For better or worse, Dexter is perhaps best remembered today as one of the quintessential examples of a show starting out with incredible promise before tumbling off a cliff in its final seasons. Yet in spite of a hilariously awful finale that somehow made the Game of Thrones closing chapter look like the Red Wedding episode in comparison, the first four seasons of Dexter remain rock-solid and serve as a good reminder of why many once believed it could go down as one of the all-time greats.

Perhaps nowhere was this promise more evident than in the show’s second season, which saw the titular serial killer try to cover his tracks after the Miami police department uncovers the bodies of his previous victims. As the walls close in around Dexter while his colleagues search for the “Bay Harbor Butcher," he forms an unexpected kinship with a new character — Lila, a recovering drug addict who holds dark secrets of her own and almost proves more than Dexter can handle.

How Does Dexter Get Involved With Lila?

Early in Season 2 of Dexter, the title character finds himself under suspicion from his girlfriend, Rita Bennett. Though his “Dark Passenger” remains elusive to her, she starts to believe that he’s a drug addict and sends him to a series of Narcotics Anonymous meetings. At these meetings, Dexter meets Lila Tournay, a former meth addict who’s able to see through his facade and senses a kindred spirit. She quickly becomes his sponsor and starts regularly spending time with him.

While initially wary of Lila, Dexter soon finds himself growing close to her as she starts to help him make peace with his darker side (the show always worked best when it treated his urges to kill as a sort of addiction). Partway through the season, Dexter learns that his mother’s murderer, Santiago Jimenez, is still alive, and while he initially plans to kill him in revenge, Lila instead helps him to work towards a form of closure. Thus, Dexter becomes convinced that she can become a possible salvation by helping him control his urges and gives Michael C. Hall some of his best acting material.

But things quickly take a darker turn. Rita dumps Dexter, believing he’s having an affair, and Dexter himself finds himself concerned about Lila’s own dark side. Sensing that her new love is starting to grow distant from her, Lila tries to win back his attention by deliberately setting fire to her own art loft and feigning innocence. She also contacts Jimenez, who then tries to kill Dexter, as she believes times of crisis can help them grow even closer together.

Nonetheless, Dexter realizes Lila is behind all this, vindicating his worst fears, and he’s forced to kill Jimenez. As Lila continues to obsessively follow him, he finally orders her to stay away from him and his loved ones, promptly getting back together with Rita. But even this doesn’t prove enough to keep Lila away, and she continues escalating things to the degree that by the end of season two, she’s become the year’s full-on antagonist.

Dexter Season 2 Sees Lila Break Bad

Wanting revenge, Lila follows Dexter to his job at the police department, and she soon seduces and starts dating Detective Angel Batista. Even while Dexter warns his friend that she can’t be trusted, Batista goes all-in on the fling and spends an evening with her, during which she gets him drunk before taking roofies. The next day, she accuses him of date rape, and when a furious Dexter confronts her, she promises to drop the charges if he returns to her.

Dexter’s sister Debra immediately grows suspicious of Lila and runs a background check on her. She soon learns that her real name is Lila West and that she has a history of criminal behavior and is living illegally in the country on an expired visa. All of this unfolds as the police department’s search for the “Bay Harbor Butcher” reaches a head, during which Dexter plans to frame Sergeant James Doakes (long suspicious of our “hero”) for his crimes while he holds him hostage in an abandoned cabin in the Everglades. However, as Dexter contemplates whether he should take the chance to escape the consequences of his crimes by framing an innocent man, Lila enters the picture once again.

In one of the show's best episodes, Lila steals Dexter’s GPS and follows the coordinates to the cabin, where she meets the imprisoned Doakes. Upon learning that Dexter is indeed the Bay Harbor Butcher, Lila becomes intent on protecting the figure of her obsession at all costs, and she sets fire to the cabin, killing Doakes and successfully framing him for the murders. Realizing that Lila is in fact the worst possible influence for him, even as he’s now evaded consequences, Dexter arranges for a meeting with her, claiming he wants to run away with her, but he secretly has murderous intentions.

However, Lila deduces his true plans and kidnaps Rita’s children, Astor and Cody, luring Dexter to her art loft before she sets it ablaze with him and the children still inside. They manage to escape, and some time after this, Dexter tracks Lila down to Paris, where he kidnaps and finally kills her, though not before thanking her for helping him to finally understand who he really is. While, admittedly, Lila’s actions in the finale kept Dexter from having to truly face the consequences of his actions (a problem that would become especially pronounced in the last few seasons), seeing Lila get brought to justice still remains hugely satisfying.

Lila Was One of Dexter’s Standout Foes

Dexter had a number of standout villains over the course of its eight-season run, but Lila was clearly one of the best. As a drug addict, she functioned as a sort of mirror image to Dexter, struggling to keep her own urges under control before slipping off the deep end, while urging him to embrace his darkest side. The fact that she proved one of his most personal foes, affecting his relationship with Rita and killing Doakes, one of his most significant rivals, only made her feel that much more effective.

She admittedly can’t hold a candle to John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer (Dexter’s best foe in Dexter’s best season), but she proved key to one of Season 2’s best elements — the possibility that our conflicted villain protagonist could become a full-on villain and lose his last shred of humanity. Dexter is streaming on Netflix.