#and bedelia is so akin to him in some ways and yet is terrified of him

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Piggybacking off of my thoughts here a bit, here are some further musings on the distinction between Will and Bedelia in how they relate to Hannibal -

To put it briefly, they’re both afraid of Hannibal, but Bedelia is afraid of what Hannibal will do to her, whereas Will is afraid of what Hannibal brings out in him.

That Bedelia is afraid Hannibal will eat her, and that her general objection to his entire deal is the risk he poses to her, is pretty obviously established. She’s intrigued by his extra-moral tendencies, but balks when confronted with the reality of what he is. In Florence, her therapy is motivated by a genuine desire to help him, imo, but also by self-preservation, pitting him against Will and continuing to be useful to him so as to prolong her survival. And once she gets away from him, she’s got no inclination to see him again - as she tells Will, “I’ve seen enough of him.”

But while Bedelia certainly has trouble stomaching actual murder (as seen in the cases of Neal Frank and Anthony Dimmond), she doesn’t seem particularly fazed by the mere fact that violence appeals to her. When talking to Will, she owns her urge to crush a wounded bird without any compunction. She might not actually do it, but she’s not troubled by the impulse itself. She doesn’t believe in thoughtcrime! Hannibal recognized her sadistic and destructive impulses, and perhaps even helped make her more aware or accepting of them, but they don’t instill guilt in her or destabilize her sense of identity - she simply finds acting on them disturbing and unpalatable. So the horror in her relationship with Hannibal stems not from having to confront herself, but in the creeping threat of what he’s capable of - and the fact that it’s so much more than what she’s capable of, that she's bitten off more than she can chew.

Will, on the other hand, is surprisingly unconcerned with Hannibal’s murder and cannibalism - at least, insofar as he himself could become a victim of it. He snarks about the cannibalism a few times - “I haven’t been gorged, drowned, plucked, and roasted” in Ko No Mono, and “If you’re partial to beef products, it is inconvenient to be compassionate toward a cow” in Wrath of the Lamb - but unlike Bedelia, he doesn’t seem seriously preoccupied the threat of it. When he discovers that Hannibal has had other murder protégés in Randall and Margot (and makes a connection to Bedelia), what upsets him about the implications as to his possible disposability to Hannibal seems to be less the idea that Hannibal might kill him, and more that the authenticity of their bond is in question - that Hannibal might not be wrestling with the same conflicted feelings that Will is, and that Will is nothing but another toy for him to play with (“wind me up and watch me go”, etc.)

The horror of Hannibal, for Will, initially comes from the shock of the realization of his true nature - starting with Savoureux and continuing into early season 2, the stag man indicates the terrifying dissonance of the fact that someone Will trusted and opened up to so much could have such a monstrous nature, without him realizing it. But in the second half of season 2, it shifts into the horror of Will’s own transformation, and of the blurring between him and Hannibal. He comes to feel, as Chiyoh sums up, that he has to kill Hannibal to avoid becoming him, and that’s reflected in a lot of the most overt horror elements of the latter season 2 arc. The beginning of Ko No Mono - imo, one of the most genuinely unsettling nightmares sequences in the show - features the imagery of Will emerging, screaming, from the stag, which is rendered chrysalis-like - Hannibal’s nature is secondary to the horror of Will’s own becoming. That same episode features the extraordinarily uncanny few seconds in Hannibal’s office in which Hannibal’s face is swapped with Will’s, seemingly listening to himself talk, and then Will is in turn swapped with Hannibal - like the blending of their faces in the final shot of Naka-Choko, the unsettling horror elements are centered on the fear of Will’s loss of himself, of not knowing where he ends and Hannibal begins.

The summation of this is Will’s rejection of Hannibal in Digestivo. It’s not on the basis of Hannibal trying to eat his brains, which in a different story would easily be the “you’ve tried to hurt/kill me too many times” last straw. It’s “I don’t have your appetite.” Yes, it’s deliberately chosen because it would hurt Hannibal the most, but I’d also say it’s true in that it’s the main reason Will wants to be able to walk away from Hannibal - the fact that Hannibal brings out a part of Will that Will himself doesn’t want to face.

To put it another way, Bedelia is pretty thoroughly amoral, and in this she’s actually more akin to Hannibal than Will is. Will does have system of morals - one could even say an overly rigid and punitive one - but his moral compass just starts going haywire whenever Hannibal is around because of Hannibal’s irresistible magnetism (really getting some mileage out of this metaphor). Hannibal sees himself as God, and his values are centered on his own whims and aesthetic preferences. Bedelia’s values are centered on her own self-preservation first and foremost. But the fact that she has this particular quality in common with Hannibal is exactly why it’s so easy for her to walk away from him when she’s had enough. She’s self-possessed enough that she doesn’t need him the way Will does. For Will on the other hand, Hannibal brings about a rupturing of his sense of self. So he’s inclined to set himself up for pain and violence, over and over, in seeking Hannibal out, just to find some kind of clarity. And whether he rejects Hannibal or embraces him, there’s always a sense that he’ll lose some fundamental part of himself.

I would say this is part of why it’s important to Will that Hannibal take something from Bedelia, as she puts it in 3.12. Part of it is his belief that “if you play, you pay” and his moral outrage over her ability to escape without consequences. But I think another part of it is more personal resentment - resentment of the fact that she’s able to let Hannibal go so easily, using her experiences with him for monetary gain without much emotional turmoil. That she doesn’t dwell on Hannibal, doesn’t struggle with her feelings about him, doesn’t feel the same confusion and anguish and longing that Will does. The fact that it’s possible for anyone to have a brush with Hannibal without feeling that.