Hi, you headcanons rocked my world! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Do you think that Hannibal intended to frame Will from early on or did he only do it after he was at risk of being exposed? And if it is the latter then it makes me wonder what was Hannibal's original plan in hypnotizing and terrorizing Will. The goal I think was to lead him to his becoming. But I would have loved to see how that would have played out. How much was Wills thoughts and actions affected by Hannibal's conditioning and what was his own. I hate that we didn't see more of what Hannibal actually did in his light therapy sessions. In the end Will got to come to his becoming on his own terms. Sorry for the incoherent rambling. Really I just came to thank you😂
Hello! Funny you mention, I was just thinking about writing on this exact topic.
No, I don’t think Hannibal was planning on framing Will from the get go and if I’m not mistaken, Mads confirmed this back in the day.
I think he was genuinely curious at first, but soon became more emotionally involved, as Bedelia points out he was “obsessed”.
I think with Abigail involved and Will showing increasing signs of moral ambiguity (“evidently not well enough”), Hannibal became infatuated with the fantasy of a family and a partner in literal crime.
The issue was that Hannibal ran out of time with Will’s becoming and due to his lack of planning and living in the moment, he miscalculated how long it would take for Will to authentically Become and be truly on his side. This is why he looks so incredibly hurt when Will points the gun at him in the kitchen, at the end of season one. He had hopes that, because Will showed some type of ambiguity and protectiveness towards Abigail, that he would receive the same.
But I do think that regardless the prison was planned or not, Hannibal was very satisfied at first because Will was like a bird, and he had finally caged him. Will made Hannibal feel out of control, something foreign to him, and also terrifying. By caging Will, literally, he felt like he would have more control by means of symbolic association (he is in a literal cage therefore I have my feelings for him caged as well).
In the end of that arc, Will tells us the meaning of it all perfectly, “he wants to be my friend”, he says when Chilton asks him why is he free. This essentially means that Hannibal realized that he needed Will to come to him out of his own volition, in order for the connection to feel authentic. So he set the bird free, if it comes back, it truly belongs to him.