Maria LaGuerta
From Dexter Wiki
| CHARACTER | ||
| Maria LaGuerta | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| First appearance | 1x01 "Pilot" | |
| Last appearance | Recurring | |
| Reason | ||
| Age | mid 40s | |
| Profession | Lieutenant of Homicide-Miami Metro PD | |
| Status | Alive | |
| Portrayed by | Lauren Velez | |
Contents |
[edit] Personality
LaGuerta is very ambitious and politically driven. When she lost her job to Esmee Pascal, LaGuerta began sleeping with Pascal's fiance Bertrand. Pascal began to become irrational, using department resources to investigate her fiance and acting out erratically. Pascal was eventually replaced, at which point LaGuerta stopped sleeping with Bertrand. Interestingly, LaGuerta has some qualms about what she was doing; she refused to speak ill of Pascal to Captain Matthews, showing that she knew what she was doing was wrong and that she felt guilty about it.
LaGuerta is not above making her subordinates feel intimidated. At the series' beginning, she had a sincere dislike for Debra which in later series has all but disappeared. In the first season, she made no secret of her attraction to Dexter, whom she flirted with constantly, to his discomfort (which after the 1st season it has yet been mentioned or suggested and sees him more as a good friend).
[edit] Season One
At the end of the first season, she is removed from command, but returns to her old job in season 2 once the new Lieutenant proves to be unstable.
Later it is revealed that LaGuerta was sleeping with the new Lieutenant's boyfriend, in an attempt to drive her to instability.
[edit] Season Two
When her friend and former partner James Doakes becomes the prime suspect in the Bay Harbor Butcher case, she tries to clear his name. She learns from a questionable source of two Special Forces missions Doakes took part in that directly conflicted with the deaths of two Butcher victims. However, Doakes is found dead in a seemingly accidental explosion, along with the body of drug dealer Jose Garza, and the case is closed. The evidence LaGuerta finds is ignored. After his death, LaGuerta starts a memorial fund for him, asking police officers for donations, and refuses to think of her deceased friend as a serial killer.
[edit] Season Three
As she recovers from the trauma of Doakes death, she leads an investigation into the murder of Oscar Prado, the brother of her ex-boyfriend Miguel Prado. She also develops a close relationship with lawyer Ellen Wolf, and is devastated when Wolf is found dead. But through the help of some personal investigation work, along with Dexter's help, she was able to discover that Miguel was the one who killed Wolf and usually confides in Dexter as he is the "only other one who knows". She becomes distraught when the Cuban community is thinking about naming a highway after Miguel and wants to find legal evidence to prove he killed Wolf, but Dexter is able to convince her that doing so would only hurt Miguel's family and the Cuban Community, and even then there is a high chance that won't prove anything and drops it.
[edit] Notes
- Her characterization in the show departs significantly from that in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, in which she is a shrill, manipulative woman whose only real objective is promotion within the department. Another departure from the books is that LaGuerta died near the end of the first book after being stabbed by Brian upon discovering Brian and Dexter standing over a restrained Deb.
