What actually happens
A brother who leaves body parts at ice rinks
Dexter Morgan saw his mother killed when he was three, and was adopted by a Miami police officer named Harry Morgan. Harry saw what the trauma had done to the boy and taught him to aim it at criminals who had slipped through the courts. Grown up, Dexter works at Miami Metro as a blood spatter analyst, which gives him cover for his killings. In the first season the police chase the Ice Truck Killer, who leaves posed body parts as calling cards, including at an ice rink. Dexter's sister Debra works the case, and a detective named Doakes starts to wonder why Dexter is always nearby. Dexter finally remembers that Debra's boyfriend Rudy is really his biological brother, Brian Moser. When Brian goes after Debra, Dexter stops him, slits his throat after a long talk, and stages it as a suicide.
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Doakes finds the cabin, and then so does a fire
In season two the FBI arrives to hunt the Bay Harbor Butcher, the unknown killer behind the bodies Dexter has been leaving in the Gulf Stream. Doakes follows Dexter everywhere, which makes killing difficult. Meanwhile Rita wants Dexter to attend Narcotics Anonymous, where he meets Lila, a sponsor who turns out to be much worse than the addiction. Doakes eventually breaks in and finds Dexter's collection of trophies, so Dexter locks him in a cabin in the Everglades. Lila finds Doakes there and burns the cabin down. The police close the case because the evidence now points to the dead man, and Dexter follows Lila to Paris and kills her. In season three Dexter kills an innocent man by mistake, and the dead man turns out to be the brother of assistant district attorney Miguel Prado. Miguel later learns Dexter is a killer and accepts it. Dexter ends up killing Miguel, framing The Skinner for it, escaping the Skinner himself, and getting to his wedding on time.
Trinity, and the bathtub
In season four Dexter is a suburban father of three with a new baby, Harrison, and a long list of reasons to be tired. He starts tracking the Trinity Killer, whose real name is Arthur Mitchell, and spends the season getting closer to him under a fake name. Debra works the same case from the police side and learns that Dexter is the Ice Truck Killer's brother. She tells him he is the one good constant in her life. This is the scene people dread most from the series. At the end of the finale, Dexter finally catches and kills Arthur, then goes home to find that Rita has been killed in the same way as Trinity's earlier bathtub victims, hours before. Harrison is alive and sitting in her blood, just as Dexter once sat in his own mother's. Rita was killed hours before Dexter arrived, so he finds her after the fact, and that discovery is the scene.
Single fatherhood, now with a witness
Season five starts with Dexter as a single father who feels guilty about Rita and hires a nanny so he can keep stalking a man named Boyd Fowler. A young woman named Lumen Pierce sees him with Boyd, and instead of killing her Dexter lets her help him hunt the men who abducted her. Their targets include Jordan Chase, a self-help speaker, and Dexter knowingly walks into a trap to save Lumen from him. Debra is busy with the Barrel Girls case and starts to suspect that a vigilante is involved. In season six the Doomsday Killer stages murder scenes from the Book of Revelation using pieces of corpses and mannequins, and Dexter chases Professor James Gellar and Travis Marshall. Travis kidnaps Harrison to use as a sacrifice for his final tableau. Dexter knocks him out and then kills him in an abandoned church, where Debra walks in and discovers what her brother does.
Debra covers up one crime and commits another
In season seven Debra helps Dexter burn the church, and Dexter moves in with her so she can monitor him. Dexter gets involved with Hannah McKay, the former partner of the killer Wayne Randall, and sabotages the evidence against her. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian mob wants revenge on Dexter and LaGuerta becomes convinced that the Bay Harbor Butcher is still alive. Dexter and Debra plant evidence to blame it on Doakes. LaGuerta arrests Dexter anyway, but he has planted that evidence too, so she is forced to apologize. In the season finale Dexter decides he has to kill LaGuerta, lures her to a murder scene, and is interrupted by Debra, who shoots LaGuerta herself. In season eight a guilt-ridden Debra has quit the force. Dr. Vogel, who helped Harry create the code, asks Dexter to track down the Brain Surgeon, who turns out to be her own son, Oliver Saxon. Dexter plans to move to Argentina with Hannah and Harrison.
The ending, explained
In the series finale, Dexter, Hannah and Harrison slip past Elway at the airport using a fake bomb scare. Hannah and Harrison take a bus to another airport, where Elway is waiting, but Hannah gets away with Harrison. At the hospital, Dexter spots Saxon going after Debra and has Angel arrest him. Debra survives her surgery and then suffers a stroke from a blood clot that leaves her brain dead. Dexter goads Saxon in his cell into stabbing him with a pen, then kills him with it. Angel and Quinn suspect the truth but conclude it was self-defense. Dexter takes Debra off life support, takes her body out on his boat, and drops her into the sea. He then drives the boat into a hurricane. In Buenos Aires, Hannah reads that Dexter has died, but he faked it and now lives under a new name, working for a lumber company in Oregon.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: not fine, in Dexter's childhood backstory.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Dexter scary?
Dexter is about a 5 out of 10, with a dread level of medium. It is a dark crime drama about a serial killer who narrates calmly, with graphic violence and some jump scares.
How does Dexter end?
In the Dexter finale, Debra dies after a stroke and Dexter sinks her body in the ocean. He sails into a hurricane, fakes his death, and ends up working at a lumber company in Oregon.
Does the dog die in Dexter?
Yes, a dog dies in Dexter's backstory: as a child, Dexter killed a neighbor's dog because its barking kept his adoptive mother awake.
Is there a post-credits scene in Dexter?
No. Dexter has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Does Dexter Morgan die at the end of Dexter?
No. He sails into a hurricane and Hannah reads that he died, but Dexter faked his death and is shown living under a new name, working for a lumber company in Oregon.
