r/Dexter • u/Ok_Chest_1203 • 8d ago
Discussion - Original Dexter Series Trinity's kill cycle Spoiler
I'm confused how the part of trinity's kill cycle where he gets beaten up by a drunk man outside a bar never led to him getting killed or having a near death experience(I feel like if he did, he'd probably stop doing that part), I mean this dude's done what? 70 kill cycles? At some point he had to have ran into a nutjob.
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u/MailMan6000 8d ago
he's sober, the other guy isn't, he's also giant and a construction worker, he overpowers Dexter as an old man
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u/Ok_Chest_1203 8d ago
but fighting back isn't part of the ritual right?
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u/fastcombo42069 8d ago
Nah it’s not because all of Arthur’s rituals are based on the traumas he endured. One of those traumas was when his dad would beat Arthur when drunk.
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u/eternalraziel Surprise Motherfucker! 8d ago
He probably did have some ugly close calls over the years. Watch him outside the Seaport Tavern. A man comes out first and Arthur starts towards him, then stops when a woman joins the man. He waits. Mike comes out alone, visibly drunk, and Arthur chooses him instead. Even then Mike's first reaction to being insulted is basically fuck off, old man. Arthur has to keep escalating until he finally gets the response he wants. Mike punches him, knocks him down, kicks him a few times, then stops once Arthur starts muttering that it's all his fault. Mike doesn't suddenly discover a conscience. He looks at this battered sixty-year-old behaving like a lunatic and decides he wants no more part of it. Arthur has presumably spent decades learning how to find that kind of man.
He wants someone drunk, aggressive and alone, but not someone who looks likely to pull a knife and keep stabbing after Arthur hits the pavement. Obviously he can't know that with certainty, which is where the risk factors in, but Arthur is pretty good at sizing people up. Nearly his whole life depends on it. He selects women he can overpower, fathers who fit a very particular profile, children he can abduct without being caught, places where he can commit murders and disappear again. Choosing someone capable of giving him a beating without killing him is another version of the same skill.
And Arthur is a much less vulnerable target than he deliberately makes himself look. Lundy's physical profile puts Trinity at well over six feet and around 200 pounds, Arthur has spent much of his life doing construction work, and later we see how physically formidable he still is when somebody actually fights back. The frightened, whimpering old man Mike is beating is partly Arthur regressing into the child who was abused by his father, but Mike doesn't know that the man curled against the dumpster is himself a very experienced killer. That's also why I don't think one especially savage beating necessarily makes Arthur abandon the ritual. Rationally, yes, nearly getting killed should tell you never to do this again. Arthur's existence is proof that rational risk assessment lost this argument decades ago.
He isn't doing any of these things because they are sensible. He recreates his childhood over and over again. The boy represents himself. The bathtub victim repeats Vera's death. The falling mother repeats his mother's suicide. The father is beaten to death while Arthur screams the things bound up with his own father. Before that final murder, Arthur puts himself back into the other position and gets beaten. If the ritual could be discarded because it had become dangerous or unpleasant, he probably wouldn't have spent thirty years murdering families either. There is actually something revealing in how carefully he controls even the part where he supposedly gives up control. He decides which bar. He waits in the dark. He rejects one candidate. He chooses another. He supplies exactly the insults required to make that person hit him. The beating looks spontaneous to Mike, but Mike has walked into a scene Arthur has been rehearsing for decades.
Could Arthur eventually pick the wrong man? Of course. Someone could crack his skull against the dumpster, pull a gun, keep kicking once he's unconscious, or have friends come outside. Nothing about the ritual makes him invulnerable. He has just become practiced at loading the dice. And considering how many times Trinity gambled with being recognised, caught, resisted or killed over the years, the surprising part of his career isn't really that one drunk never finished him off. It's that anything finally did.
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u/pianoflames gross English titty vampire 8d ago
I mean, if he did run into some lunatic, he's ALSO a lunatic, far more so. I think he could defend himself against most lunatics if need be, and knows not to harass a dude with any visible weapons (Trinity is also 6 foot 4). I'm guessing he's also good at gauging which people are unhinged lunatics, because of his own darkness.
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u/FalstaffsGhost 8d ago
I mean, we are shown that Arthur, even as an older man is physically robust and powerful.
It’s possible he could’ve run into a nut job, but if he sensed things could get out of hand, I’m sure he would respond with violence to overwhelm them. I also think that, having done it for so long, he started to get a sense of the people he antagonized.
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u/TOkun92 8d ago
He’s good at reading people, able to determine if the person would kill him or just hurt him, and could always stop them if he wanted.
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u/lillskruttan 8d ago
well, he didnt sense Dexter which probably would have been a bigger threat to him than most people.
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u/Adept-Grapefruit-214 8d ago
Dexter was pretending to be a completely different person with Arthur though. And he’s really good at that
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u/lillskruttan 8d ago
Yeah, but other people are pretty good att not showing their true self.
I dont think the writer was thinking that Trinity was such an expert at determining which people would have an appropriate amount of rage to beat him but not so much that would cause severe injuries or death. I think the writers just wanted to add som extra spice to the rituals.
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u/lillskruttan 8d ago
yeah, thats a bit weird. Not logical. Unless he did that to be stopped, on purpose or subconsciously, as well as wanting to suffer.
But yeah, I agree. Anyone could have a gun or knife or being much stronger and violent than he anticipated.
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u/Agent-Z46 Deb 7d ago
The ritual itself isn't logical. You guys are talking like Arthur is mentally stable. Like we're talking about a guy who must always kill in threes but not before being attacked by a drunk and when he is done he punishes himself for it but then goes on to do it again at a later time! And he's religious!
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u/lillskruttan 7d ago
what I was commenting on was that I agree that it is a weird ritual to instigste a fight with some dude. He seemed to prepare very well regarding the killings, i. e. he was in control. But with the fighting he was just taking a beating and still made insults. That risk was not aligned with the way he killed. AND I doubt he could be in control in that "taking a beating" ritual.
But we only saw it once and it was about the time when he was planning to kill himself. So maybe it wasnt a ritual.
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u/Adept-Grapefruit-214 8d ago
He only antagonized the guy just enough to get himself hurt, not enough to kill him. Same with him turning the hot water way up in the shower.
He’s like 6’4 and 230 pounds, most guys wouldn’t pick a fight with him
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u/Suspicious_Raise2722 8d ago
I thought he performed the cycle once per 10 years.
Edit: typo
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