We've come to expect penultimate episodes of 'Dexter' seasons to be heart-pounding and intense, but the second-to-last episode of Season 6 raised the stakes of serial-killing suspense. In 'Talk to the Hand,' Dexter thwarted a poison gas attack aimed at Miami Metro and lost a showdown with Travis that ended with him set out to sea, surrounded by a ring of fire. It also opened a pandora's box of step-sibling sexual tension when Deb's therapist suggested she might be in love with Dexter.

To help bring some perspective to such a dizzying episode, AOL TV has an interview-cap with Dexter Morgan himself, Michael C. Hall. We discussed tonight's episode, the developments of Season 6 and where 'Dexter' may be headed in its final two seasons. Hall offered his thoughts on the Wormwood attack, the Gellar twist, and the new, strange wrinkle in his complex relationship with Jennifer Carpenter. Read on for the interview.

Last week's 'Dexter' twist revealed that Professor Gellar, who we thought was the mastermind of the Doomsday Killer's apocalyptic murder spree, was actually a frozen figment of his disciple Travis' demented imagination. 'Ricochet Rabbit' re-focused our attention on Travis, who emerged as a a fully-formed 'Dexter' villain, a worthy adversary for Miami Metro's own Bay Harbor Butcher.

Travis can no longer be seen as a confused, kind-hearted kid who fell under the influence of a deranged cult-leader -- he's a dangerous, deluded psychopath who's just as evil and crazy as we thought Gellar was. He spent much of this episode in the midst of a full-blown psychotic hallucination, talking to Gellar like he had blocked out killing him three years ago. We also learned he was diagnosed psychotic at an early age and probably murdered his parents. It's now clear just how how warped Travis' brain has been all along, and how good a job Colin Hanks has done of portraying what it can look like when a crazy person latches onto a violent religious ideology.

Dexter and Brian went on reunion road-trip to in this episode, but 'Nebraska' was less about brotherly bonding and more about Dexter on the brink. With the ghost of his brother Brian, otherwise known as the Ice Truck Killer, acting as the devil on his shoulder, urging him to embrace his darkest instincts, we saw just how easily our dutiful serial killer of serial killers can devolve into an unhinged vigilante on a killing spree.

It was jarring how unstable Dexter seemed in this episode. Hearing voices in his head, he abruptly left his son, job and relatively stable life to drive across state-lines to avenge the double-murder of the wife and daughter of a man he himself killed, the Trinity Killer. Oh what a tangled web we weave when the Ice Truck, Trinity, and Doomsday Killers play crucial roles in the same 'Dexter' episode.