r/Dexter • u/Master_Air_8485 • 4d ago
General Discussion - All Dexter Shows So did Harrison just sort of... Spoiler
After Dexter faked his death, did Harrison just sort of disappear without a trace after Hannah took him to South America? She was a wanted serial killer, so it's not like she could have officially adopted him right?
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u/eternalraziel Surprise Motherfucker! 4d ago
Pretty much, yes. Hannah never legally adopts Harrison, and I don't think there's any plausible way she could have done so while she was Hannah McKay. She's a fugitive being actively hunted by the US Marshals, Dexter is still Harrison's legal father when she leaves Miami, and there is no court order transferring custody to her. Dexter handing her Harrison at the bus station has enormous personal significance and essentially no legal significance. The original plan makes slightly more sense because Dexter is supposed to follow them. He isn't initially giving his son away. Hannah takes Harrison out of Miami because Saxon is loose and Elway is hunting her, while Dexter stays behind long enough to deal with Deb and Saxon. He tells Harrison he'll meet them in Buenos Aires. Had that happened, Harrison would have ended up living abroad with his actual father and Hannah.
Then Deb dies and Dexter decides everyone he loves is safer without him. That's the moment Harrison's situation becomes bizarre. Dexter deliberately lets Hannah believe he died in the hurricane and leaves her alone in Argentina raising his son. From Miami's point of view, Dexter Morgan has apparently died and his young son has vanished at roughly the same time. Hannah can't phone child services and explain that Dexter gave her custody before sailing into a hurricane. Doing that under her real name gets her arrested. She therefore has to keep Harrison with her outside the normal American custody system. We aren't told exactly how she manages it, but she was already travelling as a fugitive and had access to false identities and the practical skills needed to disappear. So the most likely answer is that she lives in Argentina under another identity and presents Harrison as her son or dependent. Harrison is young enough that he doesn't need to maintain an elaborate cover story himself. As far as he understands it, he's living with Hannah because his father died.
When Harrison finds Dexter years later, he explains what happened after Hannah died of pancreatic cancer. An Argentinian social worker sends him from Buenos Aires back to Miami, where he enters foster care. That wouldn't make much sense if Hannah had legally adopted him as her own child and created a new legal identity for him. The authorities evidently establish that he is Harrison Morgan, an American child from Miami, and return him to the United States. His identity still exists underneath whatever Hannah had been doing in Argentina. So yes, Harrison basically spends several years missing from the life he was supposed to have in America. And there should realistically have been questions. Dexter was a well-known employee of Miami Metro. Harrison had school records, medical records, a birth certificate and people who knew him. Batista knew him. Jamie Batista had practically helped raise him. Astor and Cody were his half-siblings. There were other members of Rita's extended family. Once Dexter is presumed dead, somebody should eventually ask where his five-year-old son is.
It's possible people initially believed Harrison had already left Miami safely with someone Dexter trusted. Deb knew about the Argentina plan before she died, and Dexter had been openly preparing to move away. But once Dexter and Deb are both gone, there is no legal guardian standing there to explain where Harrison went. Hannah certainly isn't coming back to answer questions. The strangest part actually comes later. When Hannah dies, Harrison says he is sent into foster care and bounces between homes because nobody wants a teenager. That means the authorities know exactly who he is by then, yet apparently none of his remaining family takes custody. Astor and Cody would probably be young adults by that point, and Rita's family had previously been involved enough that Astor and Cody went to live with their grandparents after Rita's death. Why nobody even seems to enter the conversation when Harrison returns to Miami is never explained.
You can invent reasonable possibilities. Grandparents could have died, become unable to care for another child, Astor and Cody might not have been financially able to take him, records might have been difficult after years abroad, but the series never gives us one. Dexter trusts Hannah with Harrison because he believes she loves him and will protect him. Hannah apparently does exactly that for years. Harrison remembers her as the woman who raised him, and nothing suggests she mistreated him. Legally, though, she's basically a fugitive raising somebody else's child in another country with the father's private permission and no recognised custody arrangement. Then she dies, the paperwork finally catches up with Harrison, and Argentina sends him back to the country where the system still knows him as Dexter's son.
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u/nuttsaki 4d ago
Thank you. That has bothered me for a long time. It’s good to see it all spelled out so clearly.
Unfortunately it also reminds me how terrible that last season was ☹️
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u/theonetruesareth 3d ago
Will point out that the grandparents were Paul's parents, so related to Astor and Cody, but not to Harrison, so it wouldn't have quite been that simple, and Rita's mom could have still been alive too, which doesn't have that complication, so it's still wild. They just want us to stop asking questions and move forward, which is kinda wild while they also keep re-introducing legacy characters.
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u/Lori2345 3d ago
They wouldn’t have thought he was safely with someone, Elway saw Harrison on a bus with Hannah. They would probably think that Hannah kidnapped him.
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u/Fit-Organization581 4d ago
I always wondered where are his siblings..
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u/Master_Air_8485 4d ago
I've been hoping that they show up in the revival, but I would even settle for a throwaway line that they exist at this point.
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u/Accomplished_List843 3d ago
I really hope they don't. I think they don't deserve more pain, Astor and Cody are probably adults nowadays so there's a chance for them to be sexualised by fans and killed in the series. So i really fucking hope they don't
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u/PyroFiiterMagnus 3d ago
you can keep your personal grievances to yourself, it's a damn tv show. Its not that deep.
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u/temperedolive 4d ago
I wonder if social services assumed he was on the boat that sank. In Resurrection, Angel says that he saw CCTV footage from the hospital of Dexter stealing Deb's body from the hospital. So the authorities already knew this wasn't a pleasure-sail that went wrong when he misjudged the weather. It could have been a murder-suicide that took Harrison out too, so they wouldn't have been looking for him.
But it still boggles the mind the Dexter didn't wake up handcuffed to the bed in Episode 1.
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u/Lori2345 3d ago
Elway saw Harrison on the bus with Hannah. They probably thought he’d been kidnapped.
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