It's already over...
You've read the picture's caption. It's already over for Arthur Mitchell's status, as the NPE Harbor Butcher has struck again!
Ok but outside of the corny joke, he needs to go. He already wouldn't have been strong of a NPE due to four preventions, but these are pretty strong ones, so lemme commence his removal.
Thanks to DarthVerminader for giving me permish to cut this guy. (Via Discord)
What's the Work?[]
Dexter is a 2006 TV Crime series that is based on the novelization series by Jeff Lindsay. It revolves around the serial killer and blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan going around in a killing spree against criminals who are no better than him after being taught his killer code by his adoptive father Harry, all while blending in with not only his job in the Miami PD, but also with his family life when with his sister Deb or his wife Rita and their children. The show went on for 8 seasons and was well-received until the 8th season fumbled the bag and got a follow-up called New Blood which also got a shit ending and then a prequel series called Original Sin.
Who is He? Original Proposal?[]
Arthur Mitchell, aka the "Trinity Killer", is the main antagonist of the fourth season. While on the outside he is perceived as a kind and Christian father to a loving family who cares for his community, this is all to mask his killing spree against people who remind him of his late family in a cycle that's caused by him losing his family one by one in a traumatic event, and even having that violence be lashed out on to his family to mold them into his past family.
Being given an amazing role by the usually comedic John Lithgow as a terrifying yet broken villain, he is regarded as the most popular and well-received Dexter villain and is one of the reasons why Season 4 is considered one of the best seasons in what was the Golden Age of Dexter. (Which I agree with, he and Brian are easily my fav Dexter villains)
You can also find the info about him and why he was thought to have counted on his proposal: User blog:Bluedeadredemption/NPE Proposal: Arthur Mitchell
Why doesn't He Count?[]
Time to address the elephant in the room that has been noticed for a good while now: He's simply too broken for NPE. Yeah sure he has like a kill of nearly 300 on innocents and is a massive asshole to his new family, but the problem is that regardless of how bad these are, they all stem from one thing, and that's his awful tragedy. It consists of accidentally causing his sister to die from a bathroom incident, his mom committing suicide and his father relentlessly abusing Arthur badly, and him getting all the unneeded blame without any support despite the fact he had purely zero intentions of causing his sister's death and only wanted to peep on her for the lolz. And even decades later, he's still unable to let go of the traumatic past because of how badly it messed up both his life and his late family's. Every cyclical kill he does is literally because there are people who remind him of his family and he's unable to let go of that fact and gets disturbed because unlike him, their life with family is happy and cheery, which mirrors his past and so re-enacts events of the horrible event as a means of coping with the trauma. It's especially bad when before burying a 10 year old in cement, he activates a train set and plays his sister's favorite music while having the child wear pajamas, and it's all because these are memories prior to the trauma that he also can't let go of because they remind him of innocent and joyful times he had with his family, and hence why the killing of the children are to punish himself. This alone is proof that despite how brutal the kills are, they're to cope with the fact he's unable to not be haunted by his past that he believes is all his fault, despite it being unintentionally caused.
This makes me move on to my next argument: His remorse is too much. Even the prevention wording on his page reads "He feels intense remorse for his actions which is clearly evident in punishing himself for each murder. He claimed to dislike what he did and said that he didn't enjoy killing. At one point, he even attempted to commit suicide, but Dexter saved him, showing that his remorse for his actions is sincere."
That alone sounds like too much, and it's true. Arthur does NOT enjoy his killings and believes he has become too much of a monster all because he was unable to control the violent urges that were inherited from especially the abuse he got and how grotesque his sister's death was. He tries to ensure the intrusive violent thoughts don't get the better of him outside of his killing spree and what he does to his family (Which even then is to mold them into the family he used to have in his past before his sister's death caused it all to get fragmented). And worst yet, he even punishes himself by taking extremely hot showers and getting himself beat up by gangsters, all because he believes God is punishing him both for being plagued with his trauma and especially for going too far with his crimes. Even at one point he tries to JUMP OFF A BUILDING because of his unwilling violence that he has been desensitized to cyclically doing. Honestly, the attempted suicide alone is enough to cut him tbh because I cannot think of a villain close to Pure Evil that literally tries to take their life away because they've sunken into low depths because they cannot control their trauma that they did not deserve to be part of.
His final moments are also worrying for his status, as he acknowledges that he has gone too far without any pride, wanting Dexter to do the same, and takes his death with absolute dignity because it's an escapism from all the trauma and violence he's been through that's been glued to his whole life. He even asks Dexter to activate the same train set and play the same music he does when he buries a child in cement, because the last thing he wants to embrace and recap when conscious is not his violent tendencies or tragedy, but one last remembrance of a sweet and innocent time in his life before everything happened, something that is played with sympathy despite what he's done.
And the final nail in the coffin is that he's getting a spin-off show that's gonna focus more on his backstory and that translates to making him more tragic than in Season 4, so his NPE status, even if the above didn't prevent him somehow, wouldn't age well anyway.
Overall, he's a broken old man who's mentally stuck to that one moment where his life went downhill and intrusively caused him to be an unwilling killer, something he deeply never wanted to inherit and even tried to end his life as a means of escaping the living hell he's in.
Verdict?[]
I will reiterate again, It's Already Over. Cut.