What Hannibal does is not coercion. It is persuasion.
Hannibal persuaded Will to kill him.
We often think of Hannibal as a man devoted to life, one who indulges in every pleasure, who immerses himself in beauty, who explicitly rejects suicide, even declaring in the final episode, “Suicide is the enemy.” Yet, what we truly witness is a man who constantly flirts with death. He is too self-possessed, too vain to end his own life directly, but he is also not so attached to life that he avoids its risks like most of us.
And then Will entered his world. Love entered his world.
Before that, Hannibal had very little tethering him to existence beyond frivolous indulgences and superficial pursuits. But once love touched his life, truly touched it, the thought of living without it became unbearable. And so, he discarded his life entirely, surrendering himself with the full knowledge that it would likely lead to a death sentence. Even when he was granted an insanity plea, he rejected it. He wanted to die.
But even before that.
So many moments where Will nearly killed him, and Hannibal never fought it. He accepted it, welcomed it. He stood before Will not as Judas but as Jesus, embracing his fate with open arms and a smile. Because oh, what a sweet release it would be to die in the hands of an angel, the most beautiful angel of death. Finally here to set him free, to take this hollow existence and make it mean something.
In the end, he could never kill himself.
But he would never stop love from doing it.