Season 4 Finale “The Getaway” Episode Recap

Big spoilers within. If you have’nt seen the Season 4 finale yet, you do NOT want to read this post, come back once you have!

Whoa.

Dexter & Arthur declare peaceWho saw *that* coming? Not me! A fantastic episode to wrap up the season. Rather than jump to the end let’s get back to the beginning of the episode. As you know last week’s episode “Hello, Dexter Morgan” ended with Arthur right in Dexter’s face on his own turf – the Homicide division of Miami Metro. Dex manages to nudge Arthur towards his office where an agreement is reached, Arthur does’nt want to kill him, does’nt want anything to do with him, just wants Dexter out of his life. Dexter agrees, only to buy him some time and get Arthur out of the office.

Thinking he’s intimidated Dexter, Arthur heads out the office with a smug look on his face. However Dexter realises that this may be the only opportunity to catch and finally kill him, so follows after him. He runs into Quinn in the carpark who has beef with Dexter about a report, Dexter – in no mood for delays winds up shoving Quinn to the ground. The chase begins.

While speeding through the streets, old faithful Harry appears – “What’s your plan Dexter?”. Dexter’s only plan is to follow Arthur until an opportunity arises. Adding to the stress, Rita calls about wanting a honeymoon - unfortunately he should have been concentrating on the road more and swipes a side mirror of another car. Ignoring this he follows his target into a parking garage and watches as he walks towards a bank. A perfect spot to nab Arthur on his return.

Dexter -about to lose it in front of the copsUpon his return Dexter cleanly grabs Arthur and knocks him out with his needle juice. Seems that Arthur was at the bank to close his account and take all the money, which can only mean that he’s planning a getaway. About to wrap things up nicely Dexter notices the guy who’s mirror he knocked off along with two cops, just as he was thinking his luck was finally changing. The conversation with the guy and the cops heats up when the he tries to take a photo of Dexter, who loses his cool and goes for the jugular and is then promptly arrested.

Back at Miami Metro, Deb is ordered to take the day off by Batista as she only just witnessed Christine commit suicide. Rather than chilling out Deb favours using this time to chase up one of Harry’s CI’s. The CI leads her to a scarily familiar place, the home of Brian Moser where Deb was on the cutting table 3 years before.

After Rita bails Dexter out of jail, she drives him to his car. Dexter hopes that Arthur is still unconcious inside, but unfortunately not. Arthur escaped and headed straight for his house to ransack the place for more money, which Dexter had hidden near the van above a light in the garage. Dexter grabs the cash and heads off, now without a clue how to track down Arthur again. Later Dexter talks to Rita about the honeymoon, Dex thinks it’s a very good excuse to get the family out of harms way. Astor and Cody go with their grandparents to Disney World while Rita and baby Harrison leave for the Keys ahead of Dexter who wants to stay behind for the night to take care of Arthur.

To clarify the Moser situation Deb goes to talk to Harry’s old cop buddy who hesitantly opens up and confirms that Dexter is indeed the son of Laura and Brian’s brother. Deb naturally flips out over this information. Meanwhile at Miami Metro things are heating up as they begin to work out that Stan Beaudry is not the killer they’re after. Deb is called in to interview Scott Smith, the 10 year old who was kidnapped by Arthur, Deb opens up to him about being kidnapped and helps Scott to remember the sign on the car he was taken away in. It’s the Four Walls sticker. This leads them to a build where they dig up a young boy, this along with other information leads them to one… Arthur Mitchell.

Debra & Batista open up the Garage to find Dexter already there.As he has no idea how to track down Arthur, Dexter heads to the Mitchell household to find that Arthur was there and desperate for cash. Suddenly Dexter is surprised by noise outside, the house is covered in SWAT. Dexter manages to quickly run and hide in Arthur’s coffin. Arising out of the coffin moments later just as the garage door opens to Deb and Angel and he explains that he rushed to the scene so quickly he forgot his flak jacket.

Once the rush is over, Harry intercedes to lecture Dexter, saying that the harm Arthur did to his family is bound to happen to Dexter’s, “You’ll always need someone on your table”. Deb interrupts this to tell Dexter about Laura Moser, Dexter plays dumb and pretends he never heard of her. Following on Deb tells him that two boys were left behind after Laura died, Dexter was one and the other was Brian Moser – The Ice Truck Killer . Dexter does actually panic a little but turns this into faux confusion and guilt that he was responsible for Deb becoming Brian’s target. In a teary moment Deb dismisses Dexter’s guilt stating that he is the only constant good thing in her life. Dexter takes this well and sees it as a way of differentiating himself from Arthur as no-one saw good in Arthur, but at least Deb and Rita do in him. Right after this conversation Dexter clocks the broken windshield that Jonah smashed with a baseball bat, Dexter looks through the envelope he got off Arthur earlier, he sees a receipt for the GT 500 to fix the windshield…. as well as a respray.

Back at Metro, the Feds have come in to take over the Arthur Mitchell case, much to the bemusement of the team. The least impressed was Debra who took the opportunity to blame the FBI for not listening to Lundy in the first place, which eventually led to his death. Matthews attempts to defuse the situation but even Quinn steps in to reiterate Deb’s point.

Arthur-CruisingEnjoying his cruise down the highway that afternoon Arthur seems to be very pleased, but later that evening he needs to pull over as the Mustang is blowing smoke and clunking, he pops the hood “Where’s my fucking oil cap?”…. Dexter appears through the smoke, pushes him to the ground “Hello, Arthur Mitchell” (cute) and wrestles him to the ground. It appears that Dexter beat him to the car shop, took off the oil cap and presumably hid in the trunk. Finally Arthur is on Dexter’s table, surrounded by hundreds of photos of his victims. A deep conversation begins, they talk about family, their inner monsters, heaven and acceptance before the merciful Dexter switches on Arthur’s trainset and plays that incredibly creepy “Oh Vera” song, then takes the infamous hammer, claw side down and kills Arthur Mitchell.

On the Slice of Life, Dexter disposes of Arthurs remains and ponders that his Dark Passenger needs to take a back seat to what he really wants now, to focus on Rita and his family. The family which used to be secondary and part of Dexter’s mask has grown into something very human within him. Back at home he glances over the family photos on the wall. His phone beeps, receives a voicemail from Rita, calls her back only to hear that her phone is right next to him. Outside of the room he hears a baby cry, rushes towards the voice… flips on the bathroom switch to see baby Harrison on the floor surrounded by blood, peering around the corner Rita comes into view, lying in the bathtub full of
My two stabs:

Holy shit eh? We all knew a major character was going to kick it this season, but Rita would have been about last on my list! I admit in retrospect it is one of those things I *should* have seen coming. It does make perfect sense, John Lithgow and the Trinity killer could not be just another target for Dexter, it had to be significant. Then with Harrison I do feel bad though, regulars of my little blog would remember a post in which I complained about Rita being so annoying, with an accompanying poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I never knew the esteemed writers of Dexter read my blog! ;-) On a serious note I do feel bad about that poll now, but at least 148 (47%) of you agreed that Trinity should take her out too! Thanks for sharing the guilt guys. I will miss Rita though, she was always good Yang to Dexter’s Yin. As well as the character I’ll also miss the gorgeous Julie Benz. I wonder if she will return in Season 5 as a Harry-esque ghost? By the way there has been much net-natter about the whole scene being a dream in which Dexter will awake from in S5, showrunner Clyde Phillips has confirmed that this is not the case.

What do you think is in store for season 5? Big things are going to change that’s for sure, but as the entire cast & crew are off on hiatus even they don’t know where the next season will go. Discuss the episode in the forum, leave a comment and you may want to follow me on Twitter. BTW regarding twitter, please don’t just follow me, talk to me as I’m always up to chat about Dexter!

RIP

Rita Morgan

13th December 2009

Dexter&Rita-Not-like-Paul

“You were the wind beneath a serial killer’s wings.”

View my blog to see more reviews of Showtime's Dexter, such as The Getaway Episode Recap