‘Dexter: New Blood’ Ending — ‘We Needed to Have the Ultimate Closure’ Showrunner Clyde Phillips Says
The Dexter: New Blood ending may have been more controversial than the original Dexter finale in 2013. Fans were dissatisfied to see Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) become a lumberjack, but even more disappointed in what happened this way. Showrunner Clyde Phillips tells them this was the way it had to go.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Dexter: New Blood ending.]
Phillips appeared on the Dexter: New Blood Wrap Up Podcast on Jan. 10 following the airing of the series finale. The showrunner explained how the Dexter: New Blood ending allowed him to do what he couldn’t do the first time around.
Clyde Phillips always wanted this ending
Phillips worked on the first four seasons of Dexter. When he left, new creators, including executive producer Scott Reynolds, took Dexter’s story in new directions. The lumberjack finale was their idea.
“I’ve always wanted Dexter to meet his demise because first of all, what greater closure is there?” Phillips said on the Dexter: New Blood Wrap Up Podcast.
Clyde Phillips felt a moral obligation to ‘Dexter: New Blood’
Phillips developed and produced a show about a heroic serial killer. The show was based on Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter books, so there was precedent for telling this macabre story. However, Phillips said the Dexter: New Blood ending had to be morally responsible.
“Second of all, what he does is reprehensible,” Phillips said. “It just happens to be completely entertaining because Michael Hall is so appealing and it’s a serial killer show with a sense of humor but he’s a psychopath. You don’t get to kill people and he needed to pay the societal price for it. We needed to have the ultimate closure and we knew that all season long. It’s just how we got there that was important.”
The ‘Dexter: New Blood’ ending was personal, too
The notion of Harrison (Jack Alcott) killing Dexter was poetic to Phillips, too. Phillips alluded to some difficulties with his own father which comes out in his writing outside of Dexter, too. The Dexter: New Blood ending put all the pieces in place for Phillips to exorcize that idea.
There’s the old saw about for any man, whether you’re a completely normal person or a f***ed up person that you need to kill your father in order to move on in life. I had a terrible childhood and a terrible father whom I’ve killed many times in my novels and in screenplays and teleplays and therapy. So it was natural to do. I wrote the script with a pen filled with blood. It’s why it’s very moving. It’s very emotional. I was, just an hour ago, wiping tears away watching the show again.
Clyde Phillips, Dexter: New Blood Wrap Up Podcast, 1/10/22
