‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Ending Explained – A Fitting Climax With No Surprises

Anyone expecting any major surprises from the ending of Dexter: Resurrection is likely to leave “And Justice For All…” a little disappointed. But, based on that title for Episode 10, it’s hard to claim that it doesn’t perform as advertised. We’ve had the clever twists — like the Gemini twin reveal — and the beloved fan-favourite character deaths already. This finale is all about Dexter getting away with it, in typical Dexter style, and reassuring long-time fans that he isn’t planning on changing any time soon.

You could even argue, if you were so inclined, that this isn’t a very good finale. It’s contained mostly to two rooms, little happens in it that you can’t see coming a mile away, and it short-changes some subplots and character resolutions to facilitate a neater denouement than it strictly deserves. And yet I can’t quite bring myself to criticise it for any of this, since it just feels so right for Dexter. If this spin-off has been about him realising exactly who he is, the ending, particularly, is about him deciding he’s okay with that. And so am I.

Inside Man

The action begins with Dexter still locked inside Prater’s vault with Batista’s corpse. Charley isn’t exactly thrilled that her employer has killed a cop in his penthouse while all of New York’s finest drink champagne at the gala downstairs, but Prater’s fizzing with the excitement of his first kill and scarcely notices. His bright idea for Dexter is to simply leave him there for three days until he dies of dehydration, with Charley keeping watch for good measure. It’s hardly a foolproof plan, but when someone’s that rich, they’re used to people just agreeing with whatever they say.

While Prater presses flesh downstairs, Dexter uses Batista’s phone to call Harrison, who’s busy using Gigi’s inner thighs as earmuffs — hey, whatever happened to Elsa? — but eventually picks up. Dexter needs help. And, conveniently, Harrison is uniquely positioned to provide it, so he calls Lance to ask if that job catering the gala is still available. Of course it is!

Despite being in charge of serving the most powerful people in the state, the catering company doesn’t seem to mind Harrison having his phone hanging out of his jacket pocket and an AirPod in one ear so that he can live-stream his progress to Dexter. He needs to get to the penthouse while avoiding the cops — Claudette is there looking great — and Prater himself. No pressure.

The Great Escape

Dexter’s master plan for guiding Harrison to the penthouse didn’t account for Charley still being in there when he arrived. She interrupts Harrison while he’s noisily trying to pick the lock and holds him at gunpoint, assuming she has acquired some necessary leverage. But Dexter has some of his own. While he was snooping around Prater’s vault — in between arguing with a vision of his long-dead brother — he discovered a bunch of kompromat that proves, among other things, that Charley was responsible for staging Mia’s suicide. Prater has been keeping receipts for years.

This news rattles Charley — whose real name, by the way, is Charlotte Brown, aka Charley Brown — especially when Dexter threatens to AirDrop photos of the evidence to the cops downstairs. But she doesn’t go in for Dexter’s proposed idea of letting Harrison go and himself go free. Instead, she offers to let Harrison go, mostly as a thank-you to Dexter for not killing her mother, but insists on leaving Dexter in the vault to die. If he escapes, she promises to track Harrison down, torture him, and kill him.

After Charley leaves, both Dexter and Harrison completely ignore this threat and get to work on breaking open the vault. “And Justice For All…” wrings a remarkable amount of tension out of this whole process. Batista’s phone is dying, they only get one shot at the code, Dexter thinks he has it nailed down but then changes his mind at the last minute — it’s unnecessarily great stuff. The code turns out to be the prisoner number of the man who killed Prater’s parents, and just like that, father and son are reunited.

One Last Kill

Since Dexter accidentally leaves Red Schmidt’s thumbprint behind, he has to re-enter the vault to retrieve it lest he be locked in the penthouse, so he sends Harrison out the way he came. Naturally, their separation allows Prater to get the drop on Harrison. Just as Dexter is leaving the building, Prater calls him to return to the penthouse and face the music.

Thanks to the “protection” that Dexter gave Harrison in a previous episode — thank goodness he was still carrying it despite having changed clothes multiple times since — they’re able to subdue Prater before he puts a hole in Harrison’s head, and he’s finally able to get out of there while Dexter remains behind to give Prater the full Bay Harbor Butcher treatment. Dexter is properly, enjoyably nuts in this sequence, it being part of his whole “coming to terms with himself” arc. Peter Dinklage sells it really well. Prater doesn’t even get the privilege of a blood slide — Dexter would rather not remember.

After dismembering Prater and cleaning up any evidence that he was there, Dexter deliberately inputs the wrong vault code to sound the alarm and summon the cops while using Prater’s severed thumb to slip away. Claudette — whose impromptu rendition of the “Staying Alive” dance is one of those totally unnecessary inclusions that I’m so glad was there — finds a treasure trove of incriminating evidence against Prater, Batista’s body, and finally learns the identity of the New York Ripper (turns out Dexter was right about the murder weapon based on that impromptu spatter analysis in a previous episode.)

This is really all that the ending of Dexter: Resurrection has to offer. And it’s enough. Dexter rides off into the sunset — figuratively speaking; it’s still nighttime — on Prater’s luxury yacht with a few sackfuls of his body parts and some pilfered folders of serial killers to target. He’s happy with his lot; with Harrison, and with Blessing and his family, and with his urges. He’s happy being Dexter Morgan. And why not?