Why Some Dexter Fans Gave Up On Season 8

Shows like "You," "Hannibal," and "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" became hits because they made psychopaths and murderers into characters we'd want to watch every week, but "Dexter" was the first to make a serial killer a TV antihero.

Adapted from the crime novels by Jim Lindsay, the Showtime drama stars Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter analyst and a seemingly average guy. He does his job, dates single mother Rita (Julie Benz), and is a functional member of society. However, Dexter has a secret that he only lets the audience in on: He's a vigilante serial killer, and almost every night, he lets his "Dark Passenger" loose on anyone unlucky enough to have escaped the justice system.

The first four seasons saw critical and popular acclaim, but the final season has only gotten a worse appraisal since the series wrapped up in 2013. On Rotten Tomatoes, Season 8 has a low 33% score from critics and a 51% audience score, whereas Season 1 has high critical and audience scores. Here's why even some diehard "Dexter" fans were fed up with Season 8 of the show.

"Dexter" fans on Reddit have given a number of reasons for their distaste of the final season of the Showtime drama. In a thread titled "what do you hate most about season 8?" on the "Dexter" subreddit, r/Sideshow_Slob called out "how many seemingly major plot points are quickly forgotten" during the last episodes. This includes Hannah trying to kill Debra, La Guerta's death and the warrants she requested, and even Debra's attempted murder of Dexter.

Other commenters simply pointed out the decline in the quality of the writing. User r/mr-self-destruct noted how the voiceover started to over-explain "every...detail of the plot." In another thread, r/vortex_of_suck said that "the writing got unforgivably lazy."  

Yet it was the final image of a bearded Dexter, now in hiding, that really sent fans into uproar. Incredulous, r/mittens12 described how it felt like "they messed up the footage from the real ending....showtime [sic] wouldn't give them the funds for a reshoot and Michael C  Hall was like, 'oh well I have a beard now and this lumber yard is down the street...'" It was u/peckx063, though, who summed up the absurdity of the ending perfectly: "Dexter will be upset with himself so he'll fake his death, swim through the ocean during a hurricane, and become a lumberjack."

It's not surprising that a sequel series, "Dexter: New Blood," is now airing on Showtime, and trying to make up for the first show's ending.