It's been a while since Right was a huge hit on Showtime, but even though it's been over a decade since this once-great series had its initial (disappointing) finale, fans are still having nightmares about one of its scariest villains, Arthur Mitchell, the Trinity Killer, masterfully (and yes, horrifically) brought to life by actor John Lithgow.
After Right ended, Entertainment Tonight interviewed longtime fans of the series (and the cast), and the Trinity Killer was picked as the most impressive and definitive villain of the series, hands down. While much of that notoriety no doubt has to do with John Lithgow's incredible and menacing performance, which earned him both a Golden Globe and an Emmy, the Trinity Killer character was a complex killing machine that captured the public's imagination and deserves a closer look. Here are the chilling details that led to the making By Dexter the biggest villain, the Trinity Killer.
Is The Trinity Killer inspired by a real serial killer?
His real life inspiration was as much of a monster as he was.
Dennis Rader, the man who history would infamously call BTK (“to tie up,” “to torture,” “to kill”), was born in 1954 and, for the most part, lived a relatively quiet existence as a family man in Kansas before becoming one of the world’s most prolific serial killers. Similar to how Arthur Mitchell is introduced in season 4 of RightRader was a pillar of his community and a loving family man. He was also the very definition of a wolf in sheep's clothing..
BTK began his killing spree in 1974 and went undetected for years. It is believed that between 1974 and 1991, Dennis Rader killed at least ten people around Wichita, Kansas. His primary targets were families and the ages of his victims ranged from 62-year-olds to young children as young as 9. Rader did not have as rigid a pattern of killing as Arthur Mitchell would later do, but he did want a lot of attention. He got his nickname “BTK” after sending several letters to a television station, admitting to his crimes and suggesting that they call him that.
The most absurd thing is that Dennis Rader did not stop killing in 1991 because he was caught. Instead, he had to refrain from pursuing his “passions” because his commitments as a father, husband, and community organizer got in the way of his nocturnal activities.
The authorities' case subsequently cooled, but was reopened in 2004 when Rader began sending letters again. The following year, Rader was arrested and admitted to over 55 “projects,” his word for potential victims he had stalked during his “inactive” years. The many revelations that came from this arrest turned BTK into one of the most notorious killers in history and provided much-needed inspiration for Arthur Mitchell.
How did Arthur Mitchell become the Trinity Killer?
He wasn't born in obscurity, but he was definitely baptized in blood.
Now that we understand what formed the foundation of Arthur Mitchell, let’s explore how this fictional madman became the Trinity Killer. Born in Tampa, Florida, Arthur lived uneventfully in a beautiful two-story house. Then, at age 10, he stumbled upon his sister Vera showering and stood paralyzed in the doorway. When Vera realized she was being watched, she slipped and fell, shattering the glass shower doors and severing her femoral artery, bleeding to death.
After this devastating event, Arthur's family attempted to reinvent themselves by moving to Miami. There, Arthur's mother, Marsha, fell into depression and committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in 1960. This left Arthur all alone with his alcoholic father, Henry, who was both physically and verbally abusive. Four years later, Arthur bludgeoned his father to death in an alley near his favorite bar. While Arthur's role in this murder has never been confirmed, it seems almost impossible to believe that it was anyone else.
After graduation, Arthur became a high school teacher. He soon met Lorraine Hill and they had a daughter named Christine. Unfortunately, the marriage ended and Arthur rarely saw Christine after that. A few years later, Arthur met a new woman named Sally and had two children, Jonah and Rebecca. Around the same time, he joined a charity called Four Walls One Heart that traveled across the country building homes for the needy, which Arthur would use as an alibi to hide his many crimes.
Arthur Mitchell didn't stop killing after unintentionally causing the death of his sister and then murdering his father with his own hands; instead, he embraced the demon within himself by instigating a series of murderous cycles hidden behind a wall of complex schedules and routines.. Seemingly a decent man on the surface, Arthur has always been an abuser at heart, capable of frightening and harming anyone, including his own family. As terrifying as that may be, the lengths to which Arthur was willing to go to feed his dark passenger proved to be the scariest of all.
How does Trinity's kill cycle work?
This cycle of violence continues to turn.
When audiences first meet Arthur Mitchell in season four of RightThey don't know it, but the number of his victims has already exceeded 200, all killed during the Trinity Killer's 69 murder cycles since 1976. FBI Agent Frank Lundy deduced Arthur's pattern of three separate murders following one another, and as such, began referring to him as the Trinity Killer. What Lundy didn't know (and what Dexter later discovered) was that Mitchell had a hidden fourth part for each cycle.This is how Mitchell cycles worked.
Arthur Mitchell's cycle always follows the same order. It must begin with the murder of a ten-year-old boy to represent Arthur's loss of innocence at that age. At this stage of his “trial”, Arthur would kidnap a young boy, who would then be forced to wear pajamas and play with a toy train, representing the last moment of Arthur's life when he would ever feel truly happy. The boy would then be drugged and taken to a Four Walls One Heart construction site, where they would be buried alive in wet concrete.
Then came the second phase, in which a young woman had her femoral artery cut in a bathtub, to reproduce the tragedy that occurred when Arthur was ten years old. As Arthur grew older, he developed an additional rhythm in this phase, in which he forced women to watch themselves bleed by holding a mirror up to their faces.
The third part of Arthur's cycle was to recreate his mother's death. To do this, Arthur would find depressed and damaged mothers of two sons, whom he would then gaslight into taking their own lives in the same manner as his mother, by jumping from a great height. Once the woman has done so, Arthur visits the body and grieves as if it were his mother, even going so far as to refer to the deceased individual as “Mom.”
The final and (thankfully) final phase of the Trinity Killer cycle features Arthur's father. Before going out to hunt down a potential victim, Arthur drinks himself senseless to the point of hallucinating his father sitting across from him. Once this pre-murder ritual is complete, Arthur goes to a bar where he berates an unknown patron for beating him senseless. After recreating his father's violent ways, Arthur then tracks down a pre-selected father of two and beats him to death with a blunt object, similar to how he no doubt murdered his own in an alley behind a bar.
During the fourth season of Right, our titular serial killer discovers Arthur's true nature and does what he can to stop it. However, when he prevents Arthur from killing Scott Smith (and starting a new cycle of killings), this unintentionally causes an abbreviated form of the cycle in which the Trinity Killer kills Dexter's wife (and mother of two), Rita Morgan, leaving her son, Harrison, in a pool of his mother's blood. This, in turn, leaves a lasting effect on the series that becomes the true legacy of the Trinity Killer.
What is the legacy of the Trinity Killer?
A Taste for Murder Begins at Home
Arthur Mitchell meets his end when Dexter Morgan kills him with a hammer and then throws his body into the ocean. What Dexter doesn't know is that this death is part of Mitchell's plan to take his own life in a way that reflects the final phase of his typical killing cycle. Even worse, Dexter has no idea of the carnage Arthur has caused. When he arrives home, he finds his wife murdered and his son sitting in a pool of blood.
As far as the FBI knows, Arthur Mitchell has escaped, so while they continue to search for him, they put Mitchell's family into the Witness Protection Program and moved them to Nebraska. Two years later, in the season six episode titled “Nebraska,” Arthur's wife and daughter, Rebecca, are found murdered, leaving his son, Jonah, as the only surviving family member. Knowing that Arthur is dead, Dexter travels to Nebraska to find out if Jonah might be as dangerous as his father was.
While confronting Jonah, Dexter discovers that Rebecca committed suicide due to the abuse she suffered from her mother. As punishment for what he had done, Jonah beats his mother to death but also expresses great remorse, so Dexter decides to let him live. For a while, it seemed like this might be the end of the Trinity Killer's legacy as Right concluded the series a few years later, after the eighth and final season.
Then, in 2021, came the arrival of Dexter: New BloodSet ten years after the events of the original series, this spin-off saw Harrison, now a teenager, discover the truth about his mother's death at the hands of Arthur Mitchell. He even has a flashback to the moment his mother was killed and sees the Trinity Killer emerge from the bathtub, smile at him and say:
“Don't worry, dad will be back soon.”
This scene implies that Harrison was so traumatized by seeing Mitchell kill his mother that he developed a dark passenger similar to Dexter's.. When the details of his mother's murder are revealed to him, Harrison becomes more unstable and begins to hurt people. Dexter does his best to teach his son his “code” of killing only the worst in humanity, but by the end of the season, it becomes clear to Dexter that he is as imperfect as any other killer, and he begs his son to kill him. Harrison agrees and Right It ends with the death of the series' beloved but morally questionable central character.
Of course, with the recent news that actor Michael C. Hall will be returning to the role of Dexter Morgan, Dexter's apparent “death” may not be as final as it seemed. Regardless of where the creative minds behind the Right When the franchise decides to revisit this series and its characters, it's hard to imagine that they will ever dream of inventing a villain as terrifying and unforgettable as Arthur Mitchell, the Trinity Killer.