I think I like this the best.

The first thing my wife said was "I spent 7 years watching this for that shit ending?"

It was pretty bad.

Lumberjack scene was not needed at all. The group I was watching it with all hated it. The Dexter Facebook page is blowing up now with hate.

I can't believe that she ended up being the hurricane.

That's not really accurate. Don't get me wrong, I hated it, and I actually went to check it out because I wanted to see me some vitriolic hate, but maybe 1/3rd of the posts are negative. Plenty of nonsense about people crying or getting goosebumps or whatever.

The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Is Dexter a bad enough dude to save the President?

Finale: Dexter saves the President, and they go out for a burger together.

Wow.

In the world of Dexter, the Miami hospitals are just as inept as the Miami Police Department...

how do you go from "Im optimistic" with a gunshot to the stomach that 'didn't hit anything major' to a brain dead vegetable in a matter of hours?

I think these are pretty nitpicky. We've seen hospitals break down into chaos during hurricanes. Granted if they were trying to portray this as a Katrina-grade hurricane they failed miserably, but I wouldn't put the scenario of Dexter leaving a hospital with Deb's brain-dead body among the top 20 unbelievable events of the show.

Secondly, the blood clot thing is wholly plausible, medically speaking. It's still a total Deux ex Machina on the part of the writers though.

Blood clot, like they mentioned.

It's rare, but it does happen and is possible.

If they hadn't tacked on the lumberjack scene at the end it would've been a decent enough ending (not great, but passable). But the epilogue totally ruined it.

If you saw the last couple of episodes, Dexter had already said good bye to Harry.

My question is, has there been a final that the vast majority has ever enjoyed in the last 20-30 years of TV history? And with this being such a dark show, for the people who cry on Facebook wanting a happy ending, it's a dark show...no happy ending allowed.

Yeah I realize its possible but talk about a piss poor way for our 'hero' character to go out on.

Deb deserved a much better death after surviving being shot, beaten up and nearly killed by several of Miami's serial killers over 8 seasons.

Why even have her conscious in the first half of the episode. It weakened the impact of her death and didnt bring any closure to her character unless you count her half hearted 'I love you' to Quinn....

Then again, having our 'anti-hero' Dexter decide to kill himself driving out into a hurricane wasn't much better...

These season writers should never... EVER get anymore work. What a piss poor written season. I mean so much wrong I dont know where to begin... but Hannah walking around with no damn disguise once or ever... I mean my 9 year son couldn've thought up to at least put a hat on. Dexter walking out the hospital with Deb's body just kill any type of emotion they seem to be going for... Im so pissed off.

At least we have Breaking bad to fall back on.

I'm definitely in the minority in that I've really enjoyed these last two seasons flaws and all. But this finale, while appropriate, just didn't work for me. Deb and Dexter both deserved better endings (and I did understand that Dexter was punishing himself by choosing isolation).

I really think doing two back to back seasons hurt the writers quite abit. That being said its still one of my favorite shows and I look forward to rewatching when I get the complete series.

What....the....fuck was that. Just....god.

Since Dexter knew he was going to fake his death I guess I can let it slide that he obviously killed Saxon (that was a very poor attempt to make it look like self defense).

The whole bit with Deb was ridiculous. How is no one noticing Dex transporting Deb out of the hospital like that?

Finally, I thought the final solution "I need to protect Hannah and Harrison from myself" was just completely unnecessary. You killed Saxon, Deb died...there are no loose ends. There's no reason to believe you can't have a happy life with them.

I still enjoyed the series as a whole...but man did it drop off the last few seasons.

Michael C Hall goes from being on the best series finale (6 Feet Under) to arguably the worst.

Although not great, I thought the ending was much better than I expected. the whole lumberjack thing was ridiculous though.

Nice!

Dexter died. What is left, no one knows. I figured a lot of people would hate this ending, so kudos for them going out on a good note. Dexter was convinced he only brings misery. To me that ending made sense.

Probably a stupid question, but how did he survive without a boat in the middle of a hurricane? Swam to shore?

He found out he can't die, and unlike Bruce Willis in "Unbreakable", his Kryptonite is not water.

There are no stupid questions, only stupid writers.

Hilarious - I deleted it after the boat debris scene

The whole idea (as I took it) was that he finally broke free of his dark passenger last episode and once Deb died, he really, finally, hurt for the loss of someone. It was one of the reasons that he ran off to be alone. If he's alone, he wouldn't have to deal with losing anyone again. Now that he was "normal" he couldn't handle the pain, and shunned the normal life he wanted.

I liked it fine. I kinda wanted to see a happy ending, but knew that it couldn't happen. Deb dying was a surprise, and Dexter's pulling the pull scene was well acted.

I thought it was fine.

Farewell, Dexter.

To answer my own question, this is from an interview with Scott Buck: