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Last year around this time, I speculated that Dexter really isn’t much different than Batman. They both lead double lives, both are vigilantes, both had a childhood trauma that would affect them for the rest of their lives, and, most importantly, both have killed evil people.

I also argued that the only real difference is that Batman kills with reluctance, often in the process of saving some damsel or other innocent, while Dexter’s acts are cold, calculated and ethically questionable. We know his victims are the lowest of the low, killers themselves. If anyone’s deserving of Dexter’s knife, it’s them.

Yet, the ethical ambiguity lingers. Dexter’s nocturnal antics remain unsettling to watch. If justice is being served at the end of Dexter’s knife, then justice ain’t pretty. I’m sure this is one of the themes the Dexter writers intend - no big revelation there - but I got to thinking about why a Dexter death is so much grimmer than one at the hands of a more traditional hero or superhero figure. I think it’s embedded in not the show’s mythology, but in the Dexter character’s own personal mythology.

You see, if Hollywood has taught me anything about serial killers, it’s that they all have a ritual, and they all kill to achieve some sort of release. What makes Dexter a lovable serial killer is his ritual. We all know it. His foster father Harry helps create it. It’s a personal code involving both choosing the correct targets, and perfectly covering his tracks.

And it seems pretty airtight. Harry, as a cop himself, knows how to fool the police. He also knows about serial killer ritual and, discovering young Dexter’s budding proclivities, instills in him a ritual which both helps to rid Miami of predators and keep Dexter safe from the law.

Yet, like other mythologies, there are rules, and if Dexter breaks these rules, Harry’s code begins to unravel. In most shows, when the audience senses that they aren’t playing by the rules, the backlash kicks in. In the case of Dexter, we watch for those moments that Dexter steps off the Harry path, setting off a chain of events that nearly lead to his downfall. Even the cleverest and most meticulous of serial killers gets sloppy on occasion and Dexter is no different. In fact, his violations of the code in season four have the most tragic consequences yet, the death of his wife Rita.

Which brings me to the other half of the serial killer equation, the release. We want to like Dexter. We want to believe that he follows Harry’s code out of some sense of justice. Yet Dexter claims, over and over, to have no feelings for other humans. When Rita dies, we want him to experience some anguish. Does he? It’s hard to tell. He certainly has some emotional reaction. He kills a man on impulse in a men’s room. The man is an asshole - no question there - but whether he’s killed anyone is up for debate. In any case, Dexter sure doesn’t know. But he needs that release.

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