteous psychopathic killer, changed some of the plot and characters, and made one of the best TV shows of the 2000s.

Now, Dexter can easily be divided into two halves. And while the first was ahead of its time and continues to surprise viewers years later, the second completely ruined the show's legacy. After all these years Dexter can serve as a guide to "When to Finish a Project and What Happens If You Don't Do It in Time.”

Dexter should have ended with the fourth season. But Showtime didn't want to give up on a successful project. In the fourth season finale, Dex Morgan defeated the serial killer, calmed down, and was ready to focus on his family. But suddenly he realizes that Arthur Mitchell aka The Trinity Killer has been claiming more victims, and his wife Rita was the latest.

And Morgan finds his son Harrison in the same situation little Dex once was. Here is the key moment that says violence begets violence. A tough but powerful finale. But no, Dexter went on, and it was just awful.

The show lost its dark humor, so the viewer got an endless series of flashbacks, flat characters and boring investigations. By the finale, the spirit of Miami and funny shirts had evaporated, giving way to memories and endless conversations. The show about an emotionless but fair madman became too serious and could not carry its own weight.

Season 6 Was the Final Stab in the Back

The complete breakdown came in the sixth season, when Dexter's half-sister Debra realized that she loved him not only as a brother (what?). But it gets worse. In the end, she decides to confess her love to him, but finds her brother at the scene of another maniac's murder.

Let's forget that this happened because the writers drastically reduced Dexter's IQ and he forgot his caution. The question is: what now? And then there was a completely different show. And it was just impossible to watch. Debra should not have become Dexter's accomplice, because it broke the whole dynamic of the show.