The worst thing about Hannibal being halted after season 3…
…is that it was clearly written without a complete ending in mind. That is not how you end a story. Will is clearly in the midst of a crisis. I just want to know what happens to him! That’s like going to your favourite restaurant for the first time and getting up halfway through entrée because the city’s municipality brought a crane to the restaurant to destroy the building! Where is my closure!!
I’ve seen a lot of discourse on Hannigram from Hannibal’s side, and I want to add my two cents from Will’s side: Hannibal is Will’s muse.
Will does not have effective barriers protecting the things that separate his “self” from the “outside”. He has to let some of it stain his psyche as long as he lives. This is why he doesn’t make eye-contact, doesn’t like socialising, doesn’t want to know the people around him and burden whatever pathos they come with.
And then the Chesapeake Ripper happens to him. He sees Cassie Boyle impaled on that decapitated antler head. The crows picking at her corpse, and the impact of this picture is so utterly traumatic and never ever seen before, that it manifests itself in the image of a feathered stag inside his mind.
Like ink staining his favourite shirt, it integrates itself into his psyche. The idea of who the Chesapeake Ripper is, his cruelty, his philosophies — Will instinctually understands. Yet this stag doesn’t harm him, but it’s always there. He can’t forget it. He forgets a lot of horrors, but he can’t let this stag go until he has to — when Hannibal cuts a piece of himself out of Will’s stomach.
Will even dreams of killing Hannibal using the stag, and he watches the stag die in the kitchen. Follows the stag around in the hospital, in Italy on the rail road. Even before meeting Hannibal’s true self, Will attaches himself to Hannibal through Cassie Boyle. And when he kills Randall and the prisoner in Castle Lecter, his tableus are inspired by the Chesapeake Ripper. When he kills Dolarhyde, he mimics Hannibal gutting him. Not anyone else, but only Hannibal.
It is poetic that Hannibal’s influence on Will isn’t entirely direct or related to psychic driving; but from the very first day, Hannibal has been someone unforgettable to Will, traumatic, permenant, comforting, and someone who has inspired Will when he performs nefarious acts in the name of righteous justice.
IT’S THE FACT THAT Hannibal sits down ANYBODY at the dining table before giving them food but he brings Will into his kitchen and serves him dessert on the kitchen counter like i know what u are hannibal lecter 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
Season 1 Hannibal and Bedelia therapy sessions are so funny to me in the same way a rough, clumsy child interacting with a tolerant, adult cat is, in that Hannibal just wants an intelligent person to vent to and Bedelia actually gives him really wise advice for making friends which he then pretends he’s considering before he goes home and does whatever he wants anyway. He sucks as a patient. He sucks as a doctor too. He just does what he wants and then tries to make code for time machine software on his little handbook. What is he????? Audacious. He’s like Howl from Howl’s moving castle (Re: Howl throwing a tantrum about Sophie changing his shampoo) except that Hannibal hates everybody but himself
Bedelia being morbidly curious is so fascinating in and of itself, especially the slow reveal of her perverse nature, however, re-watching season 1, I now realise that Hannibal must have chosen her as his “confidant” so to speak because he must have been confident that she’d never choose justice. She would always choose herself. Re: Her conversation with Jack, saying how Dr. Lecter was better company to Will and further driving the wedge between Jack and Will that Hannibal had been effortfully creating. It is so fun? So interesting, how such individualist sadists can complement each other’s depravity simply because they enjoy said depravity. It’s such refreshing character writing in a crime show.
OH GOSH, there is something so– something so romantic about Hannibal yielding to Will in terms of body language. Lowering himself next to Will’s chair so he can look up at Will– his hand on Will’s nape, always, as he cradles his head to Hannibal’s shoulder. Maybe even paternal? And just, someone like Hannibal who knows he is separated from the rest of humanity yielding to Will in all contexts is just, so, so, romantic.
