Dexter Skewers Sixth Season

 

Warning: some spoilers ahead for the current season of Dexter.

You would think that Dexter Morgan is getting tired after five seasons of running around killing murderers and getting away with it without any legal consequences. Apparently, he’s doing just fine.

After posting the second highest ratings of any episode with this past Sunday’s installment, Dexter is expected to receive an official sixth season pickup from Showtime. The Hollywood Reporter states that a renewal announcement is expected shortly. But while the network ordered two new seasons of Dexter back in 2008, Showtime is only expected to renew the serial killer series for one additional year due to key talent deals needing to be renegotiated before a seventh season pickup.

The ratings might be there, but many fans can surely agree that the currently airing season five has been a mess with even bigger leaps in internal logic than usual and several storylines growing tired, like Batista and LaGuerta’s always impossibly strained relationship or Liddy and Quinn’s investigation into Dexter, which is playing out almost exactly the same as the Doakes investigation from season two. That’s not even mentioning the developments with Dexter and Lumen this week — no longer just killers-at-arms, they’re officially lovers, too, mere weeks after Rita’s death and Lumen’s rape. Yeah, that moment feels earned.

A sixth season of Dexter could be great if it takes the show in a new, decisively final direction by revealing Dexter’s true identity to the rest of the show’s cast members; but is there enough room for a creatively successful seventh season? At the very least, season seven won’t be ordered anytime soon — and that, for now, is a very good thing.