- In the Season Two finale, Lundy and the FBI finally settle the case of the Bay Harbor Butcher, but the heat's not entirely off Dexter as his world literally becomes an inferno. Can he rise from the ashes once again?
- Lila peers into the cabin and sees Doakes who cries for help. She sees the door is padlocked shut, then looks over at a nearby axe.
Deb is ready and rarin' to go to catch Doakes after having dinner with Dexter. She wants him to come along but he's resistant. She asks if he's afraid to face Doakes and Dexter confirms this, wanting to stay behind. As soon as Deb is gone, he takes some supplies and speeds off to the cabin, knowing he needs to beat the manhunt for Doakes or his secret will be discovered. He needs a miracle, Dexter thinks to himself, en route to the cabin.
Lila uses the axe to break into the cabin. Doakes explains he's a Miami Metro sergeant, that Dexter locked him up and that Dexter's the Bay Harbor Butcher. He asks her to open the gate with the key behind her. "Poor thing! All alone..." Lila comments. Doakes says he's fine but Lila clarifies she means Dexter. "What are you? His accomplice?" Doakes asks. "I'm his soulmate." Lila states and drops the gate key. She turns on an oven burner and a gas tank before leaving the cabin. Doakes panics and tries to grab the gate key from a gap at the bottom of the gate. He reaches it and manages to unlock the gate but Lila's wedged the door shut from outside with the axe. He runs to turn the gas off but it's too late. The cabin explodes as the gas ignites and Lila watches from outside in her jeep, awestruck.
Dexter arrives at the Everglades and is told the search is on hold until confusion's sorted out. He discovers the cabin blew up and ponders over whether it was spontaneous combustion, divine intervention or even Satanic intervention.
After a long night of searching, well into what seems to be late morning or early afternoon, the search team finds the burned top half of a body. Masuka confirms he believes it's Doakes. Dexter looks on. The discovery of Dexter's tools, the quiet location of the cabin and a second body only make it easier for Miami Metro and the FBI to confirm that Doakes was the Bay Harbor Butcher.
LaGuerta arrives but Dexter stops her, as the coroners are wheeling the covered remains of Doakes away. In voiceover, Dexter decides he can appreciate LaGuerta's pain, if not feel it, and thinks about how Doakes wasn't such a bad guy in the end. He makes up his mind to honor Doakes' "sacrifice" by embracing his own freedom.
The next morning, Dexter wakes up and appreciates his freedom, thinking about how he came close to turning himself in.
Dexter heads over to Rita's and they have make-up / getting back together sex.
Lila paints a sinister looking painting of Dexter.
Deb and Lundy get ready for work together and plan some time away.
Lundy somberly informs LaGuerta that the body found at the scene was definitively that of Sergeant Doakes and that all the evidence paints him as the Bay Harbor Butcher conclusively. Lundy leaves her office as LaGuerta is left crying.
Sorting through evidence to catalog, Dexter and Masuka talk about Doakes. Dexter is suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his death and searches through the evidence when Masuka leaves. He finds his GPS and realizes Lila must have killed Doakes.
Dexter meets Lila at an aquarium. He realizes she thinks she'll be his next victim. He asks if she's afraid of him now but she replies she's alway been afraid of him because since she first saw him, she saw how "hopelessly consumed" he was by his "need". Dexter states Lila lied to him, that she only became his sponsor because she wanted to know how it felt like to feel something so deeply. Lila is a psychopath, just like him. They passionately make out. Dexter playfully tells her he's created a monster of his own, just like Harry did with Dexter. Lila says I told you so to Dexter about the two of them having meant to be together. Dexter apologizes for pushing her away. He suggests they leave Miami together. Lila is ecstatic and kisses him goodbye to go get her affairs in order. In voiceover, Dexter tells himself she's going away alright, in a garbage bag.
At the station, Angel tells Deb how the department's pushing to drop the rape charges Lila pressed against him because they're so preoccupied with Doakes being "uncovered" as the Bay Harbor Butcher. Deb tells him Lila should be gone because she told her to get her "slag ass" out of town, for Angel and for Dexter.
LaGuerta passes around fliers asking for donations for Doakes' memorial. Deb asks why she's honoring a killer but LaGuerta makes it clear she's honoring James Doakes, not the Butcher, and that she's in conscious denial because she could never trust herself or anybody again if she believes Doakes really was the Butcher. Deb sympathizes, because of her own experience with the Ice Truck Killer, and leaves, saying she'll leave a check in LaGuerta's office.
Dexter wonders if parents feel the same way about their children as Dexter does about Lila, his own mutated version of himself. He preps his kill kit and heads over to Lila's place.
He finds the place empty and sees her painting of him. He hears footsteps and hides behind a curtain, syringe at the ready. He reaches out to tackle whom he thinks is Lila but it's Deb, stopping by to make sure Lila's left town. Of course it's at that moment that Lila arrives, stating she bought snacks for the road trip. Deb makes it clear they came to make sure she was leaving for good. Lila confused looks back between Dexter and Deb before finally eyeing Dexter's kill bag on the floor. Lila pretends Dexter's kill bag is hers and says she'll be leaving. He tries to get it back but she offers to open it up in front of Deb, so Dexter can only pretend he made a mistake that it was his, confirming Lila's suspicion that Dexter was going to kill her.
Dexter tries to call Lila who's not answering.
Elsewhere Lila's in her jeep under an overpass, looking at Dexter's bag. She opens it up and horrified, finds his kill tools, confirming Dexter wanted to kill her.
Deb arrives at Lundy's, ready to go on a vacation but finds him packing. He has to go away to Oregon for another case that night. Deb wants to go away with him but he asks her to take the afternoon off to really think about it. Still, she seems determined, telling him she'll see him at the airport.
A babysitter brings home Astor and Cody. Someone door bells. The babysitter checks the entryway as Lila swoops in to tranquilize her.
Dexter meets up with Captain Matthews at the station. Matthews tells Dexter a woman claimed to have information on the Bay Harbor Butcher case and mentioned Dexter. Dexter figures out Lila is trying to keep him at the station to wait for her to see what she has to say in order to distract him from something else. He instinctively thinks of Rita.
At Rita's house, Dexter arrives and finds the tranquilized babysitter on the couch. Rita arrives and he tells her the kids are missing. He tells her to call Deb before leaving. Deb is about to take a taxi to the airport to meet up with Lundy when Rita calls. She tears up as she realizes she won't be able to meet up with Lundy.
Dexter arrives at Lila's place and finds Astor and Cody watching TV. He asks where Lila is and she appears. She tells him he could have had it all before knocking a candelabra over that ignites the curtains. She quickly leaves and locks the apartment metal door with chains. Dexter tries to open the door to no avail. Dexter knocks out the warehouse style window and fortunately Astor and Cody are able to slide through to go run for help. Dexter eventually keels over from smoke inhalation as Lila's painting of him burns.
As Dexter's lying on the floor, we flashback to a moment between him and Harry when he was younger. Young Dexter asks if he'll be how he is forever and Harry confirms this.
Dexter somehow musters up the strength to get back up and shelters himself with a blanket. He starts ramming into a crumbling, flaming section of the apartment wall, until he finally breaks through to the other side, the apartment hallway. Deb arrives just in time to put out the flames that caught on the blanket Dexter was using to protect himself. She helps him out of the building.
Lila boards a flight to Paris.
Deb tells officers to put an APB out on Lila but Dexter assures her she's not coming back after the fire. She's astounded at how relaxed Dexter is after his ordeal.
Lila walks around Paris and returns to an apartment. She checks her mail and sees a postcard "Greeting from Miami". She turns it over and sees only a picture of Doakes. Dexter slips out of the shadows with not a tranquilizer but a spinal epidural. "You killed an innocent man" he tells Lila, who says she did it for him. He places her in a translucent white body bag. She pleads for him not to kill her as he tells her she taught him how to accept himself. He thrusts a knife into her heart and zips her in.
Scenes of Dexter attending Doakes' memorial, playing with Rita and the kids and witnessing a police ceremony congratulating Deb and Angel for their work play as Dexter contemplates how Harry's code is now his and that his relationships aren't just disguises anymore but necessities, even if they make him vulnerable. Hiding a new empty blood slide case in his A/C, Dexter acknowledges he is his own person now, constantly evolving from the code of Harry. He's done asking whether he's good or bad.
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