I finished watching Dexter Season 2 the other night. That was the fastest marathon I ever did to date on a TV series. It only took a 1 day to watch the whole 12 episodes season 2 of Dexter!

The whole of season 2 is all about Dexter. Of course it’s all about Dexter, he’s the title role, you might say. But I mean, if season 1 was all about the Ice Truck Killer, that is, Dexter’s blood brother, season 2 is about the Bay Harbor Butcher, who is… Dexter.

Yep, some treasure hunter found Dexter ‘graveyard’ and that’s when the investigation on the Bay Harbor Butcher came to be. Season 2 introduces a new character, Lila, who eventually became Dexter’s lover as he and Rita broke up. He met Lila in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting because he told Rita that he is ‘addicted in something’ or ‘having an addiction’.

Here’s the Wikipedia summary of the whole second season of Dexter

New cast members for this season include Jaime Murray as Lila, an artist who is a former meth addict and arsonist who becomes Dexter’s sponsor (and later his lover),[4] Keith Carradine as FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy and JoBeth Williams as Rita’s mother Gail. The role of Rita’s son Cody was re-cast, and in Season 2 was played by child actor Preston Bailey.

Dexter begins the season unable to satisfy his urges for over a month, due to the constant surveillance by Sgt. Doakes. When the opportunity to kill arises, he has problems executing his victims after having killed his brother.

To further complicate matters, treasure hunters discover Dexter’s underwater dumping ground for his victims. As the police extract body part after body part from the ocean, the media dubs the killer the “Bay Harbor Butcher”, and FBI Special Agent Lundy is brought in to catch the “Butcher.”

Rita’s relationship with Dexter becomes more tense as she and her children are dealing with the death of her ex-husband Paul, who was killed in a prison fight. Paul’s repeated suggestion that Dexter was to blame for his imprisonment eats at Rita’s conscience and eventually Rita accuses Dexter of setting up her ex-husband. Dexter admits to setting up Paul, but Rita refuses to believe that Dexter premeditated the crime and assumes that Dexter is a heroin addict. He acquiesces to “having an addiction”, though he characteristically allows her misinterpretation to go without clarification; in return, she vows to stay with him while he goes through the Narcotics Anonymous program. In this way, Dexter avoids responsibility for Paul’s death (though he set the process in motion) and consequently maintains the rationalization that he only (directly) kills people who are murderers. Doakes continues to pursue Dexter until he encounters Dexter leaving a NA meeting. Doakes seems satisfied that Dexter’s odd behavior and apparent drug use can be explained by traumatic experiences from a career in law enforcement.

A cult following begins to form behind the “Butcher” when it is discovered that his victims were themselves responsible for deaths.[5] Dexter even finds that a comic-book character was created called, “The Dark Defender”.

Debra continues to struggle with the trauma of her experience with the Ice Truck Killer combined with everyone recognizing her as the “Ice Truck Killer’s girl”. For a sense of safety and comfort, she stays with her brother, another new source of stress in Dexter’s life.

Throughout Season 2, Dexter is pursued by Special Agent Frank Lundy, while both Debra’s affection for Lundy and her confidence in her own detective skills grow. Doakes’ suspicions about Dexter are revived, and he ultimately discovers Dexter’s collection of glass slides containing blood sample souvenirs from all of his victims. The possibility of matching the slides hidden in Dexter’s air conditioner with the bodies of the Butcher’s victims sets up a climactic showdown in which Doakes confronts Dexter at a drug dealer’s remote cabin. Despite receiving a gunshot wound in the leg, Dexter overpowers Doakes and keeps him locked in the cage inside the cabin. He begins to frame Doakes as the Butcher after the police discover Dexter’s slide collection in Doakes’ car while searching for him, making Doakes the prime suspect. Lieutenant LaGuerta, Doakes’ former partner, is the only one who believes in Doakes. She finds evidence of Doakes’ innocence and takes it to Lundy, but he tells her that the evidence is tainted by her previous failure to report Doakes’ telephone conversation to the investigation team. Lundy rejects LaGuerta’s case files, though he believes she may be correct about Doakes.

Dexter struggles with his life as a serial killer, thanks to revelations throughout the season regarding Harry Morgan, his foster father. Dexter learns that Harry was sleeping with Dexter’s biological mother, Laura Moser, before she died and that Harry took his own life after walking in on Dexter in the middle of a murder, unable to deal with the reality of the monster he had created. With his confidence in the Code of Harry and himself destroyed and exhausted from having to maintain his “mask” for so long, Dexter plays out the possible resulting scenarios in his head of turning himself in. Dexter’s events on his last day of freedom include having Deb becoming the beneficiary of his will, having a final dinner with her, and taking Rita and the kids out on the boat. During the “last meal” with Deb, he realizes how much she depended on him to resolve her feelings about the murder attempt by the Ice Truck Killer and decides to continue with his original plan of framing Doakes as the “Bay Harbor Butcher.”

Near the end of the season, Doakes escapes from the cage temporarily and is recaptured by Dexter. In the season finale, Lila finds the cabin where Doakes is imprisoned and causes a propane tank explosion, blowing up both Doakes and the corpse of one of Dexter’s victims, preventing Dexter from being caught. Lila then meets with Dexter, expecting him to accept her love now that she knows his ‘dark secret’. She catches him preparing to kill her and seeks revenge by trying to kill Rita’s children and Dexter. Dexter manages to save the children and escape and then exacts his own revenge on her after she has fled to Paris. In the closing scenes, Doakes’ memorial service goes largely unattended, with the exception of LaGuerta, Dexter, and Doakes’ immediate family. Expressing the logic of Dexter’s mental world, the final words in the series are a voice-over of his thoughts on the recent events. We hear that he now considers himself the master of the techniques his father taught him. Dexter believes this combined with the fact that Harry knew himself to be wrong about the code gives Dexter the right to rewrite that code and to live his life the way he wishes. He also states that he now needs those relationships that he originally cultivated as disguises to fit into society, even though they make him vulnerable. He considers himself, “An idea transcended into life.”

Season 2 premiered on September 30, 2007. On July 17, the first two episodes of the season were leaked on the internet, and on December 4, the last two episodes were also leaked.[6] On November 4, 2007, the Writer’s Guild of America started a strike, but writer Daniel Cerone stated in the L.A. Times that Season 2 had already been completed in anticipation of the WGA’s action.[7]

… That’s it.. I am now starting Season 3 and currently in the 3rd episode… This is the one after the brother found out that Dexter killed the supposedly his brother’s killer.