'Dexter' Season Finale: Producers Defend Last Episode

The series finale of Dexter aired on Sunday, Sept. 22 and the powers that be are defending why he killed off fan favorite Deb and why Dexter Morgan lived, Entertainment Weekly reported Monday.

Fans of the show have taken to social media to express their outrage. After eight years, the show ended with Debra dying. She had been shot by Saxon and was left brain dead. Dexter shut off the monitors, carried his sister out of the hospital and took her on his boat in the middle of Hurricane Laura. He dumped Deb's body into the water and then faked his own death. Hannah was left to raise Harrison and Dexter became a lumberjack.

"The main idea was Dexter is forced to kill Debra. And there are many ways that could happen. But those final scenes were pretty much unchanged," Scott Buck, Dexter showrunner, said.

Executive producer Sara Colleton also argued that Dexter's humanity was the prevailing wisdom of the day. The show had to show the depths to which the serial had fallen.

"People think of him as a monster, but he yearns to be human. We've seen him go forward on this journey every year. Now we found out what the final price was. What sums up the entire journey was the scene on balcony of his apartment before going on the boat to put Deb down - that's horrible to say aloud," she said.

Leading up to the finale, former EP Clyde Phillips revealed how he planned to end the series.

"In the very last scene of the series," Philips explained, "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."