It was the best of serial killers, it was the worst of serial killers, it was the age of knives, it was the age of forensics, it was the epoch of codes, it was the epoch of compulsions, it was the season of stalking, it was the season of hiding, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.
In the sweltering city of Miami lurked a killer named Dexter Morgan who moved undetected through tropical shadows wielding tools of dissection more adeptly than a surgeon wields scalpel. Though his hands dispatched victims with diabolical creativity, to all appearances Dexter lived a mundane life free of menace. For this monster walked not only among men, but as a man - specifically a forensic blood spatter analyst with the police department.
Dexter's double life began at age three when he saw his mother murdered with a chainsaw, leaving the boy orphaned in viscous blood that forever changed him. Adopted to serve his foster father'stwisted vision, Dexter was molded into the perfect vigilante killer; one who followed a code to only slay murderers eluding justice, never innocents. Trained to harness homicidal instincts, Dexter appeared normal while concealing a compulsion for complex ritualistic kills.
As an adult, Dexter balanced inner demons against Miami's resplendent façade. By day, he solved brutal crimes for police relying on the very insights that made him an efficient nocturnal criminal. At night, the devils arose and Dexter stalked targets like child killer Mike Donovan, ending their reign of terror if they slipped legal punishment. Ritual requirements guided each kill - adopting a fake name, wrapping the plastic kill-room to catch spatter evidence, then dismembering victims to scatter offshore so they might never harm again.
Maintenance of this chaotic equilibrium relied on strict adherence to his foster father's Code of Harry. But the code cracked when Dexter's adoptive sister Debra, herself now a detective, grew suspicious of the too-perfect Dexter after a serial killer left clues to taunt him. Meanwhile, Dexter's girlfriend Rita and her children inched Dexter closer to normalcy, creating a Jungian conflict of personas - the ordinary family man vs the sociopathic slayer.
Further complications descended when Dexter attracts the attention of the Miami PD's most obsessive cop, Frank Lundy. Sensing dark depths beneath Dexter's helpful neighbor facade, Lundy inches closer to exposing the killer's secret life. But Lundy meets his demise not knowing his hunch was right - Dexter lives a double-life of dutiful forensics analyst and thrill-killing shadow-dweller, as morally disjointed as the ruptured bodies he hides offshore.
Tragedy and betrayal around every street corner constantly threatened the code holding Dexter's polar halves together. As violence stained those he trusted, Dexter evolved from lone avenger to unraveling antihero. The Bay Harbor Butcher, as police branded his underwater evidence dumps, could evade capture but not the contradictions of living a lie. His upward arc from guiltless outcast to conflicted human opened the possibility of redemption - if Miami's most prolific killer could tame the dark and step fully into the light.
Dexter Morgan embodied the fractured postmodern psyche. Re-enacting ritual blood crimes against society's worst while solving similar cases for the police by day, Dexter is the alter-ego unfettered. His evolution suggests the possibility that even the most broken might reform by replacing compulsion with conscience. For as the British writer Dickens declared, man is equally capable of angels and demons. Let us aspire to the angels.
