Why do you think Hannibal can be okay with the absence of people he likes i.e has an affection for? But he cannot bear the absence of Will? He is fine with killing Alana, Margot, Abigail, Bedelia, Jack and imo he liked Anthony too. Whereas Mad's and Bryan have said that if he ended up killing Will he would regret it forever. He cannot kill Will even When Will threatens him in Twotl. Why does he seem to miss Will so so much when they are apart whereas he never seems to miss other people he likes even when they are apart or even dead?

Hannibal is not… unfeeling. He experiences emotions more than the average person, but how he chooses to live out those emotions is where it gets freaky. We see the death of a friend or someone we feel affection for as an end point. To Hannibal, death is not an end point, especially because he is eating them. He kills them, transforms them through cooking, and he consumes them. Therefore he has changed them. Essentially, he is exerting absolute control over them, because the thing that is most precious to almost every person is their life, and the the thing that makes them most desperate is death. Hannibal himself is not like this; he has accepted death, and therefore killing him physically won’t actually kill his spirit, but this is another conversation altogether.

“Will” vs. “Other people” is crude, because the feeling Hannibal gets from eating Bedelia must not be the same feeling he gets from eating Alana, as they both have a different role in Hannibal’s life. But the reason Hannibal won’t eat Will is, in my opinion, because Will is more valuable to him alive than dead. He wants Will’s company more than anything in his life. And others people’s company? Not so much. They aren’t that interesting.