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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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how would you describe the feeling hannibal gets when he looks at will in s1 vs s2 vs s3? [an expansion upon this ask]

curiosity & awe: in season 1, when hannibal looks at will he sees someone he’s never seen before. it’s all so very startlingly new for him. it’s this growing need and obsession to take in every aspect, every mannerism, every insight, every piece of who will is [and how he thinks]. to me, s1 hannibal always feels like he’s performing a study on a subject [will] but by the end realizes he’s subconsciously gotten too close to the subject [and therefore ruined the study and complicates the data]. hannibal starts off following his “i was curious what would happen” ploy where the subject of his little experiments mean next to nothing to him but then all of a sudden….the subject matters…a lot.

this is the penultimate moment [for me at least] that clearly marks where the curiosity turns to awe for hannibal. it’s him realizing that this person has come into his life and for the first time…he doesn’t want them to leave. it’s a slow transition but it’s important in that hannibal begins to slowly consider letting down a wall…which for him+his character…is HUGE

brazen: s2 continues the trend of hannibal beginning to allow will glimpses behind the veil which in turn, leads to him slowly realizing will can not only become an equal but also [and more significant] someone he can trust. as both of them are slowly recognizing+attempting to come to terms with their interest in the other, these feelings, despite how new and scary they are in these early stages, are more actively acted upon as opposed to s1. while both of them still dance around their true feelings+intentions towards each other, they’re much more willing to share what is usually kept well hidden and firmly locked away from the world [and each other]. they take more risks in their conversations [the “i prefer sins of omission to outright lies” scene jumps to mind] and even with the other characters [will mutilating randall’s body]. and the reason i like using, brazen, is for the double meaning of bold but more important i think for these two is without shame. both hannibal and will felt shame for their feelings, but while will’s was a bit more straightforward, hannibal’s shame stems from a more internal and deep-seated place. he feels shame, not necessarily for falling for the fbi agent assigned to capture him, but for allowing this man to change and affect him so greatly. for allowing this other person to challenge everything he’s ever known and believed, everything he thought he was and would ever be. will essentially threatens hannibal’s need for control over everything in his life and therefore threatens everything hannibal is. but hannibal is able to see past that shame for what’s on the other side: someone who understands, someone he can fully lift the veil for, someone he can reveal the monster under the person suit to and not be rejected or taken advantage of for it…but then mizumono happens…

this one expression for me just holds everything that’s built up to this moment over the past two seasons. it’s hannibal realizing that someone was actually able to change him…but more significantly…he willingly allowed it to happen. it’s all that shame rushing back and the hurt boiling up as he realizes his vulnerability has been used as a weapon against himself. it’s him reliving the painful reminder that loss of control only equals more loss and more hurt. it’s him silently scolding himself for ever believing that someone would be able to see and accept him for who he truly is.

aching: now s3 is when hannibal fully realizes the affect will has had and continues to have on him. despite the visceral hurt he felt from will’s betrayal, he still can’t bring himself to look at him with anything other than love. hannibal’s actions towards will in s3 are so peculiar….like when you really think about who his character was in s1 and how firmly planted he was in apathy+solitude. the chesapeake ripper of s1 would never give himself up, especially for another human being?? so s3 is hannibal realizing that he truly wants will. it’s not some fleeting whim or empty curiosity. it’s him realizing that this love+feelings he has for will means accepting the one thing he so fiercely avoids, vulnerability. it’s realizing that love is ugly and rotten and betrayal and fear…but all of those things just make it that much more beautiful. it’s hannibal finally realizing there’s nothing will can do to make him reject him. the ache has become so strong that it’s left him unable to keep up the walls. all of his actions towards will in s3 feel like these half-hearted and futile attempts to shake away this all-consuming ache and prove he has not been changed [him sending dolarhyde after will’s family]. but it’s all for naught. by s3 hannibal realizes this ache will never go away…insert his post-breakup arrest

this act alone shows that hannibal has fully embraced the ache. he’s not going to run away from it anymore. it’s him fully relinquishing control…

and with that relinquishing of control…comes those final scenes in twotl…

idk if it’s just me [i tried to write a post about it a while back] but in these final scenes hannibal looks so different, like specifically in his expressions+body language. there’s this relaxed…softness to him. but it makes sense. how exhausting it must be to constantly keep up this charade of someone you’re not for years upon years [and 24/7 for the three years he was in prison] on top of feeling such consuming+conflicting feelings seemingly unrequited….these scenes [for me at least] show not only just how tired hannibal was of pretending but how tired he was of denying how he felt about will. it’s the most genuine of emotions he’s ever shared/directed at someone else, pure and unabashed. it’s that total and complete loss of control…and embracing of that loss. and more importantly, it’s the ache finally stopping.

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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vimeo

Well, it’s Valentine’s Day aka “the day I watch Silence of the Lambs because, well, I’m me” so I figured I’d do a video exploring what appeals to me so much about this film and why I keep coming back to watch it.

In this video I talk about:

how horror is displayed, and not displayed, on-screen

how issues of misogyny and gender equality are portrayed (including comparing it to modern portrayals)

how the characters subvert tropes (also please note I’m talking about how they are portrayed in the film - I know there are some changes between the novel and film versions of certain characters)

and how Clarice Starling is a true feminist hero (including another appraisal of Clannibal as a dynamic)

So as always, this is just my opinions. But I hope you enjoy this reflection… well, it’s more of a tribute if anything.

Happy Valentine’s Day, SOTL fandom :)

#hannibal tetralogy

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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ALL OF THE INFO + SOURCES FOR BRYAN FULLER’S COMPLETE PLAN FOR HANNIBAL SEASON 4

Okay so I went did a lot of research

(GMM JOKE LOL)

and read through a butt ton of official Bryan Fuller interviews and podcasts and gathered all info on what I could about his plan in continuing Hannibal and his vision for Season 4.

HERE YOU GO:

SOURCES:

Vulture TV Podcast: A Candlelit Discussion of “Hannibal” Plus “Show Me A Hero”

https://soundcloud.com/panoply/9115-a-candlelit-discussion-of-hannibal-plus-show-me-a-hero

“And (Bryan) was telling me in the context of the possibility that there might be a fourth season, ‘cause I wanna know where would this thing go. And the answer is, according to him, somewhere in the vicinity of that Tattler story that described them as Murder Husbands. Like, they would be basically traveling around Europe together, getting into adventures.”

Digital Spy: Bryan Fuller opens up on Hannibal’s axing and plans for season 4

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/s225/hannibal/feature/a659886/bryan-fuller-opens-up-on-hannibals-axing-and-plans-for-a-season-4.html#~pnhaTWP2HoN4Ug

“A potential fourth season of Hannibal would, Fuller revealed, reinvent the dynamic between Will and Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) “in a huge way” - he bills it as a reinvention of the entire series. “Bryan described how a prospective fourth season might play out - or feature film, whatever it might be at this stage - and it was such a different place for them to go,” Dancy said. “I thought it sounded fascinating - an amazing inversion and almost a return to the first season, but a new kind of storytelling.”

TV INSIDER: Hannibal Finale: Bryan Fuller Reveals Will and Hannibal’s Fate…And Explains That Chilling Last Dinner Scene

http://www.tvinsider.com/article/36936/hannibal-finale-bryan-fuller-reveals-will-and-hannibals-fate-and-explains-that-chilling-last-dinner-scene/

“Will and Hannibal, who have talked about murder and murdering separately, now are doing it together. That felt like it was the evolution of their relationship, that in this moment they would become the murder husbands of fanfic lore”

The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Hannibal’s’ Bryan Fuller on the “Obscure” Finale, Movie Hopes: “There’s a Few Ways to Go”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/hannibal-series-finale-spoilers-bryan-817966

“There is something in the novel Hannibal that has not been done in any of the adaptations and I would love to explore that with Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. I’m hoping that someday, whether it’s a year from now … two years from now … that we will continue to get to tell that story. I feel like if Will Graham did survive that plunge, his most interesting chapter is yet to be told.”

Vulture: Bryan Fuller on Hannibal’s ‘Cancellation’ and Where He Wants to Take the Show in Season 4

http://www.vulture.com/2015/06/bryan-fuller-on-hannibals-cancellation-season-four.html#

“Season four would be a reexamination and reinterpretation of the Will Graham–Hannibal Lecter relationship in a fashion that is unlike anything else we’ve done in the show. So it is, in many ways, a whole reinvention of the show, in an exciting way”

Vulture: Bryan Fuller on That Hannibal Finale and the Show’s Campy, Sensual Undertones

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/bryan-fuller-hannibal-finale-campy-sensual.html

Interveiwer: In

an interview with our TV critic, Matt Zoller Seitz

, you said that the theoretical season four would be a “reexamination and a reinterpretation” of their relationship, and that it was creatively terrifying to think about. Now that we’ve watched the finale, I’m curious about what it would look like.

Bryan: Well, I still want to hold that in my back pocket because Martha de Laurentiis* is trying to find financing for a feature film, and you never know two years from now if Mads [Mikkelsen] and Hugh [Dancy] have an opening in their schedules, we can shoot something again. I still want to be able to tell that story, and it’s perhaps the most fascinating chapter of Will Graham’s story yet. But I feel like if I tell you what it is, then it kind of closes a door on it in my mind.

Grantland: Q&A: Bryan Fuller on the End (for Now) of ‘Hannibal,’ the Future of Broadcast TV, and His Plans for Clarice Starling

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/qa-bryan-fuller-on-the-end-for-now-of-hannibal-the-future-of-broadcast-tv-and-his-plans-for-clarice-starling/

“I’m hoping that with the finale airing, and with people discussing it, we’ll be able to have a conversation again about continuing the story, because myself and Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy are all ready, willing, and able to return to the story when the time is right.”

“There’s a portion of the novel Hannibal that has not been included in any of the adaptations of the story. That was the thrust of the potential Season 4 for us — taking this plot point from that book and reconceiving it for Will and Hannibal. I was talking with Hugh about this as we were landing the plane on Season 3. And Hugh was like, “Oh my god, that’s cool. I want to do that.” So I know Hugh wants to do it, I know Mads wants to do it, and I want to do it with them, we just have got to find the right time and the right platform to tell that story.”

TheHeyUGuys: The HeyUGuys Interview: Bryan Fuller on Hannibal Series 3 – Part 1

http://www.heyuguys.com/bryan-fuller-interview-hannibal-series-3/

“When I told Hugh and Mads what I planning for season four they were giddy.”

TVLine: Hannibal Finale Post Mortem: Bryan Fuller on Will/Lecter Love, Bedelia’s Last Supper, That Siouxsie Sioux Jam

http://tvline.com/2015/08/29/hannibal-series-finale-will-lecter-cliff-bryan-fuller-interview-season-4/

“It felt like we had to s–t or get off the pot, ultimately, because there had been so much going on between these two men that when Will asks, “Is Hannibal Lecter in love with me?” it is very much about death and the romance between these two men. There is a quality to connections that go above and beyond sexuality. You can have this intimate connection with somebody that then causes you to wonder where the lines of your own sexuality are. And we didn’t quite broach the sexuality. It was certainly suggested, but the love is absolutely on the table. There is love between these two men, and confusion between these two men. We had to articulate it, and the idea for a [potential] Season 4 was an interesting continuation of that, as well as a subversion of it at the same time. So it’s strange to look at [this week’s episode] as a finale, because part of me believes that the most interesting chapter of Will Graham’s story is yet to be told.”

Variety: ‘Hannibal’ Finale Postmortem: Bryan Fuller Breaks Down That Bloody Ending and Talks Revival Chances

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/hannibal-finale-season-4-movie-revival-ending-spoilers-1201581424/

“It certainly was going to be a part of season four, and I actually was really excited about exploring the Margot/Alana relationship and how they were going to dismantle all of the Verger slaughterhouses and turn them humane. She was going to completely undo the evils of her family with Alana, like a Joan Crawford sitting at PepsiCo’s table saying “don’t f–k with me, fellas.” I was really excited about that story for Alana and Margot and seeing more of them, and also seeing what it would be like for them to realize that Hannibal might be coming back into their orbit.”

The Dinner Party Show: Episode #120

http://thedinnerpartyshow.com/2015/09/ep-120-season-four-premiere-featuring-bryan-fuller/

“Hannibal and Will survived the fall”

(About the end scene with Bedelia at the dinner table) “The intention was Hannibal survived”

“THERE ARE THREE PLACE SETTINGS AT THE TABLE”

“There was so much in Season 4 that was going to include Robertus, and Lady Murasaki and Chiyoh was going to return”

International Business Times: ‘Hannibal’ Season 4: Bryan Fuller Says Lee Pace Would Be His Choice For Buffalo Bill, Almost Played Francis Dolarhyde [VIDEO]

http://www.ibtimes.com/hannibal-season-4-bryan-fuller-says-lee-pace-would-be-his-choice-buffalo-bill-almost-2077408

“I would love to cast Lee Pace as Buffalo Bill,” said Fuller.

Digital Spy: David Tennant: ‘I’ve spoken to Bryan Fuller about Hannibal guest role’

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/s225/hannibal/news/a616722/david-tennant-ive-spoken-to-bryan-fuller-about-hannibal-guest-role.html#~pnhloZcpT0z4ZD

“I would love to work with Bryan on anything - I think he’s a rare talent- so it would be lovely if something worked out. But there’s no immediate plans.”

“I love David Tennant, I think he’s a wonderful talent and I’ve been dying to work with him for many years now, so one way or another it’s going to happen.”

Inquisitr: Hannibal’ Showrunner Bryan Fuller Envisions ‘Dark Comedic’ Role For David Bowie

http://www.inquisitr.com/2150732/hannibal-showrunner-bryan-fuller-envisions-dark-comedic-role-for-david-bowie/

“We’ve had several conversations with his people and the feedback is always that David loves that we’re approaching him and to keep approaching, and hopefully the stars will align.”

Hannibal Finale Post Mortem: Bryan Fuller on Will/Lecter Love, Bedelia’s Last Supper, That Siouxsie Sioux Jam

http://tvline.com/2015/08/29/hannibal-series-finale-will-lecter-cliff-bryan-fuller-interview-season-4/

“By coming back in and seeing Bedelia at a dinner table being served her own leg, grabbing a fork and hiding it under the table and preparing to stab it in the neck of the next person who comes into the room, that’s a great way to tell the audience, “Yes, we have told you completion to this story, but who is serving Bedelia that leg? Is it Hannibal? Did he survive? Is it Uncle Robert is, and is David Bowie behind that curtain? Who’s serving her the leg?”

(Fuller later confirmed in the Dinner Party Show interview listed above that it was in fact Hannibal who cooked Bedelia’s leg)

An Interesting bit about Chilton that I ran into:

“Let’s just keep him alive, so if we ever do Silence of the Lambs years from now, with the success of skin grafts, we’ll see a Dr. Chilton that is still as feisty as ever.”

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST THIS INSPIRING QUOTE FROM BRYAN

“It’s not over until I’m dead, as far as I’m concerned,”

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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Moral worlds, miasma, and Hannibal

Jumping off the point about personal IRL moral framework being different from the moral framework established by a given story, in @bonearenaofmyskull‘s meta here (this was originally a reblog but grew long):

The moral framework of Hannibal is actually completely different from the moral framework of Harris’s novels, or of the movie adaptations, which are also different from each other’s.

Will Graham’s subjective sense of slippery moral slope, in the book, is contextualized by Harris’s portrayal of society as imbued at all levels with sexist violence, of which serial killings of women and children are just the most extreme manifestation – the far end of a bell curve rather than a break in the social continuum. The family unit in Red Dragon is an extension of the mother, in both Dolarhyde’s worldview and Will’s own family: the child belongs to Molly and an ideal non-existent father, and is not really his. Will is himself an interloper. He wants to be a protector, but knows he’s not – the mechanism of his empathy for male violence contaminates him, and makes him a contaminant – his nature is that of the vaccine, discussed in the last passage of the novel, that is “just enough like the real thing” to trigger the protective response and be destroyed in the process. It is thus imperative and inevitable, in this narrative framework, that Molly kills Dolarhyde and protects her family.

The same framework is clarified (and to a degree simplified) in the Clarice novels, by virtue of the female protagonist. The thesis of Silence of the Lambs is that only women can defend themselves and each other: Clarice’s profiling breakthrough comes not via empathy for the killer, but empathy for the victims as the living young women they were, rather than the mute bodies they are in the eyes of the other investigators as well as Buffalo Bill. Clarice is still fully under the sway of benign paternalist influences in SotL, but they – her father, Jack Crawford, the FBI – are insufficient to protect either Clarice herself or Bill’s victims. It is thus imperative and inevitable that Clarice kills Bill and saves Catherine.

By a similar argument, written in larger and more grotesque strokes, it is imperative and inevitable that Margot kills Mason, her abuser and the ultimate face of privilege, and in so doing constitutes the lesbian separatist family of her choosing.

As feminism goes it is resolutely second wave and non-intersectional (dare I say the entire concept of Buffalo Bill is kind of TERFy?), and rather than complicate his feminism along these axes, Harris turbo charges it until his heroine attains escape velocity. I’m ultimately of Stephen King’s view that Hannibal the novel is a horror narrative, because what Clarice escapes to after her drug-induced consciousness raising is not an utopian vision, but a world that is deeply violent according to a different moral framework. Which is to say, the world from which Hannibal Lecter arrives, into the “real” world mired in sexual violence, as a kind of ambassador or accidental tourist. Which is to say, the world of Hannibal the TV show.

Keep reading

Read More Now!

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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The subtlety of Hannibal Lecter not being a purveyor of sexist violence is that he’s not not a killer of women, and not a defender of women – baldly speaking, that’s not a thing that a man can be, in Harris’s pessimistic view. Benign paternalist or self-destructing vaccine is as good as it gets for men. Thus it’s imperative and inevitable that the role played by Hannibal Lecter be monster or fae, or arrogate divinity, but not merely another male sociopath; and that he doesn’t enact his – completely arbitrary, guys, if you kid yourselves about this you’re deluded – “kill the rude” heuristic to protect women like Clarice or Margot, but mentors them in enacting their own violence against embodiments of the system in which they’re caught (but he is not). Clarice eating Krendler’s brains or Margot stuffing an eel down Mason’s throat can only be moral positives, in this framework, and that they are obviously horrific acts is an intentional reductio ad absurdam by Harris of his own position. The only alternative to bad that he can imagine and have faith in is differently bad, not good. To go back to the ending of Red Dragon, at best humanity is still part of nature, and no part of nature is free of violence. Only the meaning or lack of meaning attached to violence differs.

(There’s an argument to be made that Harris only imagines escape from gendered oppression via the exercise of class privilege, as well, but that deserves its own discussion.)

With Hannibal the TV show, though, we are in Hannibal Lecter’s world from the very start. That’s a critical truism, as well as the accompanying observation that we’re not in the real world anymore, Toto, but over the course of the series’ airing a lot of viewers were wrongfooted by the realization that it doesn’t mean the world is better, i.e. less violent against women: it is differently bad. Unlike Harris’s take on the real world, violence isn’t the expression of systematic gendered oppression,** but an arbitrary and equal opportunity contaminant like a zombie or vampirism virus (the 21st century having its own vocabulary for the ancient concept of miasma). Systematic gendered oppression is played way down – gender is clearly no impediment to Beverly Katz or Kade Prunell in the FBI, nor to Alana or Bedelia as well-rounded adults who are neither wives nor mothers; and most of the killers’ motivations have nothing to do with sexual violence. It’s not a theme, not even a factor to be considered. But gender is, equally, not a factor in the fact that the first two people Hannibal kills in the show are innocent young women. If it bothers you that he kills innocent young women, it’s because you live in the real world and he doesn’t. And because gender is not a factor, there is no mitigating circumstance for violence that is enacted by women; nor really any mitigating circumstance for violence at all. Abigail is a murderer, Bedelia is a murderer, Alana and Margot are murderers; just as Will is a murderer, and made Chiyoh into a murderer, and Jack is a murderer sanctioned by law, and Hannibal is a murderer whose wilful cruelty pales against that of God. It doesn’t matter if the murder was in revenge or self-defense or as a result of coercion or persuasion, or if it would be considered morally just in another framework, because the virus has the same corruptive effect on your soul no matter how you were infected.

It is thus imperative and inevitable, in order to maintain her innocence from contamination, that Molly not kill Dolarhyde in the TV series – that she and her child escape using stealth and wits, and even though hurt, she is not seen to fight back. This narrative choice isn’t a misinterpretation of the original Harris text by the TV show: it’s its equivalent under a completely different moral framework.

Thus, a key consideration in a future S4 is that Clarice killing Bill to save Catherine could not be an uplifting moral act. It would contaminate her with the violence virus, as Will was contaminated by killing Hobbs to save Abigail (note the similarity in imagery of the aftermath of that scene with viral contamination – the focus on blood splatter, contact with body fluids). The only morally positive path in the Hannibal TV show is to set aside the possibility of violent action completely, even when victimized.

** I’m setting aside the author-centred analysis framework, which would take as its basis that there is a degree of systematic sexism baked into the text because it was created by people living in and subject to the economic pressures of the real world, which is systematically sexist. For instance, that emotionally meaningful character deaths on the show are mostly those of women, because the narrative is centered on two (three?) male protagonists who have plot protection, then – ironically to balance this out – important secondary characters who are mostly women. That’s a Doylesque consideration, though: it doesn’t have symbolic or practical significance within the narrative itself.

Moral worlds, miasma, and Hannibal

The moral framework of Hannibal is actually completely different from the moral framework of Harris’s novels, or of the movie adaptations, which are also different from each other’s.

Keep reading

#keep reading

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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Dear Fannibals: I need some Su-zakana meta!

I’m sure we were all a bit distracted by the intense levels of Hannigram and the truly hilarious line “Peter, is your social worker in that horse?” But I actually have a few questions.

Mostly - why did Hannibal stop Will from killing Clark Ingram?

We all know that Hannibal wants Will to admit to his darker nature, and when Will actually does kill Randall Tier, Hannibal is very visibly thirsty delighted.

So in Su-zakana, Hannibal should have Will exactly where he wants him - angry, in control, ready to commit cold blooded murder right in front of him. And in a way, he DOES seem to approve -

But he also stops him. Why?

Is it because he doesn’t approve of Will’s motive? Because it would be a killing he didn’t manipulate Will into committing, and thus, out of his control? Is it simply because Ingram’s death could be connected to them both, and Hannibal has no intentions of getting caught?

I NEED ANSWERS

#nbc hannibal #s2

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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Hugh

In a sense, the two of them have been wandering the Earth, totally isolated, because they have such a specific and elevated mentality. Not identical, but it is as if not only are you the greatest chess player on the planet, you’re actually the only person on the planet that can play chess. And then suddenly you walk into a room one day and there’s a guy playing chess. I think that’s how they feel about each other.

If you want to frame it in terms of a kind of romance between the two of them, I guess it was like seeing each other from across a crowded room… it was like two people who have felt entirely isolated, or maybe just unique, and then they bump into each other in the course of their lives, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone. I see some of myself in that other person.’

They’ve been alone in the world until they recognized something in the other that made them feel not alone, which is as good a description of love as you can have, I suppose.

There is kind of the feeling of falling in love, like, ‘Oh, my god, I see you. I really see you.’ Of course, the fact is he doesn’t see Hannibal at that point, but, nonetheless, whatever it is between them, is there from the beginning.

They had imagined they were unique until they saw each other. Obviously it took Will longer to appreciate that because he didn’t quite realise what he was dealing with in Hannibal, but Hannibal sees it instantly… It’s two people who have been - I mean, Will probably wears it heavier - but still, essentially alone in the world and then see some kind of, maybe not mirror image, but the other side of their coin. So… that for me explains the love, really, that they have for each other… It’s a genuine, deep feeling that they have for each other… I think it’s platonic, um, but, but I think it’s a - it’s not like two guys who are friends, you know? It’s a rich, deep love.

It’s a true love.

They are in love, or they love each other. That’s unquestionable.

It’s a very rich and profound friendship, and love even. Once Will realises who Hannibal is, it complicates that but it doesn’t just wipe the slate clean. It doesn’t change the fact of their connection.

The show is about romance and it is about love between the two of them: profound and inescapable love.

I realized that the emotional arc of the show, for the second half (of Season 2), was geared towards that cutting. It was not just a horrible, nasty, “Oh, no, my guts are falling out,” but it was a type of consummation that was like an embrace and a connection between the two of them. So, that was what I clung onto. It had to be horrific, also because it was the peak of their romance, in a way.

He’s not looking for a replacement for Hannibal (in Season 3), no. I don’t think there is a replacement for Hannibal.

When Season 3 picks up, we’re both pining for each other.

It is a love story, but obviously not a very functional one.

It’s just like a really compelling but totally destructive relationship… that you keep coming back to.

I think at a certain point it’s bigger than either of them. Hannibal wants to be more in control, but actually he’s willing to burn everything down to have contact with Will. At a certain point, that covers your whole world. I don’t think it’s sexual, but I think it’s bigger than that to be honest.

I think you can always break this down to an analogy between Will and Hannibal of a really bad relationship, or a terrible breakup, or like a mistress. So yeah, in its most basic way, it is that. It’s his past that he has kind of shared with his wife, but he hasn’t fully shared it, and he has probably convinced himself that that’s in order to protect her, but in reality it’s because it’s something he’s guarding for himself.

Will comes back to Hannibal. He’s now got this family, and Will, independently and pretty quickly, starts coming to the conclusion that it’s not sustainable for him to have that family. Like, he’s not the guy. He’s not the right person to be able to look after them, to live with them. It’s not compatible with who he really is. And you could argue that Hannibal is just driving him more quickly to come to that realization. So in that sense, it is kind of brutal, tough love. His love is saying, “Know thyself.”

I think I’ve come back purely to do the job, to try to figure out the Red Dragon… That’s his conscious agenda; the subconscious agenda is probably closer to what Hannibal would say openly, which is that he pretty much couldn’t stay away.

He comes out of it and he’s just exhilarated and he’s finally broken through to that thing Hannibal has been wishing for him and he just says, “It’s beautiful.” He loves it. And that’s the most terrifying thing. Not only do I have to end him, I have to end me as well.

It wasn’t the horror that drove Will to do this. The horror was secondary; it was a horror in reaction to how much he loved what had just happened between him and Hannibal. We’ve seen so many moments of Will covered in blood and shaking and horrified and this is suddenly realizing this is my true self.

The only time in the duration of this entire show that we had the conversation (about Hannigram) before, as we were about to shoot that scene: like, we have to kind of push in that direction; there’s no point pretending otherwise. I guess we obviously both thought that was great.

I always wondered when he would come out gleaming and whole and deadly, but the bubble of his empathy always rose to the surface.

Whether it (Hannigram) came from his (Bryan’s) subconscious, or whether it’s there, sitting in the novels, or whether it’s something we created when we came together to make the first episode, but he ran with it, and we all ran with it. It is now about these two men who are completely alone in a big, bleak world, and then see, coming across the horizon, the other person who reminds them of themselves, somehow. That, to me, is endlessly fascinating.

Bryan

This is a love story.

It was a love story from the very beginning - it was romantic horror.

It’s beyond sexual. It is pure intimacy in a non-physical way.

Will accepts who Hannibal is. It’s also narcissistic, in the way that we fall in love with people who make us feel better about ourselves and who make us feel like we’re a better version of ourselves.

Will is pulled back in to the Red Dragon arc, he’s asking Bedelia, “is Hannibal in love with me?” and Bedelia is saying “is this a ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him?'” And essentially it is, and that’s sort of the conclusion Will comes to at the end, “I can’t live with him, I can’t live without him. This is the scenario where the least amount of people can die,” meaning, “the two of us.”

There is a quality to connections that go above and beyond sexuality. You can have this intimate connection with somebody that then causes you to wonder where the lines of your own sexuality are. And we didn’t quite broach the sexuality. It was certainly suggested, but the love is absolutely on the table. There is love between these two men, and confusion between these two men.

It was Will experiencing pure joy and connection with Hannibal and realizing how terrifying that is… they’re able to acknowledge that it was beautiful. Will realizes how terrifying a thing that is for him to have enjoyed murder so much and perhaps Hannibal was exactly right for him. Bedelia says, “You can’t live with him, you can’t live without him.” That’s exactly what this is about. Will can’t live without Hannibal, and he knows that in that moment, once they’d experienced a murder together. There’s a realization of his mind being able to process that experience as a thing of beauty. With that, he knows there is very little chance of him being able to return to humanity, so off they go.

Hugh Dancy, the P word & love in Hannibal

Okay, so I’ve had a couple of days to mull this over and I’ve come to a few conclusions that I’ll share here if you’ll bear with me.

First of all, we all know that it’s absolutely canon that Hannibal is in love with Will. Bryan has said so, Mads has said so… dogs on the street have howled it loud and long. So I’m not going to go into that here.

But what about Will? Is he canonically in love with Hannibal? YES! Apart from the fact that it’s demonstrably obvious from at least partway through Season 2 that Will is falling HARD for the great conversationalist with the nice suits and hair and the great kitchen (thank you, Hugh), Bryan AND Hugh are both on record as having said it.

But then why does Hugh keep using the P word to describe Will and Hannibal’s love? Well, based on past interviews I would say that Hugh doesn’t mean platonic as in non-romantic. That would make no sense at all, given the many, many comments that have been made to the contrary. I think that what he, Bryan and Mads are trying to say is that Hannibal and Will’s love - up to the end of Season 3 - is so deep, so true, it’s almost BEYOND sexual. That isn’t to say it will never BECOME sexual and certainly the events at the end of TWotL point towards it evolving in that direction. But sex is incidental to the bond these two share. There almost seems to be the sense that categorising their relationship as sexual would trivialise it. Mads has referred to Hannibal feeling that Will is his ‘soulmate’ - a state that transcends sexuality. And Bryan has used similar language when describing the relationship.

Hugh also seemed to cause a bit of consternation by suggesting that Will isn’t the killer that Hannibal thinks he is. Well, I agree with him. Yes, Hannibal KNOWS and SEES Will - his empathy and his POTENTIAL as a killer. But WIll ISN’T the killer Hannibal is. They are ‘identically different’, not ‘identically identical’. Interestingly, both Mads and Hugh have described Will and Hannibal as ‘two sides of the same coin’ - being different in certain ways, they are essentially still one. And I think it’s perfectly possible for Hannibal to SEE Will and still misinterpret certain facets of his character. When it comes to Will Graham, Hannibal is, as Mads has said, ‘blinded by love’. He sees what he wants to see - just as Will does in Season 1.

For those of you asking about his marriage comment, that was made in reference to Will and Molly. Hugh never imagined them having a full-on wedding - he thinks it would have been a registry office do.

The other thing that unsettled people was the revelation that Will only realises late in Season 3 that Hannibal loves him (and that he loves Hannibal), primarily because Will ‘never thought of Hannibal as being capable of love’ and had put love ‘on a kind of pedestal’ as a ‘more perfect thing’. Will’s ‘Is Hannibal in love with me?’ question to Bedelia leads to the revelation not only that yes, Hannibal IS capable of feeling love, but also that what Will feels for Hannibal is also love. This appalls him - he sees it as ‘dirty and awful’ because of the terrible things that Hannibal has done and the terrible person that he is. Well, seriously, we can’t argue with that, can we? Hannibal, by anyone’s standards, IS a terrible person: his response to Bella’s dying wish is to toss a coin; his reaction to his boy’s betrayal is to cut the throat of their murder daughter. But he’s also terribly charming and he’s played by Mads Mikkelsen, so we love him anyway. Surely Will, though, can be forgiven for not jumping up and down in glee at the realisation that all these complicated feelings he’s had stewing inside him for years boil down to him being TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY IN LOVE with a cannibalistic serial killer?!

Finally to the question of whether WIll is going to give himself over completely to the Dark Side in Season 4. The answer seems to be not permanently. Or, at least, not completely. Will wouldn’t be WIll, according to Hugh, without his empathy. So ‘Hannibal’s always going to have to fight for him’. Am I the only one who actually finds that really romantic?

Before I end this, I’d just like to say that Hugh came to his Q&A on Saturday after an absolutely exhausting morning of photo shoots and autograph signings. I was stewarding in the room where the photo shoots took place and it was relentless - hour after hour of non-stop standing, posing and smiling. He was PHENOMENAL throughout - cheerful, enthusiastic and generous. And then he had to go and do signing. And THEN he went to do the Q&A and found himself alone with the mic for an hour before Bryan, who was supposed to be doing it with him, finally appeared (because Bryan, bless him, doesn’t know the meaning of the word speed and wanted to give everyone he was signing for equal and significant attention). So, as he himself confessed, he was making a lot of what he said up on the spot. Let’s face it, it’s been years since they finished making the show and I highly doubt he sits rewatching episodes. In fact, I’m fairly certain there are some episodes he’s never even seen! I think, therefore, it’s likely that he filled in some replies with stuff he’s said in the past (eg. the chess metaphor) without thinking ‘oh, hang on, that only really applies to Season 1’, etc. So maybe we shouldn’t be too hung up on the answers he gave at RDC3.

I’ll give the last words to Hugh and Bryan - comments they’ve made over the years which serve to illustrate some of the points I’ve tried to make in this post. Thank you for reading and forgive me for rambling!

Keep reading

#keep reading

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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The boats were supposed to tow the raft to safety, but after a few miles they decided to cut the raft loose and abandon almost half their shipmates and passengers. The people on the raft ran out of biscuits on day one, and the water was lost overboard when fighting broke out. 20 people died on day one, mostly either murdered or suicide. Many people died fighting over primo territory at the center of the raft, and many others were swept into the ocean by waves since most of the raft was still underwater and the weather was awful.

By day 4 there were less than 70 people alive, but on the plus side food wasn’t really an issue anymore since there were all these dead bodies around. On day 8, there was one last big fight and 15 guys threw everyone else overboard.

The people who made it into the boats - the ones who cut the raft loose on day one - all made it safely to the coast. A few died on the overland journey, but most of them made it home safe and sound, including the incompetent, politically appointed officer who got them all stranded in the first place. No one was sent to look for the rest of the survivors.

On day 13 the survivors on the raft saw a ship in the distance and tried to signal it, but it passed them by. That’s the moment depicted in the painting, by the way. The moment riiiiight before they realized they weren’t getting rescued. Fun times, right? The ship turned out to be the Argus, name after a Greek mythological figure with 100 eyeballs, so ha ha, good name choice. They spotted it again a few hours later and this time the last 15 survivors were rescued. Five of them died a few days after making it to land. France had no interest in helping the last 10 guys get home, so the British Navy took them back to France instead.

One of the survivors was the ship’s surgeon (somebody give me this historical AU please? I am just imagining Hannibal literally drinking wine on a pile of corpses in the one dry spot on the raft while the sharks circle), who filed a report on the whole mess that got the captain brought up on trial. He got 3 years prison time, but not until after he mounted an expedition to go back for the cargo (including gold) the Méduse had been carrying. When they arrived at the wreck site 54 days later, 3 of the 17 people they’d left behind on the ship were still alive despite everyone taking their sweet fucking time. One of the other survivors wrote a very political book about it, and the general scandal of the whole thing resulted in laws being passed in France that military promotions had to be based on merit instead of politics.

Géricault heard the story of the wreck and its aftermath (it was pretty big news especially once the books and trials and such started up). He became absolutely obsessed with it. He interviewed survivors and got them to pose for him, and ultimately spent three years working on the project and did tons of sketches and drafts and preliminary paintings, many of which could have carried titles like Still Life With Pile Of Severed Limbs.

He would go sit in the morgue and draw dead people, poking and moving them around to see how stiff limbs moved and dead skin changed color in the light. He set up his studio across the street from the hospital so he’d have access to the morgue. He sat in with dying patients trying to capture their expressions as they suffered and died.

Gericault picked up severed heads from insane asylums and executions and kept them in his studio (where he also lived) so he could paint them over and over. He interviewed the Méduse’s surgeon (com’mon, y’all, can’t you see the historical fusion fanfic buried here?) and even got the ship’s carpenter to build him a replica of the raft.

Le Radeau de la Méduse even contains a cannibalism joke pulled from Dante’s Inferno. The old man with his son across his lap, in the foreground, is supposed to represent Ugolino della Gherardesca, who was locked in a tower with his family and left to starve and supposedly ate his own children. Dante met him in hell still gnawing on his enemy’s brain. Oh, and William Blake did a painting of him (though the one Géricault used as a reference is by Henry Fuseli).

Y’all, this is the most Hannibal painting ever painted. The only thing missing is an ominous spectral deer. And you know how it came to my attention? THIS PAINTING IS HANGING IN HANNIBAL LECTER’S WAITING ROOM. That’s right. If you go to Dr. Lecter’s office for therapy, this is what you get to stare at while you wait your turn. Because he’s subtle like that.

Never change, Hannibal. Never change.

Okay, can we talk about this painting? It’s both historically interesting and Hannibal relevant, so something for everyone!

This is Le Radeau de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa), and the original was painted by Theodore Géricault in 1819. It’s a depiction of the aftermath of a colossal fuck up that took place three years earlier. The painting itself is massive - the figures in the foreground are twice life-size, to give you an idea of the scale. If you stand in front of the painting, you’re in the painting. It’s in the Louvre if you ever want to see it in person.

Hannibal Lecter’s version is much smaller.

The frigate Méduse was stranded in shallow water by a series of shitty sailing decisions by a very bad captain, about thirty-five miles from shore near Mauritania. The crew built a raft they called la Machine to put all the cargo on to try and lighten the ship enough to float it - but the ship started to break up in bad weather, so everyone panicked and all but 17 people out of 400 decided to make a run for it.

There were 6 boats, which held about 40 people each, leaving 145 men and one woman to cram onto a 20x60 foot raft that had not been designed or stocked to carry people. They had one bag of biscuits, two barrels of water, and six casks of wine. The raft sank below the level of the water pretty much immediately and stayed that way, with the majority of the deck under the surface, so everyone on board was stuck in the water or fighting for drier spots, and all constantly terrified they were going to sink further.

It got worse.

Keep reading

#keep reading

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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But when Will’s imprisoned, he’s been treated for encephalitis. He is caged by literal bars in an institution, placed there by another’s hand. He tests his relationships (crying in front of Hannibal, pushing Beverly to investigate, and, to an extent, Alana and the direction of his legal defense) to create a picture of what he should be afraid of. He is no longer afraid of himself: nothing he can do to himself will be worse than what Hannibal has done to him. Instead, we get a radical inverse of S2—convex fear. He spends most of his time trying to influence externalities to develop a sense of self, manipulating Matthew Brown and Frederick Chilton, in particular. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he weaponizes his fear: it’s closer to echolocation, sending fear out into the world to see what clicks back. The main plot elements in S2, I find, have to do with the transformation of appearances. The Eye of God (2.01) is only discernible from afar. Hannibal’s crimes are orchestrated with the built-in recognition of intent: Beverly’s glass-paned corpse (2.05) especially. The other cases involve literal transformations—the social worker and the horse, Randall Tier, the beehive, Mason Verger’s face. Hannibal is always demonstrative, but the loops are looser now, partially because he’s let the reins slack and Will has wriggled his way out. Not to mention the forced sterilization of Margot Verger (2.10?), which deserves a huge amount of thought on its own—but the semblance of stability, family, and belonging, in a skewed parallel between Will/Hannibal/Abigail and Will/Margot/Baby X. Randall Tier is also important in two transformations: one, reminding us of the man/beast, civilized/barbarian, order/chaos dichotomies. He’s always felt like an animal inside, just as Will has sometimes doubted his own humanity. But Will also murders Randall Tier, which is a wholly transformative act—in Hannibal’s eyes, especially. We don’t talk much about that murder, which is kind of weird to me, but anyway. There is so much to unpack here, Hannibal Studies needs to be a real major already so I can graduate.

IN ANY CASE. Hannibal also begins to show his true colors, those being, of course, Hella Hot for Will Graham. He’s taking a seam ripper to his person suit at a rapidly increasing and reckless rate as Will enacts the role of partner. But when does recital become reality? And so Will ultimately discovers the great weakness of convex fear—that convex objects can hide hollowness. And so we end up with him dithering as either man’s man in the room (2.13) and eviscerated. The evisceration to me is particularly delicious for me as a mental morsel for several reasons, but among them is that it’s such a performative and symbolic gesture. The intestines are where food is processed, transformed to nourish the body. Several cultures (Japanese included, see Hannibal’s Creepy-ass Relationship with His Aunt) place emotions in the abdomen: What’s your gut feeling? He’s got guts. Hannibal feels gutted, and wants Will to face the reality of substance. Side note: We start the season as we have never seen Hannibal before: bloodstained, feral, in less than like ten billion articles of clothing. The first scene shows us the transformative Mobius strip we’re going to experience.

I am still thinking about season 3, and what to call the shape of his fear, because I don’t quite have a grasp on it, and vice versa. I know, it’s very Sapir-Whorf. But I should be doing actual homework anyway…but thanks, @wellntruly, for always inspiring and fostering discussion!

Before I move on to 2x07 in my Hannibal rewatch, I want to talk about Will Graham & Fear for a quick sec! I saw a big pile of discussion on this when I was on mobile in the airport whispering “I’ll be back” as I quick-scrolled through my dash, and sure that was well over a week ago now, but HEY.

As a good access point to this topic, there seems to be somewhat of a divide on whether or not Will is scared (openly or otherwise) when he’s negotiating with Matty B in the prison hall of shark cages in 2x05. Although Hugh Dancy is a terrific actor, doing some sort of Expression Analysis is always gonna be a bit shifty and subjective, so it’s probably best not to hinge too much on that. Besides, the important thing is surely that while none of us would ever doubt Will’s moments of wide-eyed trembling terror in S1 to be anything but that, here in S2 it is much murkier! So what we can say for certain is that there is a change in how Will is behaving in high-stress situations.

A long time ago, I made a somewhat offhand comment about how I thought Will’s transformation arc over the series might have most to do with how he learns to channel his fear. In early S1, Alana & Jack characterize Will as someone driven by huge amounts of fear, and soon after Will tells Hannibal about the ONLY TIME he feels safe in his horrorful life. Now, I’ve always been one of those Hannibal viewers who saw nerves in Will all the way through the series, but I also think that he goes through a pretty radical transformation in how he manages them. Fear at its sciencey/psychy core comes from “arousal”, or to put it another way before I surely get back to this pun-flexible version before too long, it starts with being keyed up by something. In S1, when Will gets keyed up by a frightening thing (pick yer fave example), he usual goes into a patented Panting Panic™. There are less & less of those moments of overwhelmed fright in S2 and onward, as everyone has noticed — including the other characters. Dr. Bloom’s lines trace this out very well for us, thank you Alana: in 2x01 she tells Jack “Will’s terrified but that’s not stopping him,” but by 2x06 she’s now telling Jack “he’s not scared, not anymore.”

Although I fully agree with Alana that there’s a shift happening, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Will no longer feels fear at all. Or more specifically, I would say that sensitive high-strung Will Graham still feels something blaze through his nerves when he’s in dangerous circumstances — something that can become fear, or can become something else. “Don’t get scared, get angry” might be the new motto of our incensed dewdrop. I get the idea that Will, pushed to the edge by so many aspects of his life, is learning how to use his fear as a form of energy. Maybe he can’t control how much he’s affected by his surroundings, but maybe he can control what he does with that wild rush in his veins. Maybe it can become something like courage. Something like power.

(Where this gets real fun is when you bring in the misattribution of arousal. If you missed psych 101, there was a gem of a study that managed to convince a whole bunch of undergrad bros that the arousal they felt from walking across a high suspension bridge was in fact that other kind of arousal, directed at the cute girl “distributing surveys.” To put it more generally, it’s possible to alter what we consider to be the source of our keyed up feelings. Actually, I used to take advantage of this when I was an undergrad myself: I’d run up the stairs to the classroom where I had a hard test, so that I could (mis)attribute my accelerated heart-rate to exertion, not nervousness. Anyhow, this is something I’ve definitely laughed/sighed about when considering what Will classifies as scary and what Will classifies as exhilarating, and how & why & in whose company those begin to twine. Especially given the whole “kneaded feelings” situation, my god.)

#keep reading #deactivated

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fccdfcrthcught · 3 years ago

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Will’s character development through the motif of his clothing.

I’m not sure if this has already been talked about, but I’m going to talk about it. nbc hannibal is genius in how it uses will’s clothes to visually show the different stages of his transformation. his appearance reveals a lot about his mental state.

during the first season, we see him wear a lot of professional outfits for his work. I see these outfits as a sort of “person suit” he adopts to fit into the world, a way of blending into the crowd. the colors are always dark shades. this is the will we see in public. if you notice, his hair is also quite tame, especially during the first few episodes

something else I noticed was the amount of layers. now of course it’s cold and will is dressing for that sort of weather, but at home he wears hardly anything, so we can say that the layers are a form of protection against the outside world (like how his glasses help him avoid eye contact).

as I alluded to before, at home will’s attire is completely different. he wears the bare minimum. on the occasion he’s caught like this at home, we don’t see him cover himself up either. it’s like as soon as he’s alone and home, he feels free to strip himself of his persona. the scenes where he is at home usually show his mental state crumbling (eg nightmares etc).

as the season progresses and will becomes more physically and mentally ill, his physical appearance also shifts. his hair becomes long and unkempt. he is more frequently seen at home.

he reaches his worst point when he throws up abigails ear. when hannibal finds him, will is shivering because he’s cold, and hannibal puts a blanket over him, restoring the protective layers that will often adopts in an attempt to comfort himself.

in prison, will wears a jumpsuit that is bright orange. it’s startling because we’ve never seen him wear such vibrant colours - it draws attention to him, and his position as a prisoner. it represents his guilt. everyone thinks he is the Chesapeake ripper. even will does

when he arrives at hannibal’s office, he’s wearing it. at this point he still doesn’t want to suspect hannibal, and wears the guilt. but as the realisation begins to dawn, he changes into normal clothes, because he is shedding his role as the prisoner.

when returned to prison, he still wears a jumpsuit, but it’s a darker shade. he no longer feels like the centre of attention - he has purpose, and he knows he didn’t kill abigail. when at court, his outfit is an exaggeration of his person suit, as he tries to make everyone remember who he really is. I believe he’s 100% playing a part here. when trying to prove his innocence, he becomes very manipulative.

so to summarise. season 1 will uses his clothes as a means of protecting himself and playing the part of the functional professional helping the FBI. alone, however, his lack of clothing represents his vulnerability that he dislikes displaying to others. clothes will take on a completely different meaning to him in season 2.

the first time will confronts hannibal after prison, he’s wearing his usual clothes. he’s unsure how he wants to proceed with the situation, but after the interaction with hannibal he realises something: he can’t continue to play his usual role. to catch hannibal he has to adopt a new one.

when he comes to see hannibal for the second time after prison, however, his attire is completely different. he’s bought expensive, tight fitting clothes. he’s had a haircut. he is pretending to be the person hannibal wants him to be - he makes himself more refined and thus more appealing to (and similar to) hannibal. his body language reflects this new persona too

I think that for will, playing this part is refreshing, because he now has power. he has found a way to take back his dignity through his outward appearance. this part of will’s character development is obvious on purpose - we are meant to look at him and think wow, is this the same guy we saw a few minutes ago? I’m sure hannibal went through a similar moment of surprise.

the layers are gone now. mostly. but in the scene where will tells jack he’s a good fisherman, he’s completely covered from head to toe. to me this feels like he is trying to be the person jack thinks he is. guilt for enjoying being that person he is with hannibal makes him return to the safety of his layers.

something else that’s important we always see him dressed from now on (apart from when he has sex with margot). season 2 will is very much in control. he has learned he can only rely on himself, and so his vulnerability is not even displayed to the audience. we only get glimpses now of what he might be thinking. we are only exposed to the outward, not the inward.

I’ve seen people refer to will’s scheme as a seduction, which I definitely agree with. there’s no way that changing his appearance to appeal to hannibal isn’t an erotic decision. he thinks it will please hannibal for him to look a certain way. that isn’t platonic.

anyway, I also noticed that the way will wears clothes doesn’t really change. he’s wearing tight fitted shirts, but he keeps them unbuttoned, like he used to with his other clothes. this is his true self coming through. while he looks noticeably different, much of his style stays the same - the roles he plays are very much a part of him.

so far will has used clothing to manipulate hannibal. but then mizumono happens

will goes to hannibals place dressed in layers: he’s ready to go back to who he was before. but he finds alana bleeding outside. he takes off a layer, and covers her with his coat. when he enters the house, he is soaking wet. his shirt sticks to him. he’s vulnerable once again.

both hannibal and will are in a state of disarray in this scene. it’s alarming to see, because both of them have kept up appearances for so long. but this scene is one of the first where they are completely vulnerable with each other. they no longer have the comfort of their respective person suits.

and that’s where we end. this is where will’s pretence comes to a shocking conclusion. the only question is… what will he wear now?

are you ready to hear something heartbreaking?

when we first see will after mizumono, he is shirtless.

this is the peak of his vulnerability. his heart is broken. he has nothing: no abigail, no hannibal. he feels completely exposed. and the scar is part of that.

when will meets chiyoh, he lifts his shirt to show her the scar. and we are now faced with the fact that will knows no matter what he wears, the scar will always be underneath.

interestingly, will wears more layers in the first half of season 3, even more than he did in season 1. he’s usually wearing a coat or at least a thick jacket.

he covers himself from head to toe, seeking comfort in this period of heartbreak and uncertainty. this is especially visible in the scene where jack asks will to come back into the field after 3 years of peace. his clothes are a shield from the allure of seeing hannibal again.

also, will dresses this way in season 1 and 2 when he feels particularly vulnerable (for example, the scene where he tells jack hannibal was his friend and he wanted to run away with him). while yes, it’s cold, I still think there’s more to the style choices than just that.

when will returns to hunt francis, his style becomes distinctly hannibal-esque as he reassumes hannibal’s mindset. in therapy sessions with bedelia, he wears a shirt and suit jacket - shedding layers. and in conversations with hannibal, especially in the final scene of twotl, will wears only an unbuttoned shirt - he’s exposed.

upon killing francis with hannibal, the shirt is torn and bloodied. it becomes unimportant. will is not wearing a person suit - it doesn’t matter how he looks, or what he wears.

for season 3 will, clothing is both protection and a tool. it’s also an expression of self identity. he has a distinct style - it lingers no matter how many layers he wears.

if anyone can think of any other examples of this morif, I’d love to hear them <3

#nbc hannibal #will graham

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