Gripping, compelling, mood altering, well written, meticulously crafted BUT--- I give this episode eight stars because it was chilling, gripping, haunting and final. However, the morning after, when I took a minute to examine the overall believability, I had some questions. Let's take one character at a time.
Angela: By her own account, she dedicated her life to finding out what happened to her friend and the many other women who mysteriously disappeared from her tiny town. It took her twenty five years, and the assistance of Dexter and an insightful podcaster, to figure out that the deranged serial killer was exactly who everyone should have expected it to be. Yet, it took her a mere few minutes to figure out that Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher. The top FBI agents in the country, as well as the generally proficient detectives of Miami Metro Homicide used every resource they had to solve this case, with Dexter right in their faces. Dexter had a boat. James Doakes was killed in a cabin that was owned by one of the people who slaughtered Dexter's mother. There was proof that Doakes couldn't have committed at least a couple of the murders. Dexter's blood brother was the Ice Truck Killer. Still, no one else got it until, after years, Maria Laguairta put it all together. And forty minutes later, in TV time of course, Maria was mysteriously murdered alongside one of the other killers of Dexter's mother.
Angel Batista: He knew that his ex-wife, who was also his captain, was murdered maybe two days, in real time, after she tried to arrest Dexter for being the Bay Harbor Butcher. And again, her body was found next to the body of the man who orchestrated Dexter's mother's death. Did it take a two minute phone call from a small town rube cop for Angel to finally put the pieces together? Or had he been considering the possibility, all along, or at least since the last time we saw him? Angel had been blind when it came to his good friend Dexter but his last memory of him was watching him methodically and carefully kill Deb's murderer. Dexter didn't just presumably die in the hurricane. Deb's body disappeared from the hospital, too. And since no one knew that Dexter's son had gone to Argentina with Hannah, Harrison also mysteriously vanished. Was he also presumed dead? Angel was quick to tell Angela that he was no longer sure that Doakes was the butcher and he was quicker to give up his once sacred Dexter's name as a suspect. Maybe Angel had been thinking about it for the past ten years, maybe Quinn also had suspicions that he shared and maybe Angela's phone call convinced him. That makes sense. I won't ask why Angel, who always seemed like the most loyal of husbands, had come on to Angela at the cop-con, if he was happily married. Men will be men.
Logan: He was so incredibly bland, would anyone have even noticed that he was dead?
Harrison: Would this nice, sweet, happy little boy from ten, or was it seven years earlier, who was less than a year old when he watched his mother get murdered, be able to so easily shoot his father? It's possible, if not necessarily likely. We'll disregard the facts that Harrison was born in 2009, that he should have been twelve years old when these incidents happened and that you have to be seventeen in order to drive in New York State. Let's assume that this series takes place a few years in the future. Films that have snow covered regions as sets often do. That would also explain the fact that there were no masks and no mention of Covid, throughout the series. But was Harrison actually old enough to remember being born in blood? And didn't he ever google the woman who was raising him, Hannah McKay, and find out that she too was an escaped prisoner and reputed serial killer?
Finally, Dexter: This super conscientious, always meticulous killer was uncharacteristically and almost unbelievably sloppy in virtually all of his endeavors, this time out. Why would he buy the drugs he needed in the local store when he could have just as easily driven three towns over? Why would he attack one of his victims in the afternoon light, inches from the local crowded bar and from the road that was regularly traveled by everyone in town? But most importantly, would he actually believe that he was looking out for his son's best interests and curtailing his son's arguable dark passenger by letting Harrison go through life knowing that he had killed his own father? This was not George, a gruff manly farm hand who ate his beans without ketchup, shooting his partner Lenny out in the woods. This was a young man of either twelve or seventeen, who was already dealing with serious demons and whose two mothers were already dead. Dexter could have turned himself in. He would have had at least two years of trials and appeals before he inevitably got the death penalty. By then, Harrison would have had time to slowly absorb and accept and he would have been older and more mature. And since Hannah had escaped from jail, and it had only taken Dexter a few minutes to get out of the local cell, Dexter had to imagine the possibility that he could have broken away, at any point during the two year process.
The writers had said that they always knew that Dexter would kill Deb but the viewers still seemed largely ungratified by the final episode of the original series. One more season was needed to wrap things up neatly and in this one, the cute, vivacious, happy little boy from the original series would kill Dexter. Going by the responses here, I would say that one additional season, or at least a feature length film might have been beneficial to the legacy: Dexter gets caught, he's extradited to Florida, he stands trial, he appeals. All the while, he faces people from his past, both living and ghost. He'd have his supporters, who would protest outside the courts and jail and hail him as a hero. He could be confronted by the families of a few of his victims, some of whom might be vengeful, while others would be grateful, appreciative and sympathetic. He'd to explain to the now adult Astor and Cody how he played a part in their mother's death. Harrison would be conflicted as he dealt with his own demons and with people around him who knew he was the Bay Harbor Butcher's son. And at the end of the journey would have stood the electric chair. Now that's a wrap that might have left fans gratified.