As my esteemed colleague Ken Tucker just pointed out, conspiracy theories are flying around fast and furious in the wake of last night’s mind-blowing Dexter season finale. [SPOILER ALERT] Could Rita be alive? And is it possible she died at the hands of Dexter and not Trinity? I got exec producer Clyde Phillips back on the horn for another round of burning questions…
Is Rita really dead?
CLYDE PHILLIPS: Yes.
Is Trinity really dead?
PHILLIPS: Yes. Cut up and drifting in the Gulf Stream.
Did Trinity kill Rita?
PHILLIPS: Yes he did. That’s partly what he meant when he said: “It’s already over.”
My readers are pointing out a potential timeline inconsistency: Trinity left Miami while it was still light out, yet in the message Rita left Dexter she commented about how beautiful the moon was that night.
PHILLIPS: Your readers are smarter than we are. Totally missed it. Honest mistake. [Aus here: Turns out the honest mistake was mine. As this clip confirms, Rita actually told Dex that the moon "is going to" be beautiful, thereby eliminating any potential inconsistency. You're off the hook, Clyde! Me and my readers? Not so much.]
Any other unsolved mysteries driving you crazy? Before you answer that, be sure to read Part 1 of my Q&A with Phillips. We covered a lot of ground there.
Image Credit: Randy Tepper/Showtime
She said the moon WILL be beautiful, didn’t she?
No… Rita said the moon was SUPPOSED to be beautiful that night. As in she listened to the weather forecast and heard about it. It wasn’t inconsistent… the readers are just stupid.
Along with Ausiello I guess…sloppy writing and research at its finest.
Even Phillips didn’t know that.
Weird.
I’m so upset Rita is dead.
Seriously?
No sh*t! I’m so glad her whiny *ss is dead! I just feel bad for Dexter, but couldn’t stand her.
No kidding. I’ve wanted her dead since season one!
Kudos to the writers for killing Rita off, did any one else notice she made everything about her?
You would be whiny too if you were dating/married to a SERIAL KILLER who constantly lies to you and won’t tell you what he’s really feeling or thinking. If she hadn’t been “whiny” or pushy then I would’ve been concerned. Only someone really dumb wouldn’t question Dexter’s secretiveness.
even though the writers seemed not to know what to do with Rita for the past 2 seasons – and her breathy delivery of her lines was extremely annoying, I did look forward to see what cosmetic procedures she had done in the off season — but nonetheless, I hoped she would leave Dex or he would leave her, but I NEVER THOUGHT IN A MILLION YEARS THEY WOULD HAVE HER SLASHED IN A BATHTUB!!! — that was shocking!!!!!
i’ll miss her!! she may have gotten to be annoying, but honestly… wouldn’t you be kind of shrill and annoying if your dumbass husband was being distant and leaving at all times during the day/night? i’m just suspicious that she wasn’t smart enough to realize that dexter was doing something sketchy. and also, even though she was annoying, rita didn’t deserve to die. she was the only thing that made me feel like dexter may have been human, more than deb or even the kids. its terribly tragic that she loved him so unconditionally and his “disease” was the reason she died.
I believe they could have explored so much more if they left her alive. But, the fact that they killed her of was just shocking. I actually liked Rita. She was his conscience and his reason for being more then a typical serial killer. Now with her dead, we now know that season 5 will be focused on Deb finding out who her brother really is. So how I don’t think that will be as interesting. I really was enjoying how Dexter was evolving with him being a part time family man and the concept of him defeating the dark passenger. I am looking forward to season 5.
I am so upset too!!! I couldnt beieve it. Rita was like that comforting place for Dexter. Now I cant wait until season 5!!!
Rita was not Dexter’s comforting place. Only a girl or wife would say or even think that. She was added stress that Dexter needed to deal with to be normal. Get a little smarter. Women suck.
well, Jay – you certainly have some issues – sounds like you need psychiatric help, not just this once a week stuff, but daily sessions with a team…perhaps Vienna
Korinne is right, Jay – are you some kind of conflicted transexual person desperately searching for your identity? Why are you so filled with self-loathing?
Uh, girl here, agreeing with Jay that Rita was NOT Dexter’s comforting place. She grounded him in normalcy, to a degree, but she was definitely a source of stress more than a source of relaxation. The rest of Jay’s comment, of course, was just OT and completely unnecessary. Trollerific.
Jay….I’m a guy and your comment was a little over the top, dude. No need to be a misogynist.
I think the expectations of having a family was the added stress and not Rita specifically. In the first few seasons she was a comforting place for him in exploring his humanity especially while she was damaged. He could not self reflect in a normal family the way he could in a damaged one. It seems he has been trying to humanize his monster via Brian, Lila, Miguel, and even Arthur, all ending in blood. If he is to try to learn about his Dark Passenger via another person in the new season, I think it could only be through the children. When normalcy mixes with Dexter he can never prioritize it, so things will always end in tragedy.
did anyone else notice that she NEVER told Dexter that she was married before??… she took that secret to her grave.
Totally sucks that Rita is dead….I think they could have done better with the season finale and not kill her off!!!!! This sucks large…what next??? So disappointed.
Best show ever
My socks blew off my feet last night. Crazy
haha i like that.
I’ll have to re-watch tonight to be sure, but I thought she was saying something along the lines of: “I know this isn’t your thing, but the moon is GOING to be beautiful tonight. You should take a moment – you deserve it”
As in, maybe the weather/news/passerby mentioned a full/harvest moon was going to be coming out that night – and she was just passing along the info, not that she actually was looking at it herself.
I could be totally wrong, but that is how I understood it initially.
Whooops – when I typed this there weren’t any other comments. Sorry for the reiteration. Looks like I’m not alone.
Heh, well, it was reiterated dozens of times in the other threads too, and Ausiello STILL didn’t understand and decided to bother the producer about it, so don’t worry abou tit.
I thought rita told dexter to check out the moon tonight its gonna be beautiful…
Dexter has gotta be one of THE best shows on television EVER!!!!!
No doubt
No doubt, dexter has been my favorite! i havent liked a show like this since the earlier seasons of CSI!
I haven’t liked a show since well before that…
Brooke – I thought the same thing….that she said the moon WILL be beautiful. Also, why would it take her ALL day to realize she forgot her ID. I think Trinity killed her during the raid at his house.
Yeah…while Dexter was hiding in a coffin, Trinity was putting Dexter’s wife in a coffin, metaphorically. Ouch at the irony.
Close, the metaphore is that Dexter wants to kill the dark passenger – that’s why he hid in the coffin- at the end of the show what he wanted was to enjoy the family he’s built by getting rid of the dark passenger and he said the Getaway was going to be the beginning of that.
“PHILLIPS: Your readers are smarter than we are. Totally missed it. Honest mistake.”
Wow. Now I know why the last two season finales have been duds. This guy doesn’t can’t even remember the dialogue from his own show. Yet all of these fans are correctly pointing out that the timeline works.
Even more evidence that this finale ending was written with no plan in mind and completely to shock the audience. I’m not surprised that Julie Benz was upset now, since Clyde Phillips can’t seem to write his way out of goddamn paper bag. I checked out the writing credits for the show and it is now clear the Daniel Cerone was the writer that vaulted Dexter into hit-status.
Clyde Phillips credits include “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and “Suddenly Susan.” Apparently when you put that guy together with the woman who is screenplaying the Twilight series you get a second-rate version of Dexter.
Horrible job Mr. Phillips. Do your frigging homework idiot.
Oh shut up! A whole team of writers work on Dexter and they probably wrote the finale weeks ago. It makes sense for him not to remember every single line. Like Phillips said in the first interview, this finale wasn’t the planned one, but they knew they needed something big since last season’s finale was so happy and non-shocking so they came up with something. It happens all the time. Countless shows and movies have alternate endings that were changed at the last minute because it was best for the overall storyline.
That’s my point. None of this was planned and it wreaks of non-planning. Just because something is spontaneous doesn’t make it good. They didn’t have any good ideas so they threw something against the wall last minute. Thus, we end up with all this clunky dialogue from Rita and Deb telegraphing that someone close to Dexter is going to die. They threw in the Brian Moser flashes so that the hackneyed ending would appear to have all kinds of “meaning.”
“Best for the overall storyline?” What storyline? Phillips and crew have no idea where they’re going with this thing? So how can you say killing off one of the two moral anchors of the show with no plan is the best thing for the story?
Well I’m sure they wouldn’t kill off one of the biggest characters on the show without thinking it through. If they had ended the show like they originally planned, then they would’ve been stuck in a rut.
The death of Rita gives them many directions to take the show. Quinn, Debra, etc. are going to be wondering WHY Trinity went after Dexter. They were already a little suspicious because he got to Trinity’s house so fast. Dexter is now the single father of three kids and he has to deal with the death of the woman he loved and he can’t confront the guy who did it, because he already killed him.
There are so many things they can do. They did the right thing even though it sucks that Rita died, it’s what’s best for the storyline and it takes the show to a whole new level. And what Brian Moser flashes are you talking about?
You are so right, they have no idea what they are doing. You are definitely the one who would know that. I bet you sit in on every writing session just to make sure your extremely educated guess is correct. Haha… Just because you didn’t like it does not mean it is poorly written, that’s kind of egocentric.
From UGO.com interview with Clyde Phillips after the finale premeire party in NYC:
“Making such a definitive move like this made me think Phillips and company have an endgame in mind but that’s not the case. ‘We don’t know. It was (a big move) last year too. Dexter got married and had a baby. We just want to keep raising the bar to impossible standards and then raise those standards.’”
Yep, I’m the egomaniac.
did they feel obliged to oust Rita in such a brutal way because of the blood stain on the wedding dress at the end of season 3?
Actually, they probably wrote the finale several MONTHS ago, not weeks, and yes, an entire team of writers was working on it. God forbid one person, who’s got thousands of other things on his plate, can’t remember one tiny little line that not even the viewers could remember. Sheesh. And thank you to Rob up there, who’s totally right–people are so egocentric that if something doesn’t turn out the way they want it to, well, then, it MUST be bad. Claytron5000 sounds exactly like my 9th grade students, who when they don’t like or understand something they’ve read immediately call it stupid and pointless. So…how old are you, claytron?
Season 4 was written long before they ever started filming. All you have to do is look on youtube at one of the many videos of John Lithgow stating how he signed on to do the show after they pitched him the whole season. He was the only one on set that knew what was going to happen.
Dear Wha: no, they had not written the finale months ago as you stated. They only a few weeks before decided on the finale they wanted. Claytron is right and you are wrong.
Bullshit.
Phillips: “Your readers are smarter than we are. Totally missed it.”
They didn’t miss anything. I can sense a half-hearted attempt at sarcasm when I hear it.
The people that put Dexter together are not stupid. They would not screw up the timeline like Phillips suggests unless there was a reason for it.
Just like, when Dexter assaulted Trinity for the last time it was on the same stretch of road that Dexter rolled his van from earlier in the season. This is no coincidence. There is a reason for this and a reason for everything.
you are living in a fantasy world, goofball
Agreed Steven. With the writers in constant and obvious awareness of the over-skilled volun’tear’ critics sworn duty to search and exploit anything less than an sealed air-tight storyline/plot(which is NOT said to take away their importance; balancing the books always remains first-prize), an off-the-wizzall comment from them is therapeutic. I have difficulty believing that my next to favorite show is molded from a last second, patch work of efforts nor an eternity of planning for an episode. Dexter is great because it is Dexter. And finding different ways to produce surprise climatic endings is always fun. The writers know exactly what they are doing/writing and my hats off to all of them. And if the show takes a nose-dive and crashes, NO worries. After all, you can’t bring yourself to dislike nirvana for the music they didn’t create.
Claytron5000… as you said, “Clyde Phillips can’t seem to write his way out of goddamn paper bag.”
I don’t know of any writers that can write themselves out of a paper bag, or into one for that matter. Next time you troll a forum with opinions critical on the consistency of a writer (making what one could conclude, a lot more money at writing than you) it may be advantageous to your rhetoric if writing an analogy strong enough to “beat its self out of a wet paper bag” could be provided for the sake of logic. One might be able to side with your opinions since they are fair and do sincerely matter.
Claytron, you are 100% right on. You are totally brilliant.
She did say the moon WOULD be beautiful, so that wasn’t a mistake. So Trinity did kill her!!! Gosh I hate that guy! Dexter’s feelings are going to be so mixed since he already killed the guy! I seriously feel like she just died all over again. It’s SO SAD!!!! WHY!!!!!!
Still, when the hell did Trinity find time to swing by? And what car was he using? The van was left in the parking garage, after Dex drugged Trinity. We’re supposed to believe that he cabbed home to steal his family’s money, cabbed to Dexter’s to kill Rita, then cabbed to the auto shop to pick up the Mustang? A writing issue that undermines an otherwise fine finale.
Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Trinity went to his home. Then he went to Debra’s house. He was probably there for awhile looking for info on Dexter. Debra and Dexter were busy collecting evidence at Trinity’s house. Trinity then had plenty of time to go to Dexter’s house and snoop around and then Rita probably came home and he killed her.
Then Trinity got the mustang, which Dexter was already hiding in the trunk of and that’s how it happened. The timeline works out fine.
Dexter couldn’t have been there very long. He’s a blood splatter expert, not a detective. If there’s no crime scene, he had no reason to be there.
Exactly. He wasn’t at the crime scene long, so that gave him enough time to find out where Trinity took his mustang and to hide inside it. He probably also went home to change clothes and get his tools during that time as well. Trinity would’ve been busy snooping around Deb’s apartment.
why would Trinity be snooping around Deb’s apt? he was looking for Dex and was angry when D. Morgan turns out to be a female. So then why would he hang around that apt. people??? You are reading stuff in where it doesn’t exist.
I have a feeling when they showed him at Deborah’s house he found the mail forwarding to his new address or something in her house showed where Dexter lived. So he could have went directly there after going to Deb’s.
I wonder if they will tie Lundy, him breaking into Deb’s (if he made it noticeable) and then going to Dexter’s house together. Hmm.
I sort of understand why they killed Rita she was kinda needy, but now the writers are going to have to come up with a great story line next year
This does open up the possibility of Dexter getting a new love interest, so that’s kind of exciting. Hopefully it won’t happen next year, but maybe in a later season we will get to see him try to date. That will be interesting since he’s now a single father of three.
Single dad raising 3 kids by himself is not condusive to having a new love interest. Doubt it would happen right away anyway. Besides Dexter didn’t start out with Rita as a Love interest – he couldn’t feel anything since he was young – she was a cover for him. If you remember he kept her around becuase she was as emotionally detached as he was.
they killed Rita because she was “needy?” — she was a mother of 3 including one newborn whose husband was never home…how do you figure she was needy? are you really a guy?
aren’t the writers supposed to come up with great story line every year?
Rita was getting on my last nerve.
If you feel that way, here is a scary thought,what if she continues to visit Dexter like Harry does?
I understand – but how she was disposed of was too brutal and shocking.
It’s a show about serial killers…it’s supposed to be too brutal and shocking. That’s why season 3 was such a disappointment, there was nothing brutal or shocking all season. Glad the writers got back on track in season 4…best season yet!
I agree. My husband and I were really getting sick of her. She was always on his back!
I can see Dexter wondering if his son Harrison is like him DARK PASSENGER and all.
After all they both watched there mother being killed and spent the day sitting in a pool of blood.
Perhaps Dexter will have to take care of Harrison like Harry had to take care of him…
Harry did a poor job with Dexter. Dexter would’ve been fine with some hardcore counseling, but Harry chose to make Dexter into his own personal criminal disposal. Harrison will be fine because Dexter will hopefully do the right thing and make sure he gets the help he needs.
harry is Dexter’s dark passenger
This is kind of random, but when Dexter comes home. He trips over a train set that’s on the floor. Do you think Trinity was playing with the baby or something after he killed Rita. I just thought the train set was kind of ironic.
Ooh, I didn’t think of that. Or maybe he was just sitting in the middle of the room murmuring ‘Choo Choo’ to himself for awhile.
i never even thought of that..wow, that’s is another level of distubing heaped up on it lol..good call