"Dexter" may have kicked off strong when it premiered in 2006, but even star Michael C. Hall, who played the vigilante killer, admits that last year's series finale wasn't all that.
"I think the show had lost a certain amount of torque," the actor told The Daily Beast of the acclaimed Showtime series, which ran for eight seasons. "Just inherently because of how long we'd done it, because of the storytelling capital we'd spent, because our writers may have been gassed."
The finale saw the blood-spatter analyst faking his death after his adopted sister Deb died, leaving his love, Hannah, to raise his son, Harrison, in Argentina.
The actor, who said he didn't think he'd even watched it, thought the series ender "was narratively satisfying — but it was not so savory."
"Maybe some people wanted a more satisfying ... maybe they wanted a happy ending for him, either a happy ending or a more definitive sense of closure," the actor told The Daily Beast. "They wanted him to die or something, but I think the fact that he's sort of exiled in a prison of his own making is, for my money, pretty fitting."
It turns out executing the mass murderer was not an option.
"They won't let us kill him," producer John Goldwyn told Vulture in October. "Showtime was very clear about that. When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said to us, 'Just to be clear, he's going to live.'"
Showtime president David Nevins then revealed in January that there was a possibility of a "Dexter" spin-off involving Hall's character.
But Hall may not be ready to dive back into being Dexter again just yet.
"It's something I can't even begin to wrap my head around at this point," the actor told TODAY in March.
TODAY video: Michael C. Hall talks 'Dexter' and 'Realistic Joneses'
Hall currently stars in the indie film "Cold in July," which opened May 23.