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So we’re torn. We want him to mourn Rita, but we don’t want him just killing anybody. He must follow the rules of victim selection in order for us to remain in his corner. And that’s just it. There is the sense that Dexter, deep down, doesn’t care who his victims are. Harry trains him, creates his ritual, but what Dexter needs, more than anything, is that release. We want so much to believe that he would never kill an innocent, that he really only wants guilty victims, but this most likely isn’t the case. And the evidence for this is in the final stages of the ritual, the killing itself.

Were Dexter just some killer exterminator and not a monster himself, he wouldn’t need to wait for his victims to awaken before he kills them. He surrounds his death table with images and evidence of what his targets have done to earn their place in his blood slide collection. Then, when they awaken, he verbally taunts them with their sins for a moment before the slaughter. He wants them to know what’s going to happen to them before sinking that knife in their heart.

I suppose one could see this as justice being served. After all, an execution itself isn’t so much the punishment as it is the awareness that the execution is coming. Yet, there is a sadistic, somewhat erotic, glee that Dexter experiences as he toys with the murderers on his table before the climactic knife plunge. It does have a sexual arc to it, a build up then a release - and this is no accident. Dexter’s not doing this out of some altruistic sense of right and wrong. No, he’s getting off on it. While other vigilantes kill with a feeling of “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Dexter does it for pleasure.

And this is what makes Dexter so compelling. We want so much for him to be a cuddly serial killer, protecting Miami from greater evils. Thing is, without Harry’s brilliant code, Dexter would become one of those greater evils. The code, Dexter’s personal mythology, is a brilliant, tight construct, allowing no room for deviation, lest it lead to Dexter’s downfall. It’s the choke collar on a vicious dog, designed to reign in its most undesirable tendencies.

What makes Dexter such a fascinating character is that Harry has created a superhero façade for him to wear. He really has three identities; the charming blood splatter analyst, the vigilante killer of killers, and the true monster under it all, always wanting to run free. And each season, the monster chips away at the code, causing greater and greater destruction to Dexter’s other two identities. Even as Dexter learns love for Rita, Deb and those others around him, his so-called Dark Passenger asserts itself more and more. Yes, this is the difference between Dexter and other vigilante characters like Batman. We want Dexter to be Batman, yet, deep down, we fear that he’s The Joker. And he probably is.

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