"That is, will the serial killer Dexter Morgan head off to happy retirement in Argentina with his family, or end up in some kind of hell, whether above or below ground? Does the man we’ve watched plunging long knives into helpless victims for eight seasons require punishment, no matter how charming and sometimes heroic he’s been?
The proper fate of the seemingly irredeemable hero is a hot topic in prime time right now, with “Breaking Bad” playing out a similar scenario in its fifth and final season, which ends on Sept. 29. Of course, history tells us that these accountings can be ambiguous: Tony Soprano frozen in his booth at the diner, Vic Mackey consigned to a desk job but reaching for his gun.
Those finales (of “The Sopranos” and “The Shield”) suggested that dramatic values and the feelings of fans outweigh moral considerations when it comes to ending popular, long-running cable series, and that a good hero is hard to kill off, no matter how many people he’s killed himself.
The endgame has a different importance, though, in “Dexter,” a more stylized and fanciful show with an even more single-minded focus on its protagonist’s psyche. The question of Dexter’s fate was baked into the gothic premise: a psychopath trained by his adoptive father, a police officer, to be an honorable killer, dispatching only those who needed killing. And the show’s mix of film noir and fairy tale seemed to leave open the possibility of redemption, and even a happy ending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/arts/television/the-dexter-finale-expect-controversy.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130920&_r=0
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