Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Dexter: New Blood's finale.
Bringing the series full circle, Dexter: New Blood’s twist ending heartbreakingly reminds the beloved antihero of the worst moments in his life, all of which are summarized in a line the finale takes directly from the original pilot episode.
Dexter: New Blood’s finale episode shockingly saw his son Harrison kill his father with a new hunting rifle. After Dexter taught Harrison the Code of Harry, the latter realized his father's killing had never really been about vigilanteism after Dexter killed an innocent in cold blood just to escape his holding cell. Dexter’s 30 years of taking down bad guys also meant irreversible damage on his loved ones, including Harrison himself, his late wife Rita, and sister Deb. At this moment, Dexter came to the same conclusion, giving Harrison permission to kill him and put an end to the tragedies caused because of his decisions. Dexter: New Blood's meaningful ending asks the question of whether Dexter—the Bay Harbor Butcher—was any better than the hundreds of “bad” people he put down, with Dexter finally getting a taste of his own medicine at the hands of his son.
After picking up the rifle and pointing it at Dexter, Harrison asks whether Rita and Deb would be alive, or if Harrison wouldn’t be so traumatized if it wasn’t for Dexter choosing to be a serial killer. Harrison then screams, “Open your eyes and look at what you’ve done,” which is a direct repurposing of a line that Dexter says to his first on-screen victim in the original series' pilot episode. The Dexter season 1 shows Dexter stalking and capturing Mike Donovan, a choirmaster who killed several young boys. Aside from giving Mike directions for driving, one of Dexter’s very first lines is him screaming, “Open your eyes and look at what you did,” as he forces Mike to look at the unearthed bodies of the boys he killed.
Dexter: New Blood’s finale Easter egg takes the line he uses on his victims—forcing them to look at photos or other evidence of their crimes—and twists it for Harrison to use back on his father. Rather than show pictures or bodies of his innocent victims, Dexter mentally flashes back to images of Dexter killing an innocent Logan in New Blood’s finale.
By Dexter: New Blood’s ending, ironically Dexter himself had fit the Code of Harry, and it wasn’t until Harrison uttered his line from the pilot that he truly realized this. Dexter was blinded by the Code and the convenient justification that he was hypothetically saving thousands of lives by killing hundreds as some kind of Dark Defender superhero. In reality, Dexter hadn’t ever taken these realities to heart—they were simply the guidelines that he had always acted under, so as to continue feeding his Dark enger and avoid getting caught. Dexter: New Blood was always going to end with Dexter Morgan’s death, and Harrison repeating his line from Dexter’s original pilot sealed his fate.