Welcome! This is a website that everyone can build together. It's easy!

Dexter: Plot Holes

Dexter Plot Danglers
Add plot holes you've noticed in Dexter.
(Don't see the EasyEdit button above? Sign in or sign up.)

PLOT HOLES FROM SEASON 1:
DexterDexter
  • Tossed his beloved dissection and cutting tools overboard at his regular dump site bare-handed, leaving fingerprints on them.
- being submerged in salt water would quickly wash away any fingerprints, so this shouldn't be a problem. also, the last thing that was going to go over was the slide collection when he realized it was the ITK messing with him and he didn't throw them.

Doesn't anyone find it odd that Dexter has so many damned set of tools?
LOL. Finally, someone posted that. I think Dexter spends alot of money on tools considering how many times he throws them away. No wonder he keeps his other possessions to a minimum.
"Lying in blood 2 inches thick..."
- If there was two inches of blood, depth 2 inches, in a standard 20 foot shipping container, there would be 180 gallons of blood total, given that the shipping container was of the dimensions described in Wikipedia's containerization page ( L = 18'10", W = 7' 8", H = 2").
- It would require all of the blood from 144 average adults (at 10 pints per person).
- Not to mention coagulation.
Well if there is a lot of cargo taking up space then that can take a way a lot of that floor room. All so he could have not moved and was laying in the 2in pool around his mothers body parts.


And it is entirely possible that the car could've been previously used for other killings....
They never linked the body they found earlier (the girl that dexter didn't chop up) to the bay harbor butcher.
They linked her to her husband who was in pieces in the bottom of the ocean at the time.
patric batemen?
why has nobody caught on to that?
Yes, caught it, brilliant! Patrick Bateman is the title character in Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho"
Uh, I thought that Christian Bale was the title character...?
Christian Bale was the actor who played the lead role in the film whose name was Patrick Bateman.
In the book, it says that there are forty one victims. in the series there are fourteen victims. anyone notice that in Dexter's blood slides that there are soooo many of them! looks like more than forty one "trophies"!
The series doesn't start with his first kill, he's already been killing for a while when the series starts, they are housed in a 50-slide case



CamillaCamilla, police department's records supervisor
• Only person who can make a direct link to Dexter as the Bay Harbor Killer, as she was approached by Dexter for information regarding a lot of the people who ended up gone. She also felt threatened by Sgt. Doakes during Season 2; and--poof--threat removed...? Will she also make this link?
Camilla is all so very willing to give Dexter information. Camilla is the one that took care of his files when Harry asked her to get rid of them. She and Harry were very close. Which means Harry may have let her in on Dexter's ways and that's why Camilla is helping Dexter out with the files, maybe a plot twist later on.

• Only known active police personnel who knows about Dexter's discovery in the cargo box. This leads to Capt. Matthews who, according to Dexter, was "tight" with his foster father -- surely he remembers the case regarding two little boys found in two feet of blood.
Now this is a huge hole. There's no way the captain couldn't have known about the boys. And he would have definitely known their names given that their mother was a key informant. I have a feeling they'll wrap this hole up somehow tho. At least I'm hoping.
It IS a big hole; Camilla and Capt. Matthews are probably also "close."
• Acknowledged helping Harry destroy official police reports regarding Dexter's discovery in the cargo box. (But the newspaper reports are still available.)
The boys weren't mentioned in the newspaper.
Yes, this happend back in the days when it was more possible to lock the press out of an investigation, at least for a time....
• Inadvertently contributed to Dexter's kills by supplying him with cold case/unsolved crimes.
Deb has done this, but so have others in the department, Camilla for one....
• Harry destroyed the paperwork because it is a strong possibility that he knows that Dexter is really his kid and that Laura lied and told him that the birth father is his real dad because he had to keep everything covered up. We now know that Harry cheated on his wife.
-Harry can't be Dexter's biological father. We know this because of the blood test Dexter had done on the corpse believed to be his real father in season one, which came back positive for him being Dexter's real father.

So Brian (Rudy) killed Dexter and His father just to "Get to know" Dexter better? "Father Knows Best" suggests this is what he did, but you'd think there would be something said about the fact Rudy killed his dad.

Harry COULD BE Dexter's father. If he did not want anyone to know he is Dexter's father AND if "Joe Driscol" is Harry's brother and has the same blood type, then Harry could have gotten Joe to donate blood to avoid anyone knowing that Harry's blood also matches Dexter's type. "Joe Driscol" is not the man's real name, so he could be anybody--including Brian's father. We don't know when Harry started having a relationship with Laura.

Harry CAN'T be Dexter's father--remember when young Dexter had that accident and Harry got his "real dad" to give him blood--remember how much fighting Harry and his wife did in the hospital, like she had a problem with it or something? And then yound Dexter writes that "Thank You" note to "the man who gave me the blood"--and adult Dexter finds it in his "real dad's" house?? How would THAT have happened??

If you know anything about blood work, than you know that there are only two ways that this can be resolved. One, the blood work on the corpse of Dexter's so called Biological father was tampered with...or Two, who he thought was his biological father was really his uncle...the brother of his real dad....whom ever that may be... Only an uncle would have a narrow enough error ratio to be considered the biological father by mistake...
It seems to me that the DNA test was done so very quickly that it could have been only a superficial test. Saying it was a match might simply mean that the two were closely related.
Harry cannot be Dexters dad because in the episode where young dexter injurs himself and needs blood Harry is not compatible and has to find Joe Driscol for the transfusion.
Harry and Laura started sleeping together after she became an informant. In the flash back he has when hes listening to the tapes about the drug bust dexter at the time is two it's impossible for harry to be his birth father
-Dude, it's a TV show. The writers would have the audience believe that whatever a blood test says is correct. So if they wanted the corpse to be Dex's father, all they had to do is a blood test. It really doesn't matter if there could have been any error in real life, the writers are assuming most of the audience doesn't have a Masters in Forensics. Plus it would be pretty tacky for the writers to bring up that so called "plot hole" this season.
-Also, your assuming it was an ABO blood test, where the results would be considered inconclusive. It could have been a HLA blood test done on the white blood cells, which is substantially more accurate. ABO and HLA are only two out of about ten types of blood testing, other then them just doing a DNA test. And Dexter, being a blood splatter annalist, would know better then to have them run a regular ABO blood type test.

If the writers want to make Harry be Dexter's father, all they have to do is throw in some flashback scene where Harry switches blood samples and makes up a story to throw people off the trail.


Brian AKA Rudy AKA Ice Truck KillerBrian Moser/Rudy Cooper/The Ice Truck Killer
• The unsolved case regarding the cargo box was so grotesque, surely all the police/reporters involved would remember the names of the two young survivors (let alone Dexter's adoption). Why hasn't anyone stepped forward upon learning Brian Moser's name?
Because there was no mention of the boys in the newspaper. That's one of the questions Dexter poses to Camilla when he visits her at home - why was there no mention of a boy found in the shipping container?
• Since it's only been a few weeks after the Ice Truck Killer's debacle, one would expect more media attention (or a persistent reporter) around Dexter & Debra, possibly following them to their work, home, etc.
• Why wasn't The Ice Truck Killer's courting/capture of Debra further investigated? Was it assumed that because Debra posed as a prostitute during her stint in vice, that was his initial attraction to her?
I think they probably just believed that he was dating a police officer, a member of homicide no less, that he was with her to get any information that he could regarding the case.

Well remember how they meet he was a doctor of the victim that got away that was making him the legs, and the meet there maybe that why the never got into it because like the above this they thought he wanted into the case, I don't know why they didn't go more in to him working for the hospital, but then again the show is called Dexter and after that I wanted it to go right back to Dexter.
• Dexter's claim that The Ice Truck Killer called him to Debra's location; can't that be traced?
• Since real estate records show that Brian Moser purchased his old childhood home, why hasn't that led to Laura Moser's murder?
• Now that Brian Moser is dead, would any physician who treated him in the psychiatric hospital from his youth still bound by privacy laws?
No...

Dexter had a close call with the M99 (Etorphine hydrochloride) when it was found in the victim Rudy dredged back up from the sea floor. Up until the end of the season it was one of Dexter's more subtle parts of his killing ritual. Until Rudy used the same drug on Deb. How likely is it that a simple tox screen was not run on Deb? How likely is it that when it came up positive for opiates (which M99 is), they didn't run a confirmatory test to identify the drug? How likely is it that this would raise a huge red flag for the police dept, Masuka especially? All of that would point to Rudy being the BHB as he is the only known serial killer who uses M99. Which is good for Dex. Except how likely is it that Deb remembered Rudy telling her that it was an "homage to a fellow traveler"?
  • It's very likely that they wouldn't run a tox screen on Debra or do anything else you suggest. First there has to be some suspicion of something unexplained, before further investigation takes place. They were focused on the Ice Truck Killer. "We caught the guy and thank goodness the sicko didn't do anything worse to Debra. Case closed, move on. Why dig any deeper? For what?" And even if the report on all that drug testing jumped off the page and rearranged its letters to spell out the words "Dexter is the Bay Harbor Butcher," if no one expects to see it they won't even look. Especially not Masuka, who is too busy cracking bad jokes.

  • i believe the biggest threat for dexter is that Cuban guy, the one responsible for , he had killed along with his wife and than forged evidence against him so that he was blamed for killing her. since his body should be found along with others this will raise some questions, as dexter was the one doing blood tests (sorry about writing it here, i am not that comfortable with this interface.)



PLOT HOLES FROM SEASON 2:


Detxer Season 2Dexter
  • Tossed a beer bottle into the water bare-handed while anchored over his dump site.
- submergence in salt water would destroy the fingerprints within a short time.

Also the bottle would not stay floating above the site currents would move it along.
  • Rita told Paul that she found the shoe while speaking to him on the prison payphone. If prisoner calls are recorded, Paul's suspicions and Rita's confirmation that she found the shoe could lead to Dexter's being charged with all sorts of crimes in relation to Paul-assault, kidnapping, theft of police evidence, etc.
- I don't think that the guards would have any reason to listen to Rita's calls with Paul. Most times, the only calls that are listened to that are recorded are high-priority inmates. Paul is just a simple druggie sent to prison.
  • Not sure if I would classify this as a hole, but Rita falling for the addict routine after she knows that Dexter set Paul up, then allowed him to stay in jail and she just easily complies to Dexter's explanation. Even for a battered wife, she finds the answer so justified and goes along with it. She loses credibility as a character in this scene.
  • I disagree. Dexter never gave her an excuse. Rita came up with the using explanation on her own. And given her history it would make sense for her to assume that. Plus, keep in mind, she's in love with him so she's looking for a reason to forgive him. In her mind, making him an addict makes his actions easier for her to accept. Weird I know, but not surprising.
  • Where was security or even security cameras surrounding the BHB's bodies at headquarters? Seems a little odd that they would just lock up the bodies and go home, leaving them completely unchecked and unattended.
- any competent police department would have at least a few cameras or an officer standing guard

I keep thinking he just knows where the cameras are...thats why he scaled a fence to come at the site from the right angle...
  • Rita claiming that Dexter "planned on acting on impulse" after he says that he stole the drugs from the evidence locker. Dexter could have just said that he attacked Paul on impulse and stole the drugs afterwards (this seems to be what actually happened).
  • Debra lives with Dexter now so eventually something about his patterns are going to slip and as we know Debra is not above fishing around.
But Debra is damaged and thinks she is in the one place that she doesn't HAVE to question things....

  • Now that MOST of the bodies have been found, will anyone notice that Jorge Castillo could not have murdered his wife and left town? And who falsified the evidence in that case? Dexter!
-The investigators probably figured that the "Bay Harbor Butcher" found out about Jorge's murderous nature after he took out his own wife. And with all of the chaos over the case, everyone probably over looked his wife's case file (who had the same neck and cheek wounds)
Who said they found All the bodies?
--exactly they found 14 or 18 dexter has 46 slides
-OK I'm just assuming they found all the bodies, or else Dex would've made a mental note to the fact that they haven't found Jorge Castillo yet. He probably would have mentioned it at least one out of the two dozen times he talks to himself in one episode.
  • Ok ok, I'm an idiot. The preview for next Sunday shows Lundy questioning Dexter about Castillo. But in my defense, I made my prediction before Lundy's character figured out that the "Bay Harbor Butcher" was on the police force, and would start investigating direct ties between certain officers' case files and the victims'. Again, I'm an idiot.
  • Lundy is questioning Dexter not about Castillo but about a "Rodrigues" case.
  • Maybe I missed something but it seems like the first trip (Dexter & Lila) to confront Jimenez was an overnight road-trip. Now when Dexter goes back to kill Jimenez, he does the deed and manages to drive all the way back to Rita's house before the cops leave and then presumably makes it all the way back to dispose of the body -- after taking the time to threaten/confront Lila at her loft -- all in the same night?
    GoogleMaps says that the drive from Miami to Naples should only take a little bit over 2 hours, making it very possible for Dexter to do all that in the same night. Possibly the hotel was Lila's idea? A way to get Dexter to herself for a night? And they left after work, so it would've been later in the day. Usually easier to find someone who works in a bar in the evening....
  • Sequence of events: Dexter goes and kills Jimenez. He gets called to Rita's. He visits Lila, end of episode. Start of next episode we find Dexter had fallen asleep outside Rita's place. He leaves, Feds are following, therefore he decides to go to work, leaving Jimenez to rot (alittle). He doesn't make it back to dispose of the body until that following episode.
  • All that plastic, What does Dexter do with his bloody waste material??? That has to be disposed of to complete his ritual. It would have to be more than three Hefty bags worth. He must have stain master sprayed on that shirt too :) We always laugh at his stalking shirt - same shirt every time, must own stock in that company!
  • LOL, good observation.
  • The last few episodes Dexter has been all over that cabin with Doakes laying down on tables not wearing gloves yet touching everything, and there has to be all kinds of trace evidence from that. All Doakes is going to have to do if Dexter doesn't kill him is lead the FBI back to the Cabin. That is of course, if Doakes makes it out of the cabin alive.
Dexter and Debra find out about the Bay Harbor Butcher from a TV newscast.

They wouldn't get called in immediately to a case that big in their own jurisdiction?

- No, there are cases where only a certain amount of people in the jurisdiction are in it. Dexter wasn't involved in the BHB case for most of the time, that's why he wasn't in on the meetings and such. Masuka was the lead forensics.


Not a case this big. The grapevine alone would have had Dexter's and Debra's cell phones ringing like crazy. <== small potatoes, who cares?


I disagree. This one did annoy me. I would think on a case this big they would have called in the entire homicide team.

As indeed they did the next morning....
  • What about tying the BHB to using a boat? Did Doakes have a boat?
  • I don't believe they ever mention Doakes having a boat. That's a major piece missing since the BHB using a boat is a given fact for them at this point.

    Won't the cops just assume that the boat belonging to those two drug runners was actually Doakes'?

While they don't specifically mention that Doakes has a boat, it is mentioned by Batista (I think) that many of the cops have boats at the same marina as Dexter because it's cheap. It's not unreasonable to assume Doakes has a boat. It's not really a hole in my mind.
-One of the main reasons Lundy puts surveillance on that marina is the lack of security. Doakes is former army special ops. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that he could steal a boat every now and then if he really put his mind to it.
  • Doakes' fingerprints were on the tools, but they are not in any connected to the BHB killings unless there was any DNA testing done, which was not disclosed to the viewers.
  • Doakes wanting to get the blood slides analysed could have easily be done if he just would have given them to Lundy. The blood slides would be inadmissible in court since they were retrieved from Dexter's apt. without a warrant.
  • Doakes worked 4 of the 9 cases that ended up as the BHB victims, but Dexter too worked on those 4 cases. Dexter should also have been on Lundy's radar. <== Why do we assume that Dexter was not on Lundy's radar? Good point!
  • Dexter may have been on Lundy's radar due to his questioning of Dexter, but I also believe Lundy was genuinely distracted in his duties (although Lundy may deny it) by Dexter's sister Debra, hence Lundy also asking questions about what Debra likes when it was not the appropriate time to.
  • But I think he was asking those questions for several reasons: 1) to let Dex know he was seeing his sister, and gauge his reaction, 2) to perhaps put him at ease or disarm him before questioning, 3) or because he compartmentalizes priorities in his head, and seeing Dexter did distract him briefly enough to allow thoughs of Deb to seep through
  • Why would Dexter leave a GPS lying around in his car to be stolen? And why did Lila steal it? She had no reason to find out where he had last been. He had told her he was going away, then she sees him sailing off. Why she steals the GPS seems far-fetched.
  • The above is wrong. Lila goes looking for Dexter and bumps into Deb at the office (E8). Dex was lying. E11, Lila doesn't believe Dexter and checks the car.
  • The biggest mystery of all: How did Dexter find out Lila was in Paris and how did he track her down?? The finale made no sense. Why didn't she just go to Mexico? Easier to get lost there!
  • Lila's was in the US illegally. She may have lived in Paris before. We don't know and Lila isn't one to go to Mexico to disapear. Once she was out of the US she wouldn't have to hide. For all intents and purposes before Dexter showed up at her appartment, Lila thought she had succeeded and Dexter was dead so Lila had no worries about it.
  • It doesn't matter how Dexter found Lila. Audience doesn't really need to know.
  • The same way he tracks down every victim, he has access to police databases. Also, check out the name on her mailing address's as she sorts through the envelopes. Duh.
  • I am wondering didnt they have any shoe prints in any of the crime scene in the final episode? Dex's shoes should have been traced already..



Latest page update: made by dexgal , Sep 6 2008, 1:15 PM EDT (about this update About This Update dexgal Edited by dexgal

187 words added
3 words deleted

view changes
- complete history)
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines
More Info: links to this page

Threads

Anonymous  (Get credit for your thread)
(Showing the last 5 of 12 - view all)
Started By Thread Subject Replies Last Post
animayhemz Dexter's First Kill (page: 1 2) 31 Sep 21 2008, 1:51 PM EDT by tweetykiss
Thread started: Dec 3 2007, 1:36 PM EST  Watch
I noticed this and it completely ruined this series for me. In season 1 episode 3 "Popping Cherry" Dexter preforms his first kill on the nurse who is poisoning his father. Now in season 2 episode 10 "There's Something About Harry", it comes out that Harry committed suicide and apparently Dexter killed some pimp that got away with murder due to a typo in the search warrant. This murder happened 3 days before Harry's suicide. So I am asking who was Dexter's first kill the nurse or the pimp? And how did die Harry poisoned or did he kill himself? I know there is a writers strike but how can anyway not see that this doesn't make any sense, thanks a lot SHOWTIME for ruining your best show I guess I will have to go to watching HBO.
13  out of 47 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines season 2 episode 10
Show Last Reply
Slabtamer Incisions on victims' cheeks 8 Jun 17 2008, 6:14 PM EDT by lmoneyholla
Slabtamer
Thread started: Nov 20 2007, 9:15 AM EST  Watch
This may be nothing, but wouldn't some of these incisions be apparant to the Feds and Miami PD while examining the victims' bodies? Certainly, some of the them have been underwater longer than others and in further stages of decomposition, but I seem to recall several scenes where the bodies seemed quite well preserved. Wouldn't someone have at least mentioned this distinction amongst the BHB's victims?
10  out of 12 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines
Show Last Reply
LexLotario Deb's off her rocker 16 May 22 2008, 8:23 PM EDT by dexgal
LexLotario
Thread started: Nov 20 2007, 5:22 PM EST  Watch
Look, I don't know about "plot" holes so much, but one major gap I'm seeing is how in the world Deb got that clown from the gym to forget that she freaked out on him when they first met, took him home and handcuffed him to the bed while babbling about almost being killed on their next "date", and followed that up with sneaking into his emails and going off on him for something she mis-understood. Sorry, but any guy, no matter how sex-starved they are, would have ran the other way immediatley. Then there's Deb and Lundy. Really? Has Deb become such a paranoid nympho because of her trauma that she's turning to sex with old suits? I buy that she respects the guy, but c'mon.
5  out of 17 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines
Show Last Reply
glassbuggy All that plastic ??? 6 Jan 27 2008, 4:55 PM EST by LilaIsHot
Thread started: Nov 29 2007, 1:52 AM EST  Watch
Does anyone know what Dex does with the large amount of plastic waste?? At minimal it would be another Hefty bag. I haven't read the books so I am curious to know if this subject has been adressed,
Bart
6  out of 7 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines
Show Last Reply
type-o-negative dexter- doakes fight on dock 2 Jan 5 2008, 2:30 PM EST by type-o-negative
type-o-negative
Thread started: Dec 29 2007, 8:30 PM EST  Watch
Am i wrong ,or didn't Doakes shoot Dexter in their struggle on the dock?,(near end of season 2)
2  out of 4 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: dexter plot holes dexter storylines
Show Last Reply
(Showing the last 5 of 12 - view all)

Related Content

  (what's this?Related ContentThanks to keyword tags, links to related pages and threads are added to the bottom of your pages. Up to 15 links are shown, determined by matching tags and by how recently the content was updated; keeping the most current at the top. Share your feedback on Wetpaint Central.)
Dexter's First Kill Incisions on victims' cheeks Deb's off her rocker
All that plastic ??? dexter- doakes fight on dock Plot about Dexter's girlfriend and her mother
Unsolved mystery DNA AB blood