The television show known as “Dexter” takes place in Miami, Florida in 2006. Main character, Dexter, is a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Metro Police Department, but he is living a double life as a serial killer with a conscience. Dexter is known to only kill people that fit his foster father, Harry Morgan’s, code.
Before his death, Harry Morgan was the best police officer on the force, so he knew how to cover his tracks. Harry first discovered that Dexter was killing the neighborhood pets at the age of ten, so he decided instead of turning the troubled child away or doing something worse, he chose to teach Dexter to kill only animals to control his urges and channel them in a more positive way.
Eventually, Harry teaches Dexter to only kill bad people: people that escaped justice, people that truly deserve it. From being taught how to cover his tracks by his foster father, he learned how to make a “kill room”. This occured in advance of murdering someone, where he would wrap the room in plastic, so that no traces of any evidence could be found. If the person he is about to kill has murdered people, he usually tapes photos of their victims onto a nearby wall as a reminder for their murders.
The thing that gives Dexter his homicidal urges is a voice in his head that he has named as his “dark passenger”. When Dexter can no longer ignore the voice, he “lets his dark passenger take the wheel”. Dexter really only mentions his dark passenger when he hasn’t killed anyone in a long time and he feels his “mask” start to “slip”; he doesn’t ever mention his dark passenger to anyone and the ones that get to see his dark passenger are the ones that fall victim to him.
Dexter’s first kill was a nurse who was tending to Harry while he was in the hospital. His reasoning for killing Mary, the nurse, was that she purposely gave Harry too much medication to overdose him. Dexter took action and saved his foster father’s life for another year until his death.
Dexter had these urges as a result of trauma that occurred to him at the young age of three years old alongside his older brother, Brian Moser, where they both witnessed the murder of their mother being cut up into many pieces by a drug gang leader, Hector Estrada. Harry arrived on scene and saw the two brothers sitting in a pool of their mother’s blood in a shipping container for three days. He chose to take in Dexter since he was so young; he believed Dexter would’ve blocked it out, and seeing Brian he believed Brian was far too gone to save. Ultimately, he chose to not adopt the traumatized boy.
Thirty years pass and within those years Harry Morgan has long passed due to heart failure. Even after Dexter’s foster father’s death, he still carries his code with him. An interesting point the creators make is this is a “good” code to live by if you are someone of Dexter Morgan’s psychology. It’s boring and strict with how he goes about his life, but Harry’s code is something Dexter desperately needed to survive and get what he wants. Without the code, he would be just like any other serial killer, only killing to satisfy his urges without benefitting anyone but himself. Since he follows his father’s code and only kills people that truly deserve it, he’s benefiting the police and saving all of the potential lives that could’ve fallen victim to the ones he’s killed. Definitely a show worth watching and one that causes you to question the morality of Dexter!
