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As Dexter Morgan finally comes clean about his murderous secret, the Dark Passenger gets favorably compared to a certain Caped Crusader.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood Episode 9, “The Family Business,” which aired Sunday, Jan. 2, on Showtime.
While Dexter Morgan is a notorious serial killer, with an untold amount of victims that he has accumulated over the years to sate the murderous urges from his dark side, personified as the Dark Passenger, he has done his best to direct this lethal hobby towards arguable good. Dexter meticulously researches the background of each of his intended victims, ensuring that each of these targets are individuals with nefarious histories of their own that have managed to elude facing the conventional justice offered by the judicial system on various technicalities. And as Dexter’s teenage son Harrison learns the truth about his father’s bloody side hustle, he compares him to none other than Batman.
This confession between Dexter and Harrison was in the cards for some time, especially as Harrison began to reveal telltale signs that he inherited his own Dark Passenger from his father as he manipulated and attacked a would-be school shooter. After rescuing Harrison from Kurt Caldwell, a mass murderer who primarily preyed upon young women moving through the small upstate New York town of Iron Lake, Dexter told his son about his own dark side on Christmas morning. At the urging of his Dark Passenger, taking on the form of Dexter’s late sister Debra, Dexter stopped just short of admitting that he killed his targets, instead insinuating that he simply scared them straight with evidence of their crimes.
RELATED: Dexter’s Michael C. Hall Explains Why His Serial Killer Isn’t a ‘Total Sociopath’
Visibly impressed, Harrison compares his father’s vigilante activities to Batman, with Dexter laughing at the comparison and referring to himself as a “Dark Defender.” For Dexter, targeting killers and other criminal lowlives that avoided legal justice was never about outside validation, but the serial killer with a heart of gold certainly is relieved his son approves of his illicit hobby. And this relief quickly extends into paternal pride when Harrison deduces that Dexter actually kills his target, only to reveal that he similarly approves that his father takes such decisive action and eliminates the most twisted figures existing in society.
For Harrison, he has spent his entire life fantasizing about avenging his mother’s murderer, the Trinity Killer, who went missing immediately after killing Rita Morgan. Dexter quietly admits to murdering the Trinity Killer, which makes him a hero in Harrison’s eyes, with Harrison claiming that Dexter’s actions have potentially saved the lives of thousands of potential victims from the killers he targeted and eliminated over the years. It is this assertion that Dexter appreciates more than the superhero comparison, receiving the validation and approval for his dark crusade that he never knew he wanted and from his son of all people.
For most of the revival series Dexter: New Blood, Dexter was afraid to tell Harrison the truth about his Dark Passenger, both over fears it would repulse his son and risk his own exposure to the public and that his son would follow a similar path. When it became evident that Harrison already had a Dark Passenger of his own, and when Dexter was forced to reveal his cunning side to rescue his son from Kurt, he finally had the overdue conversation with his son. And rather than straining the fragile relationship between father and son, Dexter’s confession has not only brought them closer together but also given him a sense of familial encouragement that he has never received before.
To see the killer compared to Batman, Dexter: New Blood airs Sundays at 9pm ET/PT on Showtime.
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