Five years ago, the final episode of Hannibal aired and I was a wreck. Social media exploded with screams of HANNIGRAM!
My friend Drinkingcocoa asked a fateful question:
B, for those of us who have never watched the show, can you summarize the squee from the finale?
So I wrote for two hours & this was the result. Enjoy a fan’s perspective from August 29, 2015, Hannigram Eve.
//
Hannibal & Will, hoo boy. I wrote you a fucking novel, I’M SORRY.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SO MANY SPOILERS IF YOU EVER WANT TO WATCH HANNIBAL
Also there are gifs with blood in them, if you are not into looking at blood!!
For anyone who doesn’t know what the show is about — Will Graham works for the FBI as a serial killer profiler essentially. He’s put on the case of the Chesapeake Ripper (Hannibal). At the same time, he’s seeing Hannibal for his therapy without knowing he’s the killer & Hannibal plays the FBI every single second of that first season. There’s a palpable tension between them (there’s a moment where Hannibal literally sniffs Will & Will asks, “did you justsmell me?”), but it was there in the way that … Idk, like the subtext that shippers thrive on. You barely needed to put your slash goggles on to see what was shooting between them.
There was a girl in the first season (Abigail Hobbs) that Will saves from her murderous, cannibal father by shooting him. Hannibal ends up kidnapping her, faking her death, etc. because he wants to build a ‘family’ with Will. All the while, Will has dreams about fishing with her, adopting her. By mid-season, they are essentially her two fathers — in an extremely twisted fashion, as is the norm on Hannibal. Fuller gave a lot of interviews during this second season that was very encouraging to fans, things like, yes, Hannibal is interested in Will, Will is interested in him, they’re two parts of a whole, etc. One of my favorite parts of the entire series is the S2 finale — Will finds out Abigail is alive (Hannibal made him eat her ear in an earlier ep to make him believe her dead)(yes this show is fucked up). Not only is she alive, she’s in Hannibal’s kitchen, Hannibal has just seriously wounded a major character & he proceeds to slice Abigail ear to ear in a symbolic killing of the lamb to say ‘Hey Will, you sold me out to the FBI instead of becoming part of this family with me.’ He stabs Will in the stomach & it’s an embrace in the most aching way — it’s really hard to describe if you haven’t seen it!
Like this is how they shot that scene:
This is right before he stabs him:
Then he guts him really violently:
They’ve spent the season building Hannibal up as this villain (which he definitely is, don’t ever believe he isn’t), but they BETRAYAL he shows here, the ‘I’m doing this because you did this to us’ fucked up mentality of it, it’s so intense & you sympathize & you have a second of, yeah Will! Why didn’t you just run away with him when you had the chance!?
Cause that’s the theme of the three seasons — Will has two sides to him: the fragile minded FBI agent from season one, who’s called in because his empathy is so strong he can recreate & walk around in his mind palace the scenes of brutal (bizarre & beautiful) murders. Then, the side that Hannibal sees the potential in — the killer like him, who embraces absolute darkness, rejects ordinary, rude people, runs away with him to be murder husbands.
Hannibal is extremely jealous, possessive, deranged in the way he pursues Will & it’s 100% on screen — no subtext needed. It’s also 1000000% abusive. He frames Will as a murderer, has him locked away with irrefutable evidence at the end of S1. He nearly ends him in S2 because they betrayed each other. He manipulated the ever-loving JESUS out of Will in the first season — like Will was literally losing his mind, but he was Will’s psychiatrist, then a physician of sorts & Will trusted him so completely & Hannibal lied about how sick Will was.
Will starts to figure everything out — he goes to Hannibal’s house in S1 (really close to the finale, if it wasn’t the actual finale) to confront him, but he’s having seizures. He brought a gun to end this, to let his ‘white/good’ side win & he’s so sick he can’t even tell Hannibal no.
^^^ that’s right before he has a seizure while standing up.
So the catch phrase of that season was ‘Somebody Save Will Graham’ while the theme of S2 was ‘No One Needs to Save Will Graham’ — he knew what had happened to him, what Hannibal had done to him & everyone else. He comes back to the audience as Hannibal’s equal, as someone who is more than willing to sacrifice human life, look the other way, hurt people in order to get his means done. You can see the hearts growing in Hannibal’s eyes, the more crazy things that Will does to reach him.
Then….. then we have S3.
It’s a pursuit. Hannibal stabbed Will & left a trail of bodies behind him while jetting off to Italy to assume someone else’s identity — the FBI knew everything about him, so he had to go. As a surrogate spouse, he takes Bedelia (beautiful Gillian Anderson) instead of Will like he had planned. I won’t get into the weird weird weird relationship of Bedelia & Hannibal but just know that it’s completely about Will & Hannibal. You are made to believe that Bedelia is there against her will, that Hannibal could kill her. But it’s like he’s trying to build her into Will — the killing partner — in a much shorter amount of time & while she’s just as fucked up as either of them, she’s just not the same.
She confronts Hannibal again & again — ‘What about Will Graham? Have you come to terms with your feelings for Will Graham?’ — they take the romance between Will & Hannibal from subtext in S1, to every Hannigram fan holding their breath in S2, then S3 it is fucking balls to the wall. I can speak for myself in saying each episode felt like a goddamn gift. It was like, they’re doing this. They’re going here. Hannibal is in love with Will & it’s not subtext, they’re not baiting us, they’re not going to take this away from us.
Will finds Hannibal in Italy, after exploring his childhood home. Hannibal knows what he wants — he knows what he’s wanted from S1. But Will is finally starting to see what Hannibal wants too, to see what might be possible for himself. The FBI, the Italian police & Mason Verger (a very wealthy fucked up pig farmer who Hannibal made eat his own face) are after Hannibal but Will finds him in an art gallery, because they are so in sync that fucking WILL CAN JUST FIND HIM IN AN ART GALLERY.
Real quotes from this scene:
Hannibal: If I saw you everyday, forever, Will, I would remember this time.
Will: Strange seeing you here in front of me. Been staring at afterimages of you in places you haven’t been in years.
Please also know that Hannibal (a fabulous artist) has been drawing a Renaissance painting, but he added Will’s face into the artwork. Just casual, like oh yeah, hey Will, haven’t seen you in a while, I’ve been sitting her in Florence drawing you.
This scene leads to them walking out & Will attempts to stab Hannibal, his good side taking over again, but he’s shot by someone who looked after Hannibal from afar (another plot line). Hannibal proceeds to tie Will up, along with Jack, at a dinner table, drugs them & then starts to cut into Will’s head with a hand saw before the Italian police show up & since they’ve been paid off, they take them to Verger where they both are going to be tortured to death.
A deal is made between Alana (a major character, too much to explain right now) & Hannibal (while he’s tied up to be killed) that if she sets him free, he has to promise to save Will. Verger is preparing Will at that very moment to undergo a face swap surgery & steal Will’s face from him. Hannibal makes sure that doesn’t happen in properly grotesque revenge.
Hannibal carries an unconscious Will back to Will’s home, Will wakes up to Hannibal at his bedside & in the fashion of someone truly in love, Hannibal gives Will one more chance. He offers & Will says he wants to have no thoughts or contact with Hannibal ever again. Hannibal, visible hurt, but saying nothing gets up & leaves.
THEN THEY PULL THIS SHIT.
Jack pulls up with a bunch of FBI in tow that night, Will comes out like ??? & fucking hANNIBAL TURNS HIMSELF INTO THE FBI & SAYS THIS
THIS IS THE LOOK HE GIVES WILL:
He was free to go — free to run off & assume another identity but he turns. himself. in. so . will. can . see . him.
If you guys saw my snaps from that night, it was an extremely emotional moment, as it showed just how deep Hannibal was in it for Will. Like with all things Hannibal does, he has ulterior motives, back up plans, ways to manipulate, but in this moment — I really think he just did it for Will. He was hurt from what Will said to him, so he made an emotional grand gesture that the stunned Will can’t even answer or articulate while he stands on his porch & watches Hannibal get arrested.
That was the mid-part of the season — three years pass & Hannibal is in the iconic glass case with his drawings & his books. Will got married, has a wife & a step-son. He’s not working for the FBI anymore — his ‘good’ side is at peace, no more night terrors, no more empathetic mind palace trips to murder scenes.
But there’s a new killer that the FBI can’t figure out — the Tooth Fairy, or the Red Dragon as he later is called (played so fabulously by Richard Armitage) is out there murdering whole families & Jack needs Will’s mind. Will goes reluctantly, he knows what this work does to him & he basically gives up his ‘good’ side in order to see Hannibal again, delve back into the world of serial killers in the face value name of helping people, but he revels in it while fighting against it. He’s so changed from S1 — Will is dark. Hannibal even calls him his ‘cunning boy’ at one point because Will withholds truths, twists things to his advantage at so many points. He still outwardly shows contempt for everything Hannibal, yet he keeps coming back to him.
Hannibal sends the Red Dragon after Will’s impostor family, they survive, but Will is really opening his eyes. He’s having sassy therapy sessions with Bedelia, the fake bride of Bluebeard — the one that wasn’t good enough. She calls Will the last bride of Bluebeard & Will finally gets that hit in the face moment — “Is Hannibal in love with me?” THEN WE GET THIS??
It’s blatantly addressed. This doesn’t happen. Aren’t we supposed to get the rug pulled out from under us? Aren’t the creators supposed to be making fun of us?? Are they making fun of us?
& the beauty of it — the answer was NO. They weren’t making fun of us — they were giving us some of the best television — the most FULFILLING television I’ve ever had the pleasure & privilege of witnessing.
The finale: *deep breath*
The Red Dragon is coming after Hannibal & Will after they escape a police escort. They know he is coming — Will set this up & Hannibal knows about it. The Dragon thinks that Will is going to watch while Hannibal dies, but attempts to pull a gun on the Dragon while he isn’t looking & it results in what is basically pornography for Will & Hannibal.
They tag-team murder husband style take down the Dragon, sustaining multiple wounds & gunshots, all the while silently communicating through looks, watching each other’s moves, successfully killing him at the same time.
*dead faint from B*
I don’t know if I can fully express what this scene meant — this was them as a whole. This was their grand coming together, working in perfect sync as bloodthirsty killers. If you can imagine how well John & Sherlock fit together, how they know every part of each other, & predict each other — this was it, except with a lot more blood & unabashed, brutal, raw love between them.
They are grievously wounded, standing on the edge of a seaside cliff. Hannibal helps Will stand up and supports him, but holds back, not sure of what Will wants, which side of Will he’s going to get — the one who tries to murder him all the time? Or his Will, the one that just fought with him?
Then, Hannibal says in a moment of honesty (because what else can he say after such a moment as their twin murdering??)
We see Hannibal’s bliss. Will wraps his arms around Hannibal’s neck & nuzzles him. Hannibal, almost disbelieving, gently puts his head against Will’s & my tears were ALL OVER THE PLACE. Will, in a moment of …. lucidity? Realization? He can’t live with himself like this, but he also can’t live with out it — he plummets them over the edge of the cliff, straight into the sea.
Please see a better gif set here with nuzzling & temples touching, just kill me too guys
This was the culmination of three years of waiting from Fannibals. They DELIVERED. They didn’t treat us like we couldn’t handle this. During this season’s press, Byran Fuller stopped trying to be subtle at all — he would full on come out & say, yes they’re in a very messed up romantic relationship. There are reams of meta written about every single interaction between them. It’s so well thought out, so poetic, every shot is a work of art (seriously). It was just a hand wrapped gift from the Hannibal production team to the Fannibals, a very touching goodbye kiss.
I have to stop typing about this because it’s literally making me cry. I feel so so lucky that we got this show for as long as we did — that Fuller & Co trusted us enough, believed that their audience could handle a subversive, dark LOVE story that also involved eating people. It’s incredible. I’m sad to my very bones that it’s been cancelled, but if there was ever a fandom that could revive a show it would be the Fannibals.
Christ. I’ve been typing for nearly two hours. bye guys bye
//
(apologies to gifs I don’t have credit for, I didn’t save the usernames & those tumblrs are long gone.)
Watch Hannibal. It still rules. Eat the Rude (especially now).
-B