Do there is any chance of Dexter devolving which is when a killer spirals out of control by breaking out of his ritual completely and starts killing people randomly whether they meet his taste in victims or not?
The devolution of Dexter Morgan
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
Yeah I'm sure if the writers want to, they can do it. Dexter doesn't really correspond to how serial killers usually operate. His psychology is unique and there are no rules governing it other than what works in a story and doesn't violate the rules of physics or delve into science fiction.
But for Dexter to be a regular serial killer wouldn't be interesting. That's why it wouldn't work in the story and I'm sure the writers are smart enough to know that.
But for Dexter to be a regular serial killer wouldn't be interesting. That's why it wouldn't work in the story and I'm sure the writers are smart enough to know that.
Has Dexter ever made a mistake? I know he supposedly kills only people who "deserve" it, but has he ever gotten it wrong and accidentally killed an innocent person?
He makes mistakes from time to time...
In season 1...
In season 3...
In season 4...
In season 1...
He doesn't realize that one of his victims, a kid who he ends up identifying with, killed because he had been raped. Dexter just avoids killing the kid when he finds out this information from him. Eventually, the kid acts out in violence again, and hangs himself in prison, of course.
In season 3...
He kills Prado's brother in the season opener, which he didn't go there intending to do.
In season 4...
He kills the "pervy photographer" as he's been described in another thread, thinking he was a murder of the girls he photographed...later in the episode Dexter finds out that it was the guy's assistant.
The S4 mistake was the worst, and it's just the sort of mistake that Dexter was inevitably going to make. Even worse,
his original rationalization for thinking he could always avoid ever killing an innocent person was that he was incredibly cautious and having no emotions, could be entirely rational about every situation.
But clearly a big reason he made that mistake is that he was personally disgusted by the photographer's aesthetic and annoyed by his comments to Deb (who can certainly handle herself but will always be Dex's little sister), so he was far from objective about the whole situation. If he stops to think about it at all, he's gotta realize that his original rationalization is inconsistent with having any family relationships and he can't continue to delude himself that he's some kind of iceman who will never let his emotions get the better of him.
A similar situation occurred before, when he killed a pedophile who had taken a photo of Astor. But is pedophilia punishable by death? And anyway the guy claimed to have "reformed" and wouldn't hurt any children - what if he were telling the truth?
But clearly a big reason he made that mistake is that he was personally disgusted by the photographer's aesthetic and annoyed by his comments to Deb (who can certainly handle herself but will always be Dex's little sister), so he was far from objective about the whole situation. If he stops to think about it at all, he's gotta realize that his original rationalization is inconsistent with having any family relationships and he can't continue to delude himself that he's some kind of iceman who will never let his emotions get the better of him.
A similar situation occurred before, when he killed a pedophile who had taken a photo of Astor. But is pedophilia punishable by death? And anyway the guy claimed to have "reformed" and wouldn't hurt any children - what if he were telling the truth?
And killing Prado's brother was the kind of mistake that's inevitable when you make a habit of breaking into houses in the middle of the night. It's a wonder he didn't stumble across someone before, who wasn't the target but of course who might attack an intruder.
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