"Dexter" returned last night with Episode 1 of the final season (Season 8) entitled, "A Beautiful Day" on Showtime.

The beginning of the episode shows Dexter happy in the 6 months since LaGuerta's death. He feels that with her out of the way, all of this problems got solved. He got to coach Harrison's soccer team and get his bowling team back together. This happy Dexter would fade quickly though as we see Dexter on edge and lose his cool several times in this first episode, even snapping and yelling at Harrison which we have not seen before. 

Debra is struggling to deal with killing LaGuerta at the end of Season 7. She left Miami Metro Police to work for an Independent agency doing undercover detective work with Elway Investigations. 

It appears after the first episode though that she is also using it as an escape by getting too close to the people she is catching, namely drug dealer Briggs, sleeping with him and doing drugs. She does phone in a lead to her old partner Quinn but she seems to be losing track of her boundaries. 

Dexter is really struggling with not talking and seeing his sister. He finally tracks her down and talks with her in a convenient store and then again outside of the hotel she is staying at with the drug dealer to try to save her from being killed. 

The first of 2 climatic scenes in the premiere episode is here when Deb finally understands something. She says that she thought she always needed him (Dexter) and that he was the one always keeping her together when really it was the other way around. Dexter always needed her to keep him from falling apart. Dexter was the one "lost". This crushed Dexter to hear but it was true. 

The dealer Briggs finds them outside talking and starts a scene when Dexter tries to grab Deb's hand and take her away from there. Dexter and Briggs struggle into the hotel room, Briggs grabs a knife and Dexter eventually takes hold of the knife and stabs him in the chest to leave him dead in the hotel. Deb again covers for Dexter saying she came back and found him dead in the hotel. 

A big final season character addition was introduced, the neuroscientist, Dr. Evelyn Vogel. She is brought in a help with a case at Miami Metro but with the first cliff hanging of the season, episode 1 ends with Vogel telling Dexter that she knows about "Harry's Code" and it is clear that she knows all about Dexter's killing history. 

We are not sure how she knows any of this, but it is clear to be a huge story line of the final season while we figure it out. Vogel has written books and focuses her research on the work of psychopaths, which makes Dexter not want to be around her. Is she there to make Dexter crack or to help him?

The final season is set to be 12 episodes, so we have 11 left to see what happens to Dexter in the end. 

Tune into Episode 2 of "Dexter" next Sunday at 9/8 CST on Showtime.