14 DAY TRIAL // The season 4 finale of Showtime’s “Dexter” saw, as fans must already know by now, Dexter Morgan’s wife dead in a bathtub at the hands of the Trinity killer. It was one of the most brutal and unexpected endings in television in recent times, as critics call it, but, for all is worth, Julie Benz is not upset about it, as she reveals for E! Online.
One of the thing that most upset fans about the ending was that, truly, Rita was the one thing that made Dexter humane – she and the three children whose custody they shared, two of which were from a previous marriage of Rita’s. However, the decision was made in order to bring the story of Dexter, a serial killer by all accounts, full circle and this could only be possible with a bloodbath, literally.
Benz says she’s no longer upset about having to leave the show after 4 wonderful years and hopes that fans too will find it in their hearts to understand that there could be no other way for the story to go without losing that one thing that made this show special from the get-go. Moreover, she’s had time to become accustomed to the idea that Rita was gone for good because, logically, she knew about her being killed off in the finale long before fans got to see it on their TV screens.
“I’ve been living with news of [Rita’s death] a lot longer than everybody else, so I’m in a different place in the grieving process over Rita than everyone else. I really have been grieving Rita, and what she stands for for Dexter, but I do have acceptance,” Benz says for the aforementioned media outlet. Of course, the star goes on to say, she too had her moments, shortly after finding out about Rita’s death, when she asked herself why this didn’t happen to some other character on the show. In the end, though, she accepted that it was what it was.
As for talk of Rita coming back, it’s unlikely to happen, the actress adds. “There has been no talk of me coming back to the series in any way. A lot of people have been begging me to tell them that I’m going to come back, and I’m like, ‘Rita’s dead!’ Rita is dead and Trinity killed her. There’s all these theories that Dexter did it, or Deb snuck in and did it, but I don’t think it could get any more obvious that Trinity killed Rita. Rita is dead. And there has been no talk of Rita being a ghost. No one’s approached me about coming back,” she explains.
As we were also telling you a few days ago, speculation is rampant that producers might still bring back Rita, even though the last time fans saw her she was in a bathtub filled with her own blood. One possibility would be to have her come back as a ghost, just like Dexter’s father, while another would see the entire murder scene as a dream sequence. As per Benz’s words, neither is likely to happen.