Why Harry Morgan Didn't Adopt Dexter's Brother Brian Moser

Notice! This article contains SPOILERS for Dexter: Original Sin episode 4 and Dexter season 1.Dexter: Original Sin provided a lot more context about Harry Morgan's (Christian Slater) decision to adopt Dexter after Laura Moser's (Brittany Allen) death, but it didn't explain why he didn't adopt Brian Moser as well. As a prequel, the timeline of Original sin and Harry's flashbacks overlap with part of Dexter's story in the original show. This means Original sin delves deeper into Dexter's origins as a serial killer and his childhood when Laura was still alive. While the show answered a lot of questions about Dexter, it also raised some new ones.

Fans of the original Dexter We already know that Laura Moser was killed by Hector Estrada, a drug kingpin, and that Dexter and Brian were locked in a container full of her corpse and blood for days. This traumatic experience is often cited as the birth of Dexter's “dark passenger” and his desire to kill. Harry eventually found both boys in that container, but decided to adopt Dexter, not Brian. Dexter didn't take much time to explain Harry's decision, however, and Original sin he just started to explain why he didn't adopt Laura's two children.

Harry thought Brian was already too traumatized for him to save.

Harry believed that Dexter could block Laura's murder and that Brian was too old to forget

The main reason Harry didn't adopt Brian is because he thought Brian would never recover from Laura's death. Dexter was just a child when he was trapped in the container with Laura's body, but Brian was a few years older. Harry thought that Dexter would be able to repress the memory of his death, but Brian was too old to do so.. So instead of adopting him and trying to raise him like a normal child, Harry thought it best to put Brian in a mental hospital so they could try to treat the psychological damage from Laura's murder.

Original sin it also added a bit more nuance to Harry's decision not to adopt Brian. As Original sin Season 1, Episode 4 proved that Brian was already exhibiting psychopathic tendencies, such as ripping off lizards' tails when Laura was still alive. It's possible that Harry thought Brian was already a psychopath, and that Laura's death would only make him worse, and that Brian was institutionalized so he couldn't be a bad influence on Dexter.. Either way, Brian's bad behavior probably made it easier for Harry to believe he was too far gone to live a normal life.

Harry's decision to adopt Dexter and hospitalize Brian was also likely influenced by his own past. As Original sin episode 1 showed, Harry had a son named Junior Morgan who drowned while watching him. Junior was about the same age when he died as Dexter was when Harry recruited Laura as a criminal informant, so Harry may have seen Dexter as a replacement for his deceased biological son.. If that were the case, Harry may have committed Brian because he didn't look enough like Junior.

Was Harry wrong to only adopt Dexter after Laura Moser's death?

Brian would probably always become a murderer, but Harry could have helped him the same way he helped Dexter

Harry's decision to adopt just one of his siblings is controversial and it's unclear whether he made the right choice. On the one hand, Brian was already showing the first signs that he would become a murderer through the torture of animals. Laura's death only worsened the early warning signs, and he would eventually grow up to become the Ice Truck Killer. In this way, Harry was right about Brian and probably made the right decision by not bringing a psychopathic child into his home.. Harry had Dexter, Doris, and, shortly after, Debra to worry about, and Brian's violent tendencies would have threatened them all.

On the other hand, it's possible that Harry's decision not to adopt Brian was what sealed his fate. Growing up in a mental hospital couldn't have been easy for Brian, and he clearly resented it throughout his adulthood. In Dexter Season 1, Brian said this to Dexter:

“You were three years old, you were a little bird with a broken wing. [Harry] I wanted to make you better. But I, I could see it in your eyes. All they saw was a fucked up boy. They all did that, so they locked me up."

There's no way to know for sure, but growing up in the loving family that Harry and Doris could have provided may have been enough to prevent Brian from becoming a murderer. At the very least, he could have implemented Harry's Code for both Dexter and Brian, and could have prevented Brian from killing more than a dozen prostitutes. The idea of ​​nature versus nurture has always been central to Dexterand Brian was arguably an even better example of this than Dexter himself. No one knows who Brian Moser would have been if Harry Morgan had adopted him in Dexter: Original Sin.