Dexter Season 7 Thread (Spoilers Ahoy!)

So did Deb poison herself?

@Intro said:

So did Deb poison herself?

I think so. Like Hannah said, if she'd wanted to poison Deb, Deb would be dead. I believe it, too. Girl has kind of an immaculate record, when it comes to poisoning people. At this point, though, I'm far more interested in La Guerta pinning the tail on the Dexter donkey than the Hannah McKay issue. Though, if LaGuerta is smart, she'll question Hannah about Dexter. Dexter's relationship with Hannah wasn't exactly a well kept secret, and LaGuerta's been pretty good at putting even distantly related pieces together this season.

Also, I find it interesting how this season has managed to turn the real good guys into antagonists you really root against, moreso than any other season. By all accounts, Deb and LaGuerta are heroes here, both trying to bring down prolific murderers. Deb is going about it in some shady and stupid ways, mind you, but LaGuerta is on the up and up, just trying to clear her innocent dead partner's name.

OMG, DOES JAMIE DO LITERALLY ANYTHING BESIDES WATCH HARRISON?!?!

Next week is the finale? Im still waiting for this season to start. This has definetly been the weakest one yet. Worse than the fifth season.

A ton of shit is happening in the finale. I wonder if there's enough time to cover everything in a satisfying manner.

@laserbolts said:

Next week is the finale? Im still waiting for this season to start. This has definetly been the weakest one yet. Worse than the fifth season.

That's one bad and horribly wrong opinion you've got there.

I'd rank the seasons...hmm, like this:

1st) 4

2nd) 2

3rd) 1

4th) 7 (Might move up. Season's not done and I don't have a final rank for it yet.)

5th) 5

6th) 3

7th) 6

Surprise motherfucker.

@Aegon: I find your opinion much worse but ill agree on season 4 being the best.

While I think this season has been awesome, agreeing with Aegon's rankings, I find it has one really weird fault. There has been no real villain this season, yeah Sirko was a bad dude who only died a couple episodes ago but he didn't really seem evil or anything. The bull dude lasted only a couple episodes, Hannah could (and possibly can but I doubt it) have been a cool villain but they went a different route with her, the Phantom felt so shoe horned in it was ridiculous, and it looks like Estrada may be another enemy(even if there's only one episode left in the season).

I guess the departure from the standard Dexter formula isn't really a bad thing because it leaves room for all this extra drama stuff to happen. I think the writers just felt like they always needed a killer out there for Dexter to hunt, it's just strange having this cast of possible antagonist who all but Hannah and Sirko to a degree felt pointless.

Also I don't get Dexter leaving the chainsaw going in the storage container, it pretty much just screams at LaGuerta that he's the Bay Harbour Butcher. Dexter believing Hannah poisoned Deb was a little out of character too, you think he would have questioned how Hannah poisoned one of Deb's sealed water bottles without her knowing.

Still even with some shortcomings this season has been a return to form for the show, especially after the disappointing seasons 5 and 6.

@Zella said:

While I think this season has been awesome, agreeing with Aegon's rankings, I find it has one really weird fault. There has been no real villain this season, yeah Sirko was a bad dude who only died a couple episodes ago but he didn't really seem evil or anything. The bull dude lasted only a couple episodes, Hannah could (and possibly can but I doubt it) have been a cool villain but they went a different route with her, the Phantom felt so shoe horned in it was ridiculous, and it looks like Estrada may be another enemy(even if there's only one episode left in the season).

I guess the departure from the standard Dexter formula isn't really a bad thing because it leaves room for all this extra drama stuff to happen. I think the writers just felt like they always needed a killer out there for Dexter to hunt, it's just strange having this cast of possible antagonist who all but Hannah and Sirko to a degree felt pointless.

Also I don't get Dexter leaving the chainsaw going in the storage container, it pretty much just screams at LaGuerta that he's the Bay Harbour Butcher. Dexter believing Hannah poisoned Deb was a little out of character too, you think he would have questioned how Hannah poisoned one of Deb's sealed water bottles without her knowing.

Still even with some shortcomings this season has been a return to form for the show, especially after the disappointing seasons 5 and 6.

I think the lack of a real villain is made up for slightly by the background menace that's been building of LaGuerta making the big discovery. Also, it's allowed for actual, honest to god character development rather than the sort of one step forward, two steps back mentality that's clouded seasons five and six. I've said it once and I'll say it again, this season could have easily followed season 4, save for the whole doomsday killer thing being the set up for Deb walking in on Dexter in mid uhh... climax. Lumen's only purpose in season five was a vehicle for Dexter to get over Rita with, but Hannah could have filled that spot easily, especially with the contrasts between her and Rita; Rita offering Dexter a 'normal' life, but Hannah offering him a life where he can truly be himself.

I did not like the Dexter gives up Hannah bit at all. Dexter isn't this dumb.
 
@BabyChooChoo: 
A dedicated nanny like that would be awesome to have however.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

I did not like the Dexter gives up Hannah bit at all. Dexter isn't this dumb.

I don't get why he made it clear it was him either, that's just going to make her want to lash back at him by fueling LaGuerta even more. If he kept quiet it could have just been made out Deb found it, which would be plausible.

The twist with his mom's killer being a setup was pretty good though.

the closer LaGuerta gets to nailing Dexter, the more I want to see it. I'm surprised she's lasted this long in the series considering Dexter lets her die in the first book. That said, I can't wait for the manhunt to begin. It's the only way this show can end in a satisfying way.

The way Dexter gave up Hanna was really silly and sloppy. I feel like they did this just to give LaGuerta a easier chance to get to Dexter. 
Nope that was some TV justification bullshit, as someone else pointed out here, Dexter is to smart too believe that Hanna really poisoned Deb.

@Aegon said:

A ton of shit is happening in the finale. I wonder if there's enough time to cover everything in a satisfying manner.

@laserbolts said:

Next week is the finale? Im still waiting for this season to start. This has definetly been the weakest one yet. Worse than the fifth season.

That's one bad and horribly wrong opinion you've got there.

I'd rank the seasons...hmm, like this:

1st) 4

2nd) 2

3rd) 1

4th) 7 (Might move up. Season's not done and I don't have a final rank for it yet.)

5th) 5

6th) 3

7th) 6

I'll have to agree with laserbolts here. Season 7 is by far my least favorite season thus far with the exception of season 3 (I glazed over that in my original post...wonder why). It seems like things really only started picking up last week. To each their own I suppose. If I'm ranking the seasons, I'm going...

1st - 4

2nd - 1

3rd - 2

4th - 6

5th - 5

6th - 3

With a strong finish I might put it in in 5th. Season 6 didn't grab me at first but going back and watching it, grew to appreciate it some. It's finale is only outdone by Season 4's finale.

@Sooty said:

Surprise motherfucker.

CYBER DOAKES LIVES.

Debra needs to die.

Maybe Dexter thinks Hanna doesn't has it in her to rat him out. Although, I don't know why he'd feel that way.

Whether it be the next episode or sometime next season, LaGuerta needs to die specifically on Dexter's table. If she dies any other way, I'll be insanely disappointed. I just feel like it would be the most interesting scene between the two and the best way to give LaGuerta peace about Doakes. Maybe she'll live though, not sure.

Dexter really screwed himself by not waiting longer to go after Estrada, he acted too quickly. Everyone keeps asking why he left the chainsaw running, he probably did it to distract LaGuerta so him and Estrada could easily escape.

Also, would you guys like to see Dexter killed, arrested, or keep killing for the final season's finale?

@Intro said:

So did Deb poison herself?

That'd be some craziness. Maybe it was Hanna's friend, but that would be boring. This is interesting. I don't like it, but a happy ending isn't how this show should wrap - pretend lives will be destroyed.

I'll tell who is going to die for sure though - Batista. Everybody's friend who can do no wrong and is setting up for his happy retirement = dead meat.

@plaintomato said:

@Intro said:

So did Deb poison herself?

That'd be some craziness. Maybe it was Hanna's friend, but that would be boring. This is interesting. I don't like it, but a happy ending isn't how this show should wrap - pretend lives will be destroyed.

I'll tell who is going to die for sure though - Batista. Everybody's friend who can do no wrong and is setting up for his happy retirement = dead meat.

It would be sad to see Batista die but it's a possibility. I'd kinda like to hope that Deb didn't do this to herself, because Dexter has enough shit to worry about, let alone Deb fucking with him to get rid of Hanna. Can't wait to see how everything plays out next episode.

An interesting theory I read predicted that somehow Dexter would end up killing Debb or that she'd wind up dead somehow and next season she'd be a ghost that follows him around in the vain of Harry. Of course I find that very unlikely, but it could be an interesting outcome.

I don't think Deb poisoned herself. I'm sure if she did they would have made it super obvious. The idea that Hannah wouldn't mess up if she tried to poison Deb only holds true if she wanted to kill her quickly. Trying to make it look like a car accident the dose has to be smaller and is inherently more risky. That's what she tried with Price and that didn't happen as planned.

Somehow when seeing next week's preview i can't help but think that Dexter surrender's himself. I just don't see them being able to catch him. Unless of course if Hannah or Estrada talks, in which case it would just confirm how fucking dumb it was to give away Hannah instead if killing her and just how lazy it is that Estrada conveniently escaped.

@C0V3RT said:

@Aegon said:

A ton of shit is happening in the finale. I wonder if there's enough time to cover everything in a satisfying manner.

@laserbolts said:

Next week is the finale? Im still waiting for this season to start. This has definetly been the weakest one yet. Worse than the fifth season.

That's one bad and horribly wrong opinion you've got there.

I'd rank the seasons...hmm, like this:

1st) 4

2nd) 2

3rd) 1

4th) 7 (Might move up. Season's not done and I don't have a final rank for it yet.)

5th) 5

6th) 3

7th) 6

I'll have to agree with laserbolts here. Season 7 is by far my least favorite season thus far with the exception of season 3 (I glazed over that in my original post...wonder why). It seems like things really only started picking up last week. To each their own I suppose. If I'm ranking the seasons, I'm going...

1st - 4

2nd - 1

3rd - 2

4th - 6

5th - 5

6th - 3

With a strong finish I might put it in in 5th. Season 6 didn't grab me at first but going back and watching it, grew to appreciate it some. It's finale is only outdone by Season 4's finale.

I don't understand the season 4 love. I'll take 1, 2, and what I've seen of 7 over 4 personally. For me it's something like:

1. 1 or 2
2. 2 or 1
3. 7
4. 4
5. 5 or 3
6. 3 or 5

I didn't watch 6. It's been so long since I've seen 1, 2, and 3 that I'd have to see them again to lock them down.

I feel both 7 and 4 started strong but grew weaker as they went along, but 7 stayed strong longer. Plus 4 had a lot more time spent on stories I really don't care about like Deb's love life, Quinn's anything life, Angel and Laguerta, and of course Rita. So far in 7 I like that Laguerta and Deb have pretty much only been in stories revolving around Dexter, and Angel has been very much in the background this season (as has been said in here, he seems to be on his "farewell" tour) Quinn's the only one who's had any significant story unrelated to Dexter, but even that's been tolerable for me. I feel like they've only gone to that well just as much as they needed too.

i wonder if the preview is trying to fool us and estrada kidnaps maria or something

@pyromagnestir: Season 4 was the pinnacle of the series IMO and nothing's come close to touching what they did with the story telling. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the way Lithgow portrayed Trinity. There wasn't one episode that didn't feel meaningful and like it was driving the plot.

Maybe it says more about me, but I'll have to disagree with you about the start of season 7. Coming off the huge "holy shit" moment at the end of 6, I felt like they really shit the bed in keeping the momentum they built up. I kept waiting for something to happen and up until maybe episode 10, nothing really did. It felt too busy. I didn't care about Isaak. Quinn/Nadia/Novikov was of little interest. Hannah McKay is the single most interesting story line this season and didn't really feel as that became a thing until the 7th episode.

Well, it's over.  
 
I thought it was a strong season, but full of a bunch of mini stories that didn't necessarily connect together too much.  The Debra fallout, then Hannah, the Koshka guy, then Laguerta.  Good stories, but nothing like an ITK or Trinity to tie it all together.  With that being said, it kept the filler to a minimum as each story got explored.  At least, I thought so.
 
But seeing Doakes.... hot damn, time to rewatch those early seasons.

@oulzac said:

LMAO

Well, that fuckin happened.

Also I think this episode had as much Dex-Doakes interaction as the first two seasons combined.

That was an intense finale, but Deb got her fingerprints all over Laguerta.

I really liked the insight on how Doakes came to figure out Dexter. Looking back on season 1 and 2, it was neat that he always knew something was off about Dex but they never bothered showing why he felt this way and none of the others at the station.

As much as i hated LaGuerta in the last couple seasons i still wish they'd done more with her sendoff. It was a bit abrupt.

Overall it was a great season. Not the best but it's up there for me right after the 1st and 4th one.

Well, it's over.    I thought it was a strong season, but full of a bunch of mini stories that didn't necessarily connect together too much.  The Debra fallout, then Hannah, the Koshka guy, then Laguerta.  Good stories, but nothing like an ITK or Trinity to tie it all together.  With that being said, it kept the filler to a minimum as each story got explored.  At least, I thought so.  But seeing Doakes.... hot damn, time to rewatch those early seasons.

Well that was a very unsatisfying ending. Instead of doing a "but, wait......." cliffhanger style, they just didn't resolve things very much at all. Why they felt the need to bring Debra into the end there and just make a complete mess of it, instead of ending the LaGuerta chapter and cementing the seasons tone of Dexter learning to accept himself is beyond me. I mean Dexter daring to kill despite the code would give this season so much more meaning than whatever this was.

i think that it is suppose to be a complete mess, a unstoppable train wrecked that cannot ever end well, and will go on until it finally falls apart. i thought that it was a good ending, not great it left a lot of loose ends, but overall not bad

That ending would've been much more meaningful if Laguerta on the Dexter case lasted the whole season. Instead it was just a series of small few episodes moments for a lot of stuff, even the love affair with Hannah almost came out of nowhere. They kinda fucked up what could've been an amazing season with too much FORCED plot points, it's like I can see the writers bumbling at their keyboards trying to figure out how to get to their end goals while watching each episode.

@csl316 said:

@Ben_H: I expected Laguerta to go, too. But definitely not by Deb. And definitely not while Dexter's standing there in his butcher get-up. The butcher digs still unsettle me, actually. I think they should go and show him dismembering and doing the dirty clean up work to drive home that he's a god damn monster. Maybe they did and I just repressed it.

Nah, they've never shown it. I agree, that would be some powerful imagery. It's easy to think of Dexter as the good guy in the show when all we see him do is stab bad guys in the chest. Nice, quick, (relatively) clean, and easy. Nothing too disturbing about that. It's when you actually stop to imagine him chainsawing the bodies into pieces, bagging them up, cleaning up the blood, all with a serene smile on his face like he's doing some sort of fucked up, macabre yoga that what he is really sends shivers down your spine.

I'm curious as to if they'll continue to take him down the path of becoming a total irredeemable monster in the final season, since they've taken it to a point where there really is no going back now. This is the first season since either 2 or 4 where I feel like there's been honest to god character development that they can't just sweep under the rug to return to the status quo. They've committed to this, and I'm excited to see it through.

EDIT: Just rewatched the first episode of the series. They do in fact show Dexter finishing up after a kill. Just a brief flash of it, putting a dismembered leg in to a trash bag amidst a bloodied room of cellophane and plastic sheeting, but it's nothing too explicit. Not the actual act of cutting up the body, at least.

It felt really weird to see Laguerta get shot like that. A character that has been "around" since the beginning. Debra almost feels more like the main character of Season 7 than Dexter.

So was that the last episode of season 7? I didn't want it to end, been such a great season! That last episode (12) was amazing, So many things going on now and it's pilling on top of Dexter..

For the most part I enjoyed this season more than the last couple but it still felt uneven. I'm hoping that they have a very tightly plotted storyline for the final season.

Nah, they've never shown it. I agree, that would be some powerful imagery. It's easy to think of Dexter as the good guy in the show when all we see him do is stab bad guys in the chest. Nice, quick, (relatively) clean, and easy. Nothing too disturbing about that. It's when you actually stop to imagine him chainsawing the bodies into pieces, bagging them up, cleaning up the blood, all with a serene smile on his face like he's doing some sort of fucked up, macabre yoga that what he is really sends shivers down your spine.

I'm curious as to if they'll continue to take him down the path of becoming a total irredeemable monster in the final season, since they've taken it to a point where there really is no going back now. This is the first season since either 2 or 4 where I feel like there's been honest to god character development that they can't just sweep under the rug to return to the status quo. They've committed to this, and I'm excited to see it through.

@freakin9: Sorry I just have to say that I think you are wrong

@AlianthaBerries said:

@freakin9: Sorry I just have to say that I think you are wrong

Well that was incredibly trite. Thanks for that.

I'm sorry, but this show has jumped the shark this season, and dangled the carrot for far too many a seasons. They keep dragging out Dexter getting caught. The dynamic of the show is so stale that it's become formulaic.

Dexter stabbing a guy in broad day at a shooting range. Debra hugging LaGuerta and turning up to the party without even blood speck on her shirt. Fuck off! The writers have gotten so lazy this season, I can't wait until they put a bullet in this show.

@realph said:

Dexter stabbing a guy in broad day at a shooting range. Debra hugging LaGuerta and turning up to the party without even blood speck on her shirt. Fuck off! The writers have gotten so lazy this season...

I'm not as pissed off as you about it, but there were definitely some convenient things happening in the last episode plot-wise. Why would Laguerte show up to the shipping yard by herself? She was convinced Dexter had killed tens or hundreds of people; she should've been f'ing terrified of him offing her and should've called for backup. And Dexter was just so sloppy with Deb showing up and catching him in the act -- it could've been anyone else. He definitely should've been prepared for Laguerte to bring backup, but he just left the door wide open for anyone to walk in on him.

Yeah, this season was the epitome of give and take. I think this season can be best summed up as "clunky."

The entire final moments were pretty flacid, considering the build-up they were going for.

All things considered, i did watch this after the Homeland finale...tough act to follow regardless.

This finale just reminded me how much I miss Doakes and how good those first two seasons were.