Debra Morgan

In 1991, Debra is a teenager who butts heads with her father and feels Harry only has eyes for Dexter. Not knowing what ties them together, she feels left out. In the end, she announces she wants to be a cop like her dad, and the family celebrates.

Years later, Debra works undercover in Vice and dreams of Homicide. With her brother's tips on the Ice Truck Killer case, she gets the job. She starts dating Rudy Cooper, who turns out to be the killer himself. Rudy kidnaps her, and Dexter saves her. She comes out of it shaken but alive, and her spot in Homicide is secured.

In S2, Debra joins FBI agent Frank Lundy's team and gets involved with him. When Lundy returns to Miami in S4, they're both shot in an ambush: he dies, she survives. In S5, she catches Dexter and Lumen behind plastic sheeting without seeing their faces and lets them go.

Later she makes lieutenant over Batista. In therapy, she realizes she's in love with Dexter. Looking for him at an abandoned church, she sees her brother drive a knife into Travis Marshall.

Dexter confesses everything. Debra tries to change him, then agrees to protect him. When LaGuerta gets close to the truth and Dexter sets up her death, Debra has to choose between them, and she shoots LaGuerta.

Through it all, she runs the Homicide unit and never trusts Hannah McKay, her brother's new love.

Guilt drives her off the force. She becomes a private investigator, sinks into drugs and even drives her car into a lake with Dexter inside, then swims back to save him. They make peace. Just before Dexter's escape, Oliver Saxon shoots her; she has a stroke after surgery and is left brain dead. Dexter takes her off life support and carries her body out to sea.

Ten years later, the Debra Dexter sees and hears exists only in his head. She nags him, curses at him and pushes him to protect Harrison. She isn't a ghost. She's the shape Dexter's conscience took after he lost his sister.

In Jeff Lindsay's books she's Deborah. Jennifer Carpenter won a Saturn Award for the role and was married to Michael C. Hall from 2008 to 2011.