Throughout the course of the series, Dexter has met his equal in a variety of capacities. His brother, "The Ice Truck Killer", was his equal in both his ability to kill without leaving a trace and the scope of his evil. Lila was his equal in the way she embraced her dark side and let it feed as often as it needed. Miguel Prado was his equal in the way his thirst for a sort of sick justice fueled an unyielding ambition to kill.

Now he's met a new sort of equal. An equal in a way that is probably most important to Dexter. Somebody who matches up to him, probably exceeds him, in his ability to create a life that masks his evil - to hide his monstrous ways in plain site. That equal is Arthur Miller, The Trinity Killer.

Dexter is in desperate need of that ability. Rita is at her wit's end with his lies, and has them in therapy now, trying to open the lines of communication in their marriage. If Dexter loses her, he's suddenly the loner outcast that often winds up in the headlines as a cross-county slayer. And he can't have that. He can't allow his dark passenger that much control.

So he takes to Miller as a sort of apprentice, attempting to learn how such a prolific monster could carry on with a happy family for such a long period of time.

He discovers that Miller has an extremely twisted attachment to his family. His murders are, in fact, a recreation of the deaths of each member of his immediate childhood family (as 100% correctly predicted in this column a few weeks ago) and now it seems that this his attachment to his new family is an extension of that murderous devotion to the family he lost. While Dexter uses his family as a mask, Trinity's family is an essential part of what spurs him to kill, and because of that he's so brilliant at using them as a tool to hide in plain sight. It's such a good disguise, because he doesn't believe he's wearing one.

Dexter discovers this, but he doesn't realize it when he does. Instead, he simply tries to adopt Trinity's apparent "strategy" in mending his relationship with Rita. In Dexter's mind, Trinity's insane familial devotion can't be anything more than a tactic - he can't imagine the mind of another monster is any different from his blank slate.

In fact, it is, and it is that difference that is certain to form the basis for the divergence between Dexter and Trinity as their relationship plays out, and ultimately find Dexter in further trouble with Rita as another one his shakily built hiding places crumbles.

Image © Randy Tepper/Showtime

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Story by Andrew Payne

Starpulse contributing writer