Dexter vs Joe Goldberg: The Brutal Truth About TV’s Most Chilling Killers

The Nature of Killing for Control.

This is one of the darker questions we’ve wrestled with — but that’s The Think Drip: curious, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable.

Dexter Morgan and Joe Goldberg are both serial killers. Both narrate their lives with unsettling intimacy. Both wear the mask of the charming everyman while hiding a darkness most people will never see. But beneath their shared DNA, these two characters couldn’t be more different.

The key difference? Dexter kills because he feels too little. Joe kills because he feels too much.

Dexter: The Monster Who Wants to Be Good

Dexter is built around the idea of control through structure. He has a code. He only kills those who “deserve” it. He suppresses his urges, channels them into a twisted form of justice, and creates a meticulous moral framework to live by. He’s emotionally stunted, yes—but his emotional awareness is what makes him feel real. You can see him trying to be a father, a brother, a partner. Trying to be human.

When Dexter does feel—like in his overwhelming love for Deb, the pain of losing Rita, or his desire to be a good dad—it’s powerful because it’s rare. As he once put it:

“I see their pain. On some level, I even understand their pain. I just can’t feel it.”

He’s not heartless, he’s just disconnected. And that makes his moments of connection hit harder.

His darkness is an addiction. He knows it. He doesn’t romanticise it. That’s why his worst moments are so devastating: when he kills an innocent, it haunts him. He’s broken, but he wants to be better. That’s what makes the audience root for him, despite it all.

There’s something poetic about the way Dexter reflects on his inner world. His narration often sounds like confessions whispered into the void—raw, reflective, and disturbingly elegant. It’s why his voice lingers in the story a little more. When he hallucinates his own darkness speaking back to him, it says:

“You can’t kill me. I’m your darkness. You need me.”

That line doesn’t just sum up his struggle—it gives it a mythic weight, like he’s locked in an eternal contract with his shadow.

Joe: The Lover Who Believes He’s Good

Joe, on the other hand, is the opposite. He’s all feelings. Obsessive love, jealousy, anger, self-righteousness. His kills are rarely part of a plan—they’re often impulsive, emotional, and messy. He doesn’t follow a code. He just tells himself a story that makes him the hero.

And in that story, he’s not the villain.

“I’m not a killer, I’m a romantic.”

He genuinely believes his love redeems him, even when it destroys everything around him.

Joe doesn’t love people. He loves ideas of people. Fantasies. Versions of them that only exist in his mind. And when the real person doesn’t match up? He panics. He blames them. He kills them. All while insisting it’s for love.

His morality shifts with his desires:

“Sometimes, we do bad things for the people we love. It doesn’t mean it’s right. It means love is more important.”

That warped logic is how he lives with himself—justifying violence as devotion, possessiveness as passion.

Joe doesn’t seek control to resist chaos. He seeks control to protect the illusion: that he’s a good man, a protector, a lover. But deep down, perhaps even he suspects the danger in that illusion:

“The most dangerous people are always the ones trying to do good.”

Two Killers, One Thread

Despite their differences, both characters are ultimately about control. Dexter uses it to keep his darkness contained. Joe uses it to keep his fantasy alive.

Dexter’s relationship with violence is visceral and precise. He once described it chillingly:

“Blood. Sometimes it sets my teeth on edge, other times it helps me control the chaos.”

There’s a ritualistic clarity to it—he’s not killing for love, for thrill, or revenge. He’s killing to manage the monster.

And yet, even with all this structure and logic—Dexter isn’t immune to the pleasure in the act:

“I’ve always had my dark passenger. And when he’s driving, I feel… alive, half sick with the thrill, complete.”

That’s a confession Joe would never allow himself to say out loud. But it’s true for both of them.

One is chillingly calm, the other disturbingly passionate. One kills out of emptiness. The other out of obsession.

Both make us uncomfortable—just in very different ways.

–“The drip never stops”

If you want to check out our other preview article: “Gaslighting Exposed: The Secret Tactics Used to Control and Confuse You”