Warning: Contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood.
In the Dexter: New Blood ending, the show managed to use Angela to fix one of the biggest problems with the original Dexter. When Dexter season 8 concluded the series, the open-ended finale was controversial amongst viewers. However, the issue that led to that ending started in with Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) in season 7.
At the end of Dexter season 6, Deb goes to meet Dexter (Michael C. Hall) to explain that she’s in love with him and instead learns that he is a killer. She spends a lot of Dexter season 7 trying to reconcile who her brother is and to move on with life, but it comes to a head when she comes across Dexter staging a scene to cover up his plan to kill Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez). Dexter doesn’t tell Deb what to do and allows her to make the choice, and despite LaGuerta’s urging, she kills her police captain.
When Deb let Dexter go and killed LaGuerta, she was allowing her love for Dexter to put her social and professional obligations aside, a fact that she claims she regrets in Dexter season 8. While Deb only appears as a vision in Dexter’s mind in Dexter: New Blood, Angela Bishop (Julia Jones) is able to serve as a surrogate for the character to be redeemed through. She is the commanding officer of her department in a similar way to Deb’s role as homicide lieutenant, and also has a love for Dexter. However, when she eventually learns the truth about Dexter, she is prepared to see him spend life in prison, most likely see the death penalty in Florida (a point that she appears to take pleasure in), and potentially would have killed him if Harrison (Jack Alcott) had not done so first.
While Angela does not directly shoot Dexter herself, she does wipe Harrison’s prints from the gun and encourage him to leave town so that she can claim she did it herself. The police record will show that she did her duty in self-defense, finally correcting the mistake made at the end of Dexter season 7. Though the choice not to have the direct surrogate for Deb kill Dexter might seem odd in this instance, having Harrison as a family member do the deed and be allowed to go free helps to drive home the message all the same. Ultimately, Dexter had not only killed a lot of people but was breaking his own code: in Dexter, he was prepared to kill the innocent LaGuerta to save his own skin, and in Dexter: New Blood he killed the innocent Logan (Alano Miller) for the same reason.
The final point that drives home Dexter’s death at Angela and Harrison’s hands as a direct response to Deb’s failure to kill him in Dexter comes in the blocking of the scene. In Dexter: New Blood, after realizing that he can’t go to jail and Harrison needs to kill him, Dexter opens his arms wide, then points at his heart to tell Harrison where to shoot, telling him it’s okay. In the original Dexter season 7 scene, once he realizes that Deb needs to kill him for her to be able to live with herself, he accepts it, drops his knife and opens his arms wide, telling her that it’s okay in a very similar scene. In Dexter, Deb is almost free of the problems caused by Dexter and his Dark Passenger but isn’t able to take the final step. When, in Dexter: New Blood, Harrison kills Dexter he claims that freedom for the both of them as he is able to leave with Dexter’s letter playing in his mind, and Deb is finally able to pull her hand free from Dexter’s in her final scene, resolving the disservice done to the character in Dexter season 7.