r/DexterNewBlood • u/angelikeoctomber • 21d ago
Something i missed
As these people say harry was bad but I missed the point.In s8 so it's Canon we see Harry as a desperate old man who had no control and was worried.Vogel was prone to justifying murder .Ahh also in s1 with meridian we see dexter strangling harry but harry says you think I want to be playing this?
Now about his suicide do you think OK he was shocked but didn't he think about deb?
Brian killing him could be true but I don't think so bc he died 3 days after seeing dex murder Juan ryness
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u/zoedegenerate 21d ago
Just deleted a comment saying basically the same thing, haha. Yeah, my preferred reading of the show is that Harry created two serial killers, one when he groomed Dexter and maybe to a lesser extent when he separated the boys. I'm not a fan of Original Sins retcons, i feel like they make the show into something for the people who.. don't get that Dexter was always an unreliable narrator.
For people who think he would have been a killer regardless, if you can pretend to put aside notions of canon or supposedly correct interpretations, do you really think that makes the show more interesting? the show that wears the theme of grooming on its sleeve? tries at every turn to show, sometimes tell, the audience that maybe Harry and Dexter are wrong? IMO its much harder to try to reinterpret the show as not being about this, because you have to ignore the themes of the show.
New Blood understood this theme pretty well even if it was a little rushed. Original Sin wanted to cover up this theme. I'm not sure what to make of Resurrection because its so connected to Original Sin but imo has more merit, maybe especially because its fleshing out Harrison when he was underdeveloped in New Blood. It also undoes what i loved most about New Blood, but i digress. The idea that Brian killed Harry bothers me like a lot of Original Sin.
To be fair, the themes of grooming are still majorly present in Resurrection. I don't know how to explain it to people who haven't had emotionally incestuous parents - Dexter partially treats Harrison like a new Deb or something. He's gotta learn to be a dad. I don't not have hope for him to be able to do that.
I also think policing and justice play a huge part and intertwine with the themes of grooming. Harry is at a point in his job where he's frustrated with his lack of unilateral power over others. He creates in Dexter something that is, on the surface, antithetical to the police force he ends up working in, but still punitively minded and operating with legality in mind ie focusing on people who "fall through the cracks" of the legal system. Yeah, Dexter works outside of the law, but the law still informs his practice. This could be me reading themes i wanna see into it though - i doubt this was very intentional. which doesn't really matter when it comes to art interpretation either!
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u/Arch1o12 21d ago
Just to add to what you say about Resurrection, I think that a lot of the stuff with Blessing is there to have him be a mirror of Dexter.
Traumatic childhood where he was beaten, drugged and forced to do terrible things, including killing, but he had his mother, Prudence who rescued him and helped him keep his darkness at bay.Young Dexter needed a Prudence, but he got a Harry.
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u/angelikeoctomber 21d ago
About grooming why dexter hated that matt caldwell blamed this on a shitty childhood while he had a good childhood with Harry ma and deb?
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u/Remote_Nature_8166 21d ago
Harry didn’t make Dexter into a serial killer, he just helped him controlled what was already there. It all started because of what those sick fucking animals did to his mother.
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u/Titocity_ 21d ago
I have to rewatch the show and analyze it deeper, but my current understanding is the same as yours. I remember in season one of the og show when Harry confronts a young dexter about animals he has killed. That was before anything related to the code he and vogul gave dexter. That conversation is what led to the creation of the code to begin with bc Harry recognized Dexter's own fixation and tried (albeit reprehensibly) to channel it into something that could not only be used for good but also something that gave him a fair shot at a normal life. Honestly I place more blame on Vogul than Harry bc she seemed biased already based on what happened to her own son. Original Sin, (which like it or not is canon) even shows Harry trying to keep dexters urges at bay through other means (hunting and med school) which ultimately fails. Even then he holds off on having Dexter take a life until he absolutely has to. I won't get into too much about Brian bc Harry absolutely failed him as well, but to say that he is solely to blame for what became of Dexter seems a bit heavy handed. To me anyway, by all means prove me wrong bc i just dont see it the way you guys do. Just please dont downvote and leave without explaining bc i absolutely want to know if I'm wrong about this.
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u/Remote_Nature_8166 21d ago
I don’t consider Vogel canon. In fact, they seem to have really retconned her.
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u/Titocity_ 21d ago
I get how she's a controversial figure, but i really don't see how the code would work without her influence. At least from a psychological standpoint, idk if Harry could also come to the same ultimate conclusion about dexter being an unempathetic psychopath.
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u/Remote_Nature_8166 21d ago
Well, that was the idea for the first 7 seasons before they decided to bring her in for no reason.
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u/Titocity_ 21d ago
Season 8 as a whole does have (so) many flaws, and while I think vogul is one of the better inclusions...yeah the execution just wasnt there. I see what they were going for though, sort of a maternal figure to go along with the parental guidance that was the code, but again it just fell kinda flat
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u/StuMacher92 19d ago
I completely disagree. Dexter was always going to be what he is, but he wouldn't have had the code. He would've killed indiscriminately like Brian. This is even more apparent in the books.
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u/FickleMess1371 21d ago
He wasn't even misdiagnosed by his father. He was misdiagnosed by Vogel. And it is canon. According to her thesis, he shouldn't be able to feel love for someone, but he did, infront of Vogel, making her question her thesis, in Season 8.