#hannibal analysis

[osbcrne]

Hannigram and Verger Family analysis

TW: MARGOT AND WILL'S STOMACH SCARS MENTIONED AND IMAGES (underneith the cut)

HOLY SHIT YALL IM BACK WITH ANOTHER REALIZATION

so i just realized that wills "c section esque" scar he got from hannibal in mizumono might actually look that way for a reason

it could be symbolic to a hysterectomy because hannibal took their child away, and had to give Will scar somehow. And i mean, will technichally is the mother, he killed abigail's father placing her in his custody- hannibal only helped with it. Just how the criminals in season 1 (angelmaker, georgia madchen, abel gideon, etc) and their crime scenes were DIRECTLY paralleled to the progression of wills encephalitis and the state of his mental well being, Margot getting a hysterectomy from mason basically directly parallels will getting abigail taken from him.

Also, Margot choosing to have sex with Will specifically, and the child coming into their lives and then almost immediately being taken away (BY HANNIBALS DOING) forshadows abigail coming back and then almost immediately after, her death. Will empathized with margot (WHO HE KNEW WAS GAY, or at least hannibal did, it was stated in the script but was cut from the final product) about the lack of a child, which is literally the only reason had sex with her (he thought about the stag man the whole time anyway...)

This one specific conversation in the episode Tome-Wan is very important. Will says to hannibal, "you're fostering codependency. isn't that what you did to abigail? got her to take a life so she would owe you hers?" That's exactly what hannibal is doing to margot- trying to get her to kill mason so she would owe herself to hannibal. it also connects abigail and margot in a way.

continuing the conversation, will says "i bond with abigail, you take her away. i bond with barely more than the idea of a child, you take it away... you don't want me to have anything in my life that's not you." Hannibal, knowing very well the consequences, told mason about margot's plans and had the child taken forcibly away from her.

Hannibal also directly took abigail away from will, by cutting her throat in front of him. both of these things ended with a scar, margot's from the hysterectomy, will's from hannibal's knife, but it looks oddly familiar to margot's. Also remember, right before wills and margot got together, the two of them compared scars. (MORE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT)

Also i know this is kind of a strange comparison considering mason and his intentions, but in the episode Naka-Choko, this exchange happens:

margot is unable to kill mason because despite all the horrible things he does to her, deep down she still loves him and can't bring herself to do it. who does this sound like to you? yep- Hannibal and Will. Now bviously hannibal and will's love is very different from the verger's, but it's still a parallel

i can't believe i didn't realize it before but there's a LOT LOT LOT of parallels between hannigram and the vergers. one of them being they all were with alana (minus mason) 😭

thank you to a post by this user on tiktok for helping me realize this (idk why it won't let me link)

anyway, happy c2e2!! take cool pics w/ mads and hugh! i'll be watching the live stream of the panel tomorrow!

[pesky--dust]

the "diagnosis" Chilton gave Will during his trial was the one closest to the truth ("Will Graham has never been diagnosed. He won't allow anyone to test him. He has carefully constructed a persona to hide his real nature from the world. He wears it so well, even Jack Crawford couldn't see past it. (...) There is not yet a name for whatever Will Graham is.")

unlike Alana Bloom or Jack Crawford, he saw what a manipulator Will was and that in front of them he played a poor, confused, wounded bird ("(...) A particularly-manipulative one at that. Poor, confused, wounded bird for Agent Crawford and Doctors Lecter and Bloom. And for me, well, I get the psychopath's triumvirate: charm, focus and ruthlessness. The charm, of course, being debateable.")

he believed Will that Hannibal may be the Chesapeake Ripper and said Jack Crawford: "Hannibal once served me tongue and made a joke about eating mine. It's hard not to at least consider it.". Jack ignored him. (I think Jack was already planning some large-scale action against Hannibal, but that's a topic for another post)

he called Dr Lecter "Hannibal the Cannibal"

he understood that Will Graham was alive because Hannibal Lecter liked him that way

criticized Jack for letting Will and Hannibal get closer to each other and then leaving Will alone ("You dangle Will Graham and now you cut bait. You are letting Hannibal have him hook, line and sinker.")

when Jack expressed hope that the relationship between Hannibal and Will was one of those friendships that ends after the disemboweling, Chilton told him: "I would argue, with these two, that's tantamount to flirtation. Will is going to lead you right to him." and let's be real, he was right.

[ialwayseattherude]

Hannibal doesn't believe that God is cruel merely because of the disasters that he references (the church collapsing, the plane crashing). No, those are thin guises of examples that only back up his theory to other people. He can't tell anyone the real reason. The truth is, God gazed upon an eight year old boy, desperate with love for his sister, fighting for life in the snow, and He made the unspeakable happen just for His own amusement. So why shouldn't Hannibal?

[abominable-space-they]

A thing I try to remember about Hannibal Lecter is that when he says god would drop a church on a room full of beloved grandmas and laugh about his abuse of power. What he means is, god would murder a little girl in the cruelest manner imaginable then feed that little girl to her brother. Her brother who was a stange little boy that no one understood. A little boy who had no human connections but that little girl. A little boy who as elder brother was supposed to protect that little girl.

He means he believes god did that, destroyed his sister, his life, future, and universe, not because god works in mysterious ways, but because God works in obviously cruel and capricious ways, because god enjoys the power of destroying the innocent and faithful. He's saying that he has looked at the world, seen the worst and best of humanity, and the only conclusion he could come to was that god thinks hurting his creations is funny.

He has a god complex not because he believes he is a god, not even because he believes he is capable of being as cruel and arbitrary as God.

Hannibal Lecter has a god complex because he believes that a god who would kill a child cruely, and deliver an even more cruel fate on another child for no reason but because he could, does not deserve honoring. He believes that any god that would do such a thing, should not be worshipped, that he should be unseated entirely.

Like Kronos, utterly destroyed for his cruelty to children

He defies god because he believes god should be defied. He worships Will in defiance of god because even as a flawed human who is vicious, vengeful, petty, and mistrusting, even with all his human flaws, Will Graham is more just then god, more reticent to kill then god.

He worships Will Graham as his own personal god of love, death, and war bc he believes Will Graham is more worthy of worship then god.

And that is one hell of a thing

[onchyart]

So Will in the ladder scene puts a boundary with his body language (arches his back, so Hannibal has to stop closing in on him)

and he checks again with putting his torso forward and Hannibal recoils back a little bit (but stays put)

It shows that he is sensitive to Will's lead in their bodily geography. Will becomes more comfortable after the second check (maybe even aroused a bit, cause he feels in control)

All Will's dreams that include Hannibal, have an element of putting him in place permanently and Hannibal feeling okay with it, comfortable in Will's restraint, under his control.

Some may say that Will's s2 dreams are erotic, full of suggestive imagery.

well, so if we go all the way with this logic

On his knees, pinned, okay

Meeting Will for the first time in three years, freedom of movement only in his memory palace, glass wall, practically no agency at all. Greeting Will with his back and ass first okay

and hmmm

hmmmmm so yeah, Hannibal's cell was a perfect seduction set up for Will Graham and Will Graham only

[craqueluring]

in hannibal's tableau of the judge, the heart is ever so slightly outweighing the brain on the scale. it is also illuminated in light, while the brain is in the shadow. could this be an allusion to (or at least foreshadowing of) hannibal's love/heart beginning to outweigh, outshine, and eclipse his usual sense/mind when it comes to will?

[kuroshika]

now. i know what you're thinking. i know. "kallie oh my god let this quote die". but no. because i've had yet another thought.

"achilles, lamenting the death of patroclus. whenever he’s mentioned in the iliad, patroclus seems to be defined by his empathy."

"he became achilles on the field of war. he died for him there, wearing his armor."

i think by now we've all already seen the posts or recognized that hannibal and will have swapped clothes for the battle between them and dolarhyde. if not, here's a nifty little visual (2x13 mizumono, 3x10 ...and the woman clothed in the sun)

and if you're like me, you'd think "oh that's really sweet. he's wearing hannibal's shirt. it shows their lines beginning to blur". but you know what else it shows?

"[...] he died for him there, wearing his armor."

will went into war (the fight against dolarhyde) wearing hannibal's armor, and he (presumably) died there. he died in hannibal's armor, as patroclus died in achilles'.

and even THEN.

"he did. hiding and revealing identity is a constant theme throughout the greek epics."

"as are battle-tested friendships."

where will embraces his becoming, and steps into himself - where he casts off the persona of the man he'd been displaying and reveals who he really is underneath, which is a very constant theme throughout hannibal and will's relationship ― the battle to see each other, to understand.

"achilles wished all greeks would die, so that he and patroclus could conquer troy alone. took divine intervention to bring them down."

if you know me then you know, of course, i love love love the religious symbolism that hannibal is drenched in. and i think it's a very lovely parallel to the fact that hannibal, who sees himself as above but so intertwined with religion, and views will as his god, went to his death with the very man he worshipped.

you know. divine intervention.

[deerabigailhobbs]

I disagree with the crowd that says that Abigail likes to kill, that deep down she is like Hannibal, like Will, like her father, but just couldn't accept it. I don't think she gets a thrill out of murder, but out of survival.

This is a woman who (from what we know), was always watched by her dad, that had friends but wasn't close to them, she had no agency in her life. So when she could do something for herself, break away from the chains with force, it made her feel powerful.

She kills Nick because she thinks he'll kill her, guts him like her father taught her how. She lured the girls to her father, not because she liked it but because she wanted to live.

To her being alive is powerful, she's seen the faces of girls that look like her, seen them dead in her dreams, she knows her time could run out at any moment, so when she has the chance to face a potential killer head on, she does and kills him. She does to Nick what she wanted to do to her father for all those years.

When having that conversation with Will about her father in Relevés, Will says he felt powerful, but his version of "powerful" is very different to Abigail's. He felt powerful because he got to end a life, Abigail felt powerful because her life didn't end. It felt "good" to survive another day.

And even in the scenes with her fake and real death, she wants to end her life herself. She walks to Hannibal willingly, knowing she has no other option, and then in the flashback to the house she asks "can I push the button?" She wants to decide how her life will end, and not have it taken from her, and although there wasn't much of a choice in Mizumono, it was a choice nevertheless.

[crudelobotomiser]

I feel like people don’t talk about the aspects of Hannibal’s cannibalistic desires towards Will because I’m 70% sure that Hannibal would consider the absorption of a loved one in a sensory aspect as well.

Like he can hear, see, smell and touch Will, so of course he would want to taste him as well. Taste is a human sense constructed for delight and he would want to delight in being able to experience his loved ones on that level, like it’s the sensory experience of eating another and perceiving them with that taboo sense.

I’d also like to entertain the scene where Hannibal pricked his finger on the fishing gear and tasted the blood. Like is that not a taste for the sensory experience? Of course it could be a reference to kissing but he wanted to perceive what an object of Will’s would taste like when mended with himself, metal on metal.

I really need to rewatch Hannibal while entertaining this lens more I think it would be really interesting.

[osbcrne]

holy shit. so im definitely late to this realization, but i entirely overlooked this phrase. I swear every time i watch this show i find new things

SoI just realized that in S1E1 where Hannibal is analyzing Will upon meeting him for the first time, will says "I put up forts", and then Hannibal says after a little bit "no forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love" and that's fucking crazy because the "fort" they're talking about in that scene is wills standoffishness and especially his lack of eye contact.

there really MUST be no room for forts regarding the things Will loves, as as the show goes on Will sure does not have a problem eye fucking hannibal and tends to not wear his glasses around him! his eye contact increases and lengthens in time around hannibal specifically as their relationship progresses, and will always takes off his glasses specifically when talking to hannibal.

except for that one scene in season 3 when will rejects hannibal right before he gets arrested, he puts the glasses back on, he wants to convince himself he does not love hannibal. but when gets to see hannibal again, the glasses come back off- he admits once again that he loves him.

they make me SICK

yeah okay, will "i build forts" graham.

[pesky--dust]

You have no idea how big supporter of the theory that the fall from the cliff never happened I am.

Like— The first scene of the series didn't even happen because Will was so immersed in the story he was telling during the lecture. It was only his imagination; at the crime scene Will quickly receives confirmation of all his conclusions, such as the fact that the marriage was tapped and I truly doubt electricians would have been called immediately to the crime scene along with the police, ambulance and FBI. And then he is suddenly “magically” back in the classroom from the house of the victims, when he says, “Everyone has thought about killing someone one way or another. Be it your own hands or the hand of God”.

And since the first scene of the series didn't take place at all, why wouldn't it be the same with the ending? During the battle with Francis Dolarhyde, Will sees him with the wings of a red dragon, something that is unreal. He is also only imagining that.

And the fall is also from Will's perspective, so did it really happen? Or is this only a metaphor for his fall as a human being? He genuinely felt that the brutal pack hunting he shared with Hannibal was beautiful, so he finally accepts his dark nature — he falls as a good and moral man, descending into the depths of crime (ocean).

I love it so much. I'm sorry.

[ialwayseattherude]

I firmly believe that part of why Will was so drawn to Hannibal was because Hannibal saw him as an equal. All of his life, he had been deemed strange or even somehow less because of the deep-rooted ableism that most people had. Society is made up of intricate games of courtesy and power and subtle innuendos, after all, and Will couldn't quite figure out how to play. Hannibal uses this against him, yes, but never does he underestimate Will because of it. He still views Will as a worthy opponent, as a force to be reckoned with. And for Will, who has spent his lifetime being treated as fragile, being looked down on, degraded as a tool, that's one hell of a thing.

[super-who-locked-me-in-here]

Do you think Will has a traumatic response to the sound of glass breaking?

Like, between Randall Tier breaking into his own house to kill him after hurting one of his dogs, Francis almost killing Hannibal by shooting through the window of the safe house, and also just the general association of a shattering noise with the broken teacup imagery and being gutted/Abigail dying, I would not be surprised at all if this was true.

Imagine post-fall, someone tries to break into their house in the middle of the night, and they know someone is on their property because in this headcanon they have dogs, and the dogs are going bananas.

They split up (after sealing the dogs away), with Will making his way to the front door and Hannibal making his way to the backdoor. The intruder breaks a window near the back of the house trying to get in, and Hannibal deals with him swiftly. It doesn't seem like there's anyone else, but Hannibal can't be too sure, so he makes his way towards where Will is quietly, and is suddenly terrified to find him on the ground in the fetal position.

Hannibal tries to reach out to Will, say his name, see if he's hurt, but Will takes notice of his presence even as he's not fully aware. Hannibal just narrowly avoids getting punched in the face, but doesn't not manage to avoid getting grabbed by Will with his other hand and flipped under him.

Hannibal has been in this position with Will before but under arguably different circumstances, and he can see clearly as he looks at Will who's staring down at him like he's seen a ghost, that there is no light behind Will's eyes, that he is not present in the room with him.

Will's arm rears back as if to try to punch him again, when Hannibal whispers softly. "Your name is Will Graham. You are in our mutual home in Cuba. It is roughly 3:30 a.m. You are safe. You are alive. We are alive."

Will's eyes search his face anxiously as he says all these things, but upon Hannibal expressing that they are both alive, all the fight seems to go out of him. His arm falls to his side, his head drops to Hannibal's chest, and he lets out a quiet sob. His left hand feels up Hannibal's side and caresses the healed bullet wound, and his right hand wraps tightly around Hannibal's wrist.

Hannibal is not entirely sure what caused Will's distress, although he's positive he's the cause of it in some form or other. Whether Will's fear had been for Hannibal's safety or other people's safety from Hannibal is unclear to him. He's sure he will learn in due time, but for now, he is content to lay in the floor of their entryway and let Will ground himself with the only constant he has left.

[hold-the-devil-well]

Some lunch-break Hannibal thoughts:

Lots of people won't like or agree with this but...I don't think Will cares about his dogs in the way many pet owners do. They're not his fur-babies, or his family, or even--dare I say it--pets. I've been struck before by the fact that he doesn't hold little conversations with them or even made snide asides to them (talking "through" them, like I definitely do with my dog, lol). He doesn't show them much physical affection, even though we all love to interpret him drying off Winston that way (he is affectionate with them after he gets out of prison, but that might be the only time).

So how does he see his dogs? I think he sees them as his soldiers. A pack of dogs alerts you when someone is intruding--they're an alarm system and a protective barrier against the world, which someone who senses their own latent evil will definitely appreciate having. And, if need be, the pack will defend him. Yes they all just sniffed Chilton when he showed up all bloody and it was very funny, but I have no doubt that if Will told them too or if they perceived someone as a real threat, those dogs would attack.

As his little army, then, Will takes his responsibility to his dogs very seriously and genuinely cares about keeping them in excellent health and making sure they're happy. He's the leader of the pack and he needs to both earn and keep their loyalty. So he does. He makes their food from scratch, keeps them exercised, and makes sure they have comfortable places to relax. He takes better care of them than he does of himself sometimes. Will he risk his own life when one of his soldiers is in danger (cough cough Buster cough cough)? Absolutely. He absolutely has an emotional bond with them, a deep bond in its way, but it isn't especially soft. It's the bond of master and treasured servant.

[craqueluring]

i think this is my absolute favorite sequence of events in all of hannibal. will watches dolarhyde nearly choke hannibal out. you can hear hannibal gasping for air and you can see while dolarhyde has him, it does not look like he is able to fight back at all. hannibal looks beat.

if will just stayed put and let this happen, dolarhyde could've killed hannibal, and then will could've (at least tried) to kill dolarhyde. he could've run to get his gun and shot him, and hannibal and dolarhyde would both be dead, just like he originally planned with alana and jack. though obviously he wasn't actually planning it himself, still this eliminates any doubt.

but no, he pulls the knife out of his own shoulder and saves hannibal with it. he saved hannibal. he saved hannibal's life! this is such a "if i can't kill you, nobody can" moment. this is will choosing hannibal and everything that comes with him

and this is the exact moment 'love crime' starts playing. because hannibal saved will by jumping on dolarhyde's shoulders first just before will got his spine broken, and then will saved hannibal directly after. they are finally, after all this time, working in harmony.

[ssaseaprince]

I think with all the self-awareness Hannibal has, he doesn't actually know himself very well. That is a big reason why he is so obsessed with Will's view of him because he's never had someone who could give him an accurate reading of himself. There are things we all are unaware of that we do, and most of us can rely on others around us to point it out. But Hannibal has never had that. Even with Bedelia, she responds to what he tells her and what she guesses, but she is not able to truly read Hannibal either. Will is the only one who can. Hannibal is curious about himself, and Will is the only one who can tell him the things he does that he doesn't realize. He is the only one who can give him a genuine perspective. When the average person is discovering/questioning themselves and their identity, they can go to therapy, they could talk to their friends, Hell, they can go get drunk at a bar and talk to the bartender. Hannibal has no one who knows him and nobody who could give him any kind of self insight. Except Will Graham.