Warning: Fullfor Season 7 of Dexter follow...

With modern-era TV shows usually hitting their stride around seasons 3 or 4, while also carrying with them a creative expiration date of around 5 or 6 years, Dexter managed to do what very few series have been able to do in a seventh year: It had a resurgence. Granted, the Dexter/Deb storyline that played out in Season 7, with Deb traumatically discovering Dexter's secret, was really the story that the entire series had been leading up to, and with the end being near, the writers were able to raise the stakes and put some meat back on this show's bones. Also, the choice to not have a single season-long "big bad" this year was a great one, allowing mini-arcs to occur and the Dexter/Deb dynamic to play out in all its glory.

IGN's Review of the Season 7 finale, "Surprise, Motherf***er!"

With the entire notion of the "big bad" perfected in Season 1 and Season 4, it would have been a mistake to roll the dice again, especially after last years's disastrously predictable twist regarding Travis Marshall that monopolized so much of the season. In fact, this show has had a hard time following up Season 4, and the final image it gave us, in general. And while I didn't have a huge problem with Season 5 and the character of Lumen like some fans did, I didn't like the way she conveniently left the show, leaving Dexter miraculously healed; guilt over Rita's death assuaged. Likewise, last year's 12-episode journey of "I'm afraid I'll raise my son to be a monster/I guess it's enough to just love my son" also felt like it was leaving us with no permanent or meaningful change to the series. But that all changed at the very last scene of the Season 6 finale when Deb caught Dexter in the act of stabbing Travis, freeing up the writers' room to dig in like never before."When will Deb find out?" has been a question on all of our lips since the very beginning, and now we'd finally arrived. And it was handled tremendously; with Jennifer Carpenter (who was already no stranger to delivering strong scenes of catharsis and tears) giving us a truly memorable performance that horrifically encapsulated the entire series to date. Right off the bat, in the Season 7 premiere, Deb went from thinking that Dexter had just killed one person to realizing he was, in fact, the Bay Harbor Butcher.Given the past few years, it would not have been beyond this series to drag that particular journey out, but they squashed it in the first episode. From there, it was all looking back. Looking back at Doakes. Look back at Dexter's reprehensible cat and mouse game with Trinity that got Rita killed. Realizing that not only was Lumen Dexter's live-in girlfriend, but that she was the vigilante "Barrel Girl #13." For a show that had sparingly ever delved back at all the insanity that came before, and had dropped major characters with barely a mention of them in later years, this was a fantastic revitalization.Not having a "big bad" also helped get rid of the "stalling/filler" episodes that plague the abdomen of Dexter seasons. Yes, even a season as great as Season 4 had a few shaky episodes in the middle when Dexter was trying to make up his mind on whether to kill Trinity or not. But this time around, smaller stories made up the season, and those stories were able to, in turn, inform the larger story of Dexter and Deb. Dexter's new love life with "Heart Attack" Hannah was the B story here; with Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski once again playing an emotionally guarded killer. Admittedly, it took me a while to get used to Hannah, and to fully notice what Dexter saw in her that A: led him to spare her life, and B: made him seek out an actual relationship with her.The answer to the first part, I still assume, was that she was just hot. Dexter's decision to lay with her instead of stab her definitely left me scratching my head a little. Especially since I had enjoyed the fact that, despite all of their flirting, Dexter still wanted to kill her. True, Hannah's previous remark about the two of them discussing death as one would their first sexual encounter was notably telling, but I was still looking for a reason why Dexter was able to overlook the actual innocent people Hannah killed. I now see this moment, when Dexter ignored actual justice, as the first step that led him to his choice to kill LaGuerta in the finale.For me, it wasn't until the second to last episode when I finally was able to come to terms with what Dexter saw in Hannah after he told her that Hector Estrada was up for parole. She smiled and gave him a "go get him, tiger" look and said "Maybe it's the universe giving you a Christmas gift." This. This was the happy home life that Dexter tried to achieve in Season 4. She was Rita if Rita was a doting wife and fellow murderer. And even though the "She Said/She Said" poisoning mystery that unfolded in "Do You See What I See?" wound up being resolved rather quickly, and somewhat unsatisfactorily, in the finale, I appreciate the fact that Dexter came so very close to having it all. Only to see it all fall apart because of his lifetime of blunders.The C story here involved Ray Stevenson's Isaak, a prim and proper Eastern European mob boss out to kill Dexter for killing his lover, Viktor, in the premiere. The story started off fine, and while the producers had already stated that there was no "big bad," I was still worried that the writers were going to stretch it out too long - given that Isaak already knew who Dexter was by the third episode. But then the episode "Swim Deep" happened, and before we'd even gotten halfway through the season, Isaak was flat out trying to kill Dexter. Locking Isaak up let him stick around for a few more episodes, but it was when he got out of jail that things got interesting. After an amazing conversation between Isaak and Dexter in a gay bar, Isaak transformed from an antagonist to a "Dexter helper" ala Season 6's Brother Sam. And Ray Stevenson showed just how great he was at playing both vicious and tender at the same time. By the end, Isaak simply became a sad man who taught Dexter how to say "I love you" and mean it. I do have mixed feeling about how it all turned out, but I can definitely say that the Isaak story didn't play out predictably and that his character was certainly a highlight of the season.Also along for the ride was a really freaky killer named Speltzer who stalked women in makeshift death mazes, and gave Dexter a serious boss battle in "Run!", and a less-exciting firebug "Phantom" that took up two episodes towards the end. The "Phantom" seemed like he could have been a wicked mini-boss, but they chose to focus what could have been the second part of his fiery story on Hannah's con-artist father, played by Jim Beaver. While I'm on the topic of some of the falterings of Season 7, I have to immediately point out how awful Quinn's storyline was. Or, to clarify, how terribly it ended. At first, I liked that Quinn's past as a corrupt narc had come back into play, but it went nowhere. It could have effectively, and easily, bled over into Dexter and Isaak's story, but it remained closed off and meaningless. And then Nadia dumped him off-screen, leaving him just as much of the sad sack he was at the beginning and end of Season 6. Also, Louis was an incredibly frustrating character simply because he was created in Season 6 with, the writers have admitted, no overall plan as to his motives. And so, on an already semi-cartoonish series, he became one of the most slapdash players. Fortunately, the writers quickly realized that he needed to go, and Isaak was there at the ready to do us all a favor.Even though we saw very little of LaGuerta for most of the season, just little snippets of her Butcher investigation now and then, the ending moment in "Surprise, Motherf**ker!" was really powerful and disturbing. And much like the premiere, with Dexter doing his best "quick thinking" mesmerist act on a gun-wielding Deb, things played out his way. Most of you probably know that I'm not a fan, at all, of Deb being in love with Dexter. It was introduced last year and it felt totally forced and wonky. Not because of the "taboo," but because of everything the series, and their two characters, had showed us for six years. And while I wouldn't have minded them dropping the story entirely after Deb saw Dexter kill Travis, I enjoyed how they kept it around but used it as an underlying reason for all of Deb's decisions to protect Dexter when any sane person would have, reluctantly, turned him in.Jennifer Carpenter's performance in "Argentina" when Deb admitted her feelings to Dexter was nothing short of superb. But I was still torn because I simply didn't want this storyline to return, no matter how hard everyone involved was working to make it play well. Still, Carpenter sold me on it more than ever before with that one scene, and the fact that Dexter used her love for him to his advantage in the finale gave him a wicked Walter White appeal. Also, the two of them slo-mo walking at the end was a satisfyingly eerie parallel to the "fantasy" parade at the end of the Season 1 finale. Yes, more looking back. For the first time in years, I felt as if Dexter was actually building upon its past, instead of sweeping it under a rug. Season 7 was filled with surprises galore, and I can only hope that the next year's final run gives us as much macabre glory.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and on IGN at mattfowler . No other choice you will ever make will be as easy and render such a great reward.