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John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer on ‘Dexter’ Still Gives Us Nightmares Eight Years Later!

While many would argue Dexter Morgan was the biggest villain on Dexter, John Lithgow's portrayal of The Trinity Killer is very close to the top. Eleven years after the premiere of the Showtime series, we are still having nightmares thanks to Arthur Mitchell.

Dubbed one of the greatest TV villains of all time by Rolling Stone, John admits he had fun playing the serial killer. "I think by far the scariest scene of the whole 12 episodes is Thanksgiving dinner when he's being the gentle patriarch: 'We always like to say what we’re thankful for,' and you just know this is not going to end well. I even chuckled when I say, 'Well, nobody said they were thankful for me,'" he told the LA Times in 2009. "That tension between his nice outward demeanor and whatever's boiling inside him is really disturbing."

He continued, "There's a sort of giddy rush to that. It's also a very funny show. It follows all the rules of comedy. Dexter is constantly revealing these ironic asides that are just hilarious. It's one of the things that makes it possible to have a hero who's a serial killer is that it's redeemed by comedy."

However, if we're talking about villains from Dexter we can't forget about Dexter's long-lost brother Brian Moser aka The Ice Truck KIller or the Doomsday Killers, played by Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos. And as to whether Michael C. Hall thinks Dexter Morgan is ultimately a bad guy, he has sympathy for the Bay Harbor Butcher.

"Arguably the tragedy of Dexter is that it’s not his homicidal behavior that’s gotten the people in his life in trouble but it’s his appetite to play at becoming a human being — his desire to have real relationships," he told EW. "I guess a lesson that’s emerged is that you can’t have your cake and kill it too."

Keep scrolling to see John Lithgow, Michael C. Hall, and more villains then and now!