Rita and Dexter: Pictures (Videos) of Dysfunction (NSFW)
It was no surprise to see Dexter's wife 'Rita' killed off. Killing her was the next logical forward movement for Dexter--if he were to remain a viable serial killer. He was getting too happy, content, settling in with his pretty, blond wife and small brood. Can't have that and remain a tortured soul.
The other thing is I would have been glad to see Rita killed off in season one, she was so not my favourite character. As far as the Dexter players with as much scene time as Julie Benz, she would've been first to get the axe if it were going to fall. It just happens that due to her pivotal role in Dexter's life that we can be sure that there will be significant shock waves from Rita's murder. For all we know, season 5 could open with Dexter behind bars--the first logical suspect in the killing of a spouse. He needs an alibi, ASAP!TVGuide Exclusive Interview: Dexter's Julie Benz by William Keck December 14, 2009 ...
Freshly diced Dexter beauty Julie Benz has two apologies for TV Guide Magazine. The first is for being a few minutes late to her official exit interview—something she understandably would rather have skipped.
The second is for telling a little lie at our recent Hot List party: “You’re wrong!” she’d declared, when asked if her character, Rita Morgan, the eternally sunny wife of Showtime’s celebrated serial killer, was going to fall victim to John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer in the season finale. “I felt bad,” she confesses. “I even told you we shot multiple endings, which we did not.”
No worries, Julie. We get it. As TV secrets go, this was a doozy, even though we had our suspicions way back at Comic-Con last July when Lithgow spilled to his new costars that he knew something so shocking about Season 4 even they would be floored. Did he actually know Benz’s fate way back then?
“I’ve been told two different things,” says Benz, 37. “The producers and executives told me they didn’t know at the start of the season. But I’ve also been told that Lithgow did know.”
As they were drawing near the finale, Benz’s costar David Zayas (Det. Angel Batista) clued her in that Rita may not be long for Dexter’s world. “There were rumblings that something major was going to happen,” says Benz. “I even asked the producers and they said, ‘We would never kill Rita.’”
Then in late September, the day before the season finale script was to be distributed to the cast, the bomb dropped. “It was my day off, and I was called in for a meeting with the producers,” Benz recalls. “At that point, you pretty much know. It was a tough meeting. In a bizarre way, it felt like a scene from ‘Defending Your Life.’”
Producers explained they wanted to shake up the structure of the show. It was becoming more difficult to sell Dexter as a tortured soul since his life was growing increasingly idyllic in the Miami suburbs with the perfect wife and children. In fact, just before murdering Trinity and discovering Rita’s corpse, Dexter vowed to end his killing spree—which also would have ended the show.
But there’s nothing like discovering your wife’s body slumped in the bathtub with your baby boy crying in a pool of mommy’s blood to reboot your warped psyche.“It’s a very poetic mirror to how Dexter was found when he was 3,” says Benz, who, before her four-year run on Dexter, was a “WB girl” with parts on Roswell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
More after the jump:
Though the sting of Dexter's season finale is
still fresh, it's time to think about next season. Executive producer
Sara Colleton tells TVGuide.com how far in time the show may jump
ahead, who the No. 1 suspect in Rita's murder will be and how much the
Trinity Killer will play a role in Season 5.
TVGuide.com: Did you feel that you had to push the limits with this finale?
Sara Colleton: It's something that comes so organically with the storytelling of where Dexter [Michael C. Hall] is in his life and what he's learning and what he needs to learn. Of course, when it first comes up, you think, oh no, we can't do that, because we've created these characters and we love them. It became self-evident as we progressed that this is where Dexter needed to be taken.
TVGuide.com: Why exactly did Arthur (John Lithgow) kill Rita (Julie Benz)? Was it just revenge?
Colleton: It's complicated. We left it that way so everyone, based on their own life and their own experiences, would interpret it so it made sense for them. One way to interpret it is that in some bizarre way, Dexter gave Trinity a finality in his situation, that he does this in a bizarre way to trigger Dexter to deal with who he really is. You can only fake it for so long.
TVGuide.com: Do you see Trinity playing a role next season though? Questions will be raised by Rita's murder and Arthur did show up at the police station.
Colleton: All of those things are legitimate. All those questions will obviously be a part of next season. Dexter can't say that he knows Trinity killed Rita and that he just killed Trinity. There are a lot of possibilities and they will all be thrown out in the room to be discussed.
TVGuide.com: Is there a chance that Julie Benz or John Lithgow might return next season to appear to Dexter in his conscience?
Colleton: Anything is possible on this show because it is a theatrical invention, so any of those devices are possible, but again, none of those have been discussed yet.
TVGuide.com: What are the odds that Arthur pushed a woman to her death before killing Rita and being bludgeoned, thus completing the cycle?
Colleton: But did he break the cycle? If you really examine his death scene, Dexter is giving him an opportunity to break the cycle. Rita is the tie-breaker because he says, "It's all over now." Trinity's thing is tied up with the way he hid the reality from himself. In his master plan, this is the gift he has left behind for Dexter. It can be interpreted, if you look closely at the script, in any number of ways.
TVGuide.com: Dexter can't get vengeance for Rita's murder because he already killed Arthur. Is he going to become more bloodthirsty?
Colleton: That's an instinct he may have, but he may not. Hopefully it will be in what we call the "Dexterous response," which is based in human behavior, but uniquely put through the prism of Dexter's special needs. The fact is that he has children now that he is the sole parent of, and how that affects what he does and the choices he makes.
TVGuide.com: Were Paul's parents introduced as an easy out for Cody and Aster to leave Dexter's care?
Colleton: We needed to have the children not be there for this finale. We're trying to find the most interesting way to have to handle this situation because obviously they can always go with their grandmother or their paternal grandparents, or Dexter can take custody of them. It just opens up a variety of ways we can have Dexter deal with his grief.
TVGuide.com: Are you nervous about writing or casting a villain that can live up to or surpass John Lithgow? Might you do without a villain this season?
Colleton: That's something that's on the table to discuss because of the awesomeness of what Dexter has to deal with on an emotional level. Obviously there's going to be an investigation into who killed Rita and the number— and Dexter is going to be involved in that.
TVGuide.com: Were you about to say that Dexter might be the No. 1 suspect in his wife's murder?
Colleton: If you know anything about crimes, usually a spouse is involved. We may jump ahead six months and it could be all handled. What we wanted to do is give ourselves something that gave us the widest range of possibilities. It's so intense on a show like this, so emotionally draining, and we have a scant couple of months before we get in a room again, so all of these things are up for discussion.
Is Rita really dead?
CLYDE PHILLIPS: Yes.
Is Trinity really dead?
PHILLIPS: Yes. Cut up and drifting in the Gulf Stream.
Did Trinity kill Rita?
PHILLIPS: Yes he did. That’s partly what he meant when he said: “It’s already over.”
(There is a potential timeline inconsistency in the episode: Trinity left Miami while it was still light out, yet in the message Rita left Dexter she commented about how beautiful the moon was that night.
PHILLIPS: Your readers are smarter than we are. Totally missed it. Honest mistake.
Source: EW
When was the decision made to kill off Rita?
CLYDE PHILLIPS: I would say we made the decision pretty late in the season. We didn’t quite know what we were going to do [in the finale].
Why Rita?
PHILLIPS: The story evolved and it kind of became inevitable. We knew that we had to do more than kill Trinity. It’s a little bit of a corner that we paint ourselves into. Last year we tried to avoid that and actually I think we didn’t do as well as we could have. We killed off Jimmy Smits’ character [in the 11th episode] of 12 episodes and then we had to figure out what we were going to do in the 12th episode. This season, we knew that we were going to take Trinity out in the 12th episode and we think that the audience knew that, too. We had to raise the bar to as high as possible and then figure out what to do next year.
How did Julie Benz take the news that she was leaving the show?
PHILLIPS: She wasn’t happy. She loved being with us. We loved having her with us. She took it… professionally. She was greatly disappointed. She’s a professional. She works in television. She knew that this was a possibility.
Did Trinity tell Rita about Dexter before he killed her?
PHILLIPS: I don’t know the answer to that question. We haven’t talked about next season. But [my gut says] I would think that he did not tell her.
Might she return as a ghost like Dex’s dad?
PHILLIPS: The answer, at he moment, is no. However, had you asked me two years ago if Lundy was coming back I would’ve said no. We didn’t know he was coming back until this year. It just seemed expedient to the story — to Dexter’s story and to Deb’s story.
Some people thought the game-changing twist was going to involve Deb figuring out that Dexter is a serial killer. How much longer can you stretch out that story before you pay it off?
PHILLIPS: We’ve bounced that around the [writers] room. But once we do that… want to talk about game-changers? Once we do that, the game is changed in a way that we just don’t know how to anticipate just yet.
Will next season be about Dexter juggling serial killing and single fatherhood?
PHILLIPS: He is a single father. But, beyond that, we don’t know. We don’t know if there’s going to be what we call “a Big Bad,” like Jimmy Smiths and John Lithgow, or if it’s going to be more individual, stand-alone stories...
TVGuide.com: Did you feel that you had to push the limits with this finale?
Sara Colleton: It's something that comes so organically with the storytelling of where Dexter [Michael C. Hall] is in his life and what he's learning and what he needs to learn. Of course, when it first comes up, you think, oh no, we can't do that, because we've created these characters and we love them. It became self-evident as we progressed that this is where Dexter needed to be taken.
TVGuide.com: Why exactly did Arthur (John Lithgow) kill Rita (Julie Benz)? Was it just revenge?
Colleton: It's complicated. We left it that way so everyone, based on their own life and their own experiences, would interpret it so it made sense for them. One way to interpret it is that in some bizarre way, Dexter gave Trinity a finality in his situation, that he does this in a bizarre way to trigger Dexter to deal with who he really is. You can only fake it for so long.
TVGuide.com: Do you see Trinity playing a role next season though? Questions will be raised by Rita's murder and Arthur did show up at the police station.
Colleton: All of those things are legitimate. All those questions will obviously be a part of next season. Dexter can't say that he knows Trinity killed Rita and that he just killed Trinity. There are a lot of possibilities and they will all be thrown out in the room to be discussed.
TVGuide.com: Is there a chance that Julie Benz or John Lithgow might return next season to appear to Dexter in his conscience?
Colleton: Anything is possible on this show because it is a theatrical invention, so any of those devices are possible, but again, none of those have been discussed yet.
TVGuide.com: What are the odds that Arthur pushed a woman to her death before killing Rita and being bludgeoned, thus completing the cycle?
Colleton: But did he break the cycle? If you really examine his death scene, Dexter is giving him an opportunity to break the cycle. Rita is the tie-breaker because he says, "It's all over now." Trinity's thing is tied up with the way he hid the reality from himself. In his master plan, this is the gift he has left behind for Dexter. It can be interpreted, if you look closely at the script, in any number of ways.
TVGuide.com: Dexter can't get vengeance for Rita's murder because he already killed Arthur. Is he going to become more bloodthirsty?
Colleton: That's an instinct he may have, but he may not. Hopefully it will be in what we call the "Dexterous response," which is based in human behavior, but uniquely put through the prism of Dexter's special needs. The fact is that he has children now that he is the sole parent of, and how that affects what he does and the choices he makes.
TVGuide.com: Were Paul's parents introduced as an easy out for Cody and Aster to leave Dexter's care?
Colleton: We needed to have the children not be there for this finale. We're trying to find the most interesting way to have to handle this situation because obviously they can always go with their grandmother or their paternal grandparents, or Dexter can take custody of them. It just opens up a variety of ways we can have Dexter deal with his grief.
TVGuide.com: Are you nervous about writing or casting a villain that can live up to or surpass John Lithgow? Might you do without a villain this season?
Colleton: That's something that's on the table to discuss because of the awesomeness of what Dexter has to deal with on an emotional level. Obviously there's going to be an investigation into who killed Rita and the number— and Dexter is going to be involved in that.
TVGuide.com: Were you about to say that Dexter might be the No. 1 suspect in his wife's murder?
Colleton: If you know anything about crimes, usually a spouse is involved. We may jump ahead six months and it could be all handled. What we wanted to do is give ourselves something that gave us the widest range of possibilities. It's so intense on a show like this, so emotionally draining, and we have a scant couple of months before we get in a room again, so all of these things are up for discussion.
Source: TV Guide
...[SPOILER ALERT] Could Rita be alive? Is it possible she died at the hands of Dexter and not Trinity? And should we be reading into a certain timeline inconsistency? I got exec producer Clyde Phillips back on the horn for another round of burning questions…Is Rita really dead?
CLYDE PHILLIPS: Yes.
Is Trinity really dead?
PHILLIPS: Yes. Cut up and drifting in the Gulf Stream.
Did Trinity kill Rita?
PHILLIPS: Yes he did. That’s partly what he meant when he said: “It’s already over.”
(There is a potential timeline inconsistency in the episode: Trinity left Miami while it was still light out, yet in the message Rita left Dexter she commented about how beautiful the moon was that night.
PHILLIPS: Your readers are smarter than we are. Totally missed it. Honest mistake.
Source: EW
Warning: Stop reading if you have yet to watch
tonight’s killer Dexter season finale. Everyone else, see below for my
exclusive postmortem with executive producer Clyde Phillips. Among the
hot topics discussed:
When (and why) was the decision made to whack
Rita?
Will she return as a ghost?
And when the hell will Deb figure out the truth about Dex?
When was the decision made to kill off Rita?
CLYDE PHILLIPS: I would say we made the decision pretty late in the season. We didn’t quite know what we were going to do [in the finale].
Why Rita?
PHILLIPS: The story evolved and it kind of became inevitable. We knew that we had to do more than kill Trinity. It’s a little bit of a corner that we paint ourselves into. Last year we tried to avoid that and actually I think we didn’t do as well as we could have. We killed off Jimmy Smits’ character [in the 11th episode] of 12 episodes and then we had to figure out what we were going to do in the 12th episode. This season, we knew that we were going to take Trinity out in the 12th episode and we think that the audience knew that, too. We had to raise the bar to as high as possible and then figure out what to do next year.
How did Julie Benz take the news that she was leaving the show?
PHILLIPS: She wasn’t happy. She loved being with us. We loved having her with us. She took it… professionally. She was greatly disappointed. She’s a professional. She works in television. She knew that this was a possibility.
Did Trinity tell Rita about Dexter before he killed her?
PHILLIPS: I don’t know the answer to that question. We haven’t talked about next season. But [my gut says] I would think that he did not tell her.
Might she return as a ghost like Dex’s dad?
PHILLIPS: The answer, at he moment, is no. However, had you asked me two years ago if Lundy was coming back I would’ve said no. We didn’t know he was coming back until this year. It just seemed expedient to the story — to Dexter’s story and to Deb’s story.
Some people thought the game-changing twist was going to involve Deb figuring out that Dexter is a serial killer. How much longer can you stretch out that story before you pay it off?
PHILLIPS: We’ve bounced that around the [writers] room. But once we do that… want to talk about game-changers? Once we do that, the game is changed in a way that we just don’t know how to anticipate just yet.
Will next season be about Dexter juggling serial killing and single fatherhood?
PHILLIPS: He is a single father. But, beyond that, we don’t know. We don’t know if there’s going to be what we call “a Big Bad,” like Jimmy Smiths and John Lithgow, or if it’s going to be more individual, stand-alone stories...
Dexter - New Season 5 Spoilers and Plot Details
Q: So, was Dexter's Season 4 finale as close as Deb will come to learning her brother's true secret of being a serial killer?
A: Nope. Not only did executive producer Sara Colleton say that the story line won't be dropped, she called it the biggest one of the series. When it will be resolved, however, is a mystery. But C.S. Lee (who plays Masuka) thinks it should be soon: "It has to happen in Season 5," he says. "That has to come to some sort of fruition and when that does... wow!"
Q: So, was Dexter's Season 4 finale as close as Deb will come to learning her brother's true secret of being a serial killer?
A: Nope. Not only did executive producer Sara Colleton say that the story line won't be dropped, she called it the biggest one of the series. When it will be resolved, however, is a mystery. But C.S. Lee (who plays Masuka) thinks it should be soon: "It has to happen in Season 5," he says. "That has to come to some sort of fruition and when that does... wow!"
Source: TV Guide
Dexter - Michael C. Hall on Shocking Season 4 Finale
Two days later, we’re still shaking. The season 4 finale of Dexter delivered a few jaw-dropping jolts — and one shocking death. We asked Golden Globe nominee Michael C. Hall, a.k.a. America’s favorite serial killer, Dexter Morgan, for his thoughts on the big twist and beyond. Let’s issue a SPOILER ALERT and cut right to it.
EW: What was your first reaction when you learned that Rita [Julie Benz] would be killed in the finale?
MH: I knew what was going to happen probably three or four weeks before it happened. As far as the how, that was much closer to the day of. I thought it was brilliant. I was really proud of the writers, and the network, for not backing away from so bold a step. It really propels us forward in a way that we wouldn’t have enjoyed otherwise. And what it could mean for the character is really wide open.
EW: This twist does open all sorts of possibilities. Will Dexter raise his son as a single dad? And just as he was showing signs of real humanity, does he now turn even darker?
MH: Does he shut the door on that? Is he like, “Well, it bit me in the a–. My father was right”? And if that’s the conclusion, what does that mean? I don’t necessarily mean to say that that will be the conclusion. It remains to be seen. It’s a difficult thing to wrap your imagination and mind around a trauma that severe. I don’t know what it’s going to do to the guy.
EW: What was it like to film the bathroom scene in which Dexter discovers Rita in the tub with Harrison nearby?
MH: It was tough. The fact is when you watch it, it’s sort of lyrical slo-mo, but the actual shooting of it was much more frantic and to the point. Coming in, seeing this baby in the blood, turning my head, seeing Rita there, realizing what’s happened, picking up the baby, leaving the room — it happened much more quickly than [how] the scene plays. But it was horrifying. It’s the kind of thing that only in its aftermath can you begin to deal with. In one way or another, Dexter will be reeling from it for a long time to come. But Julie in that tub was just heartbreaking — and the baby on the floor. It was very somber. And also very secretive. Some of the people on set had just gotten pages. So I think everyone was quietly in a private way processing what we were shooting, what this meant for the show, what this meant for Julie.
EW: Executive producer Clyde Phillips said that Julie was “greatly disappointed” to learn the fate of her character. Did you and Julie talk about that?
MH: We talked about her sadness at leaving, but when it came to the scenes, we knew we had a story to tell and we also didn’t want to do anything to telegraph it — not that you possibly could. I think it was beyond Dexter’s imagination that such a thing could happen. The last scene we shot together was the scene where Dexter tells Rita that he wants to believe that he can be his own master and be a master of his compulsion, so it felt like an appropriate way to say goodbye to that relationship…. [Julie] was really sacrificing her job for the story telling vitality of the show. I must say, my first reaction [to the big twist] was about Julie: “What is our family going to be like without her?” From a story telling standpoint it was a really bold idea, but as far as losing her as a member of ensemble, it was a blow for all of us.
EW: In that last conversation between Dexter and Rita, Dexter seemed as human as we’ve seen him.
MH: Had this season not ended the way it ended, there’s almost a sense that Dexter is entertaining the thought that maybe he’s going to get this out of his system. That if he kills Trinity, who’s left to kill? I think he’s entertaining the notion that maybe he’s done. [But] with this season ending the way it ends — and Dexter experiencing this appetite for vengeance that he can’t satiate — all bets are off on that front.
EW: What sticks out to you about the scene in which Dexter finally kills Trinity?
MH: It’s a scene that John [Lithgow] and I pretty much knew was coming. We definitely didn’t want the scene in any way to telegraph what Dexter would ultimately discover. We certainly wanted it to be unique among the kills. On the one hand Dexter is killing the most formidable target he’s ever come against, and there’s a sense of victory and pride that goes along with that. And yet while there’s a real repulsion to the Trinity Killer, there’s a simultaneous attraction and appetite for connection that goes throughout their relationship and maybe comes to a head when Dexter tries to get some counsel from him that he can’t receive from anyone else about how to move forward with his life. And just the twisted, everything-turned-on-its-head nature of that kind of plea in the midst of a scene where he’s going to take a hammer claw to the guy’s head was delicious. We tried to navigate all those twists and turns, and have the malice definitely there but not give short shrift to the real appetite for connection and counsel that was alive in Dexter. And of course for John it was the way he played what is revealed to be a double meaning through a lot of what he’s saying to Dexter was really fun for him, and obviously tremendously effective in his hands.
EW: What did you like most about the Trinity-Dexter relationship?
MH: Certainly the Trinity killer storyline went a long way in creating a sense of intrigue. He was without question the most formidable foe or target that Dexter had ever encountered, so that vitalized Dexter’s fundamental need to kill… I loved the levels of it — the subtextual levels, the fact that Dexter was presenting himself as something other than who he actually is, with the full knowledge that the Trinity Killer was doing the same, and yet there were still so many secrets for Dexter to uncover about Trinity. There were always things to be learned and these layers of intrigue beneath the surface. John and I had such a great time playing those scenes. He’s just so incredibly talented, nuanced in his work, intelligent, and he brings such a genuine sense of play to the table. I think he had a blast doing the show and really infected all of us with a sense of play and enthusiasm.
EW: Looking back at the season, what was your favorite scene?
MH: That’s a tough one… but that Thanksgiving episode was like the worst Thanksgiving ever captured on film. And it went horribly wrong [so] quickly. Obviously the son’s finger was broken and the daughter had hit on Dexter and the mother had been okay with it. A lot of seeds were planted. When we sat at that table and he said, “Shut up, c—,” to his wife — I mean, within thirty seconds I’ve got him on the floor with a knife saying, “I should have f—ing killed you when I had the chance!” That was a lot of fun. As far as the giddy laughter goes, it was probably higher that day than ever. We were just like, “This is so insane!” We had a really good time that day.
EW: How many more seasons of Dexter can there be?
MH: We’re definitely going to do one more — beyond that, I don’t know. This show is as popular as it’s ever been and I’m sure there’s a desire on the network’s part to keep that ball rolling, but I take these things one episode at a time…. This thing can’t go on indefinitely, and yet it’s gone on in ways that I never could have imagined, so I would like to believe that it can continue.
YOu people are idiots! While Dex was out killing Rita was watching the kids, Who is going to do that now? Dex might have been on a short leash with Rita, but without her it will be shorter. Have you ever tried raising JUST ONE kid by yout self? He has 3 now, complete with dance lessons, camping and a toddler, as well as living too far from his work. Get real, the time Dex takes to romance his victims, it is just not possible.
Posted by: Windy Siegfried | February 08, 2010 at 03:04 AM