Showtime has confirmed that next season -- Season 8 -- will be the final one for "Dexter."

The series, starring Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter, has been Showtime's backbone since its debut in 2006. It won a Peabody Award and was nominated for 25 Emmy and 10 Golden Globe Awards.

Hall, who grew up in Raleigh, won a Golden Globe and a SAG award playing the "serial killer with a heart of gold."

"Dexter" has had its up-and-down periods, but last season was a return to greatness, with Dexter's step-sister Deb finally learning his true identity -- and making some surprising adjustments to that new reality.

Hall told Entertainment Weekly that he was happy for the show to get a proper wrap-up: “There has to be an end game. Once Deb found out, it felt like we were moving toward a place where the world as Dexter knew it would end.”

The final season of "Dexter" starts on Showtime on June 30.

Check out the sneak peek of Season 8 just released by Showtime.

Remember the cliffhanger at the end of last season's "Dexter?" You know, Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) finding Dexter (Michael C. Hall) with the things doing the thing to that person? Well, how does Deb react? How does Dexter explain himself? The series doesn't return to Showtime until the end of September, but here's a sneak peek at what happens right after Deb walks in on her naughty brother. Warning, though: This will only make you want to see more!!

Season 6 of Showtime's "Dexter" returns tonight with a fresh and freaky theme and a compelling new list of guest stars.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of this show. Even when I think I've grown ambivalent, it only takes one episode to pull me back into serial killer Dexter Morgan's (Michael C. Hall) tense and exhausting life of baby-raising, blood spatter analysis, and bad guy-killing.

The new season adds Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos as religious zealots who are trying to ... actually, I watched three episodes and I'm still not sure what they are trying to do, but they are most definitely up to no good.

Also in the cast this season is Mos Def, who is credited on the show simply as Mos (when did that happen?). Mos plays Brother Sam, an ex-con who has supposedly found religion, but Dexter is skeptical. Is Brother Sam "tending his flock" to keep them out of trouble or running some kind of scam? (The part brings to mind Walton Goggins as Boyd in FX's "Justified.")

"Dexter" returns for its fifth season tonight, picking up right where things left off in season four. After being reminded once again of Dexter's gruesome bathroom discovery, we see him on his knees in his front yard, clutching his baby boy in his bloody hands while blue lights flash all around. Our vigilante serial killer is shaken to his core and so stunned by Rita's murder that he mutters, "It was me" to the police who first arrive on the scene.

But as guilty as Dexter looks -- and boy is he ever a perfect suspect for something like this -- we all know it wasn't him but Trinity who did the deed. But like Dexter, we also know it was because of Dexter's dangerous relationship with Trinity that Rita was targeted, and that is what has our usually composed protagonist unraveling in the premiere.

Michael C. Hall is truly great as the dazed, zombie-like Dexter, who stumbles around in the aftermath of Rita's murder processing his guilt and flashing back to memories of when they first met (giving Julie Benz a chance to reprise her role). Dexter has always known he would eventually cause his loved ones pain, but imagined it would be the pain of hurt and public humiliation when he was finally caught, not that anyone would actually have to die. More acutely than ever before, Dexter must reckon with the inevitability that his darkness will destroy the innocent people who love him.