By Keri O’Shea
Caution – this article contains spoilers
When the credits rolled on the last episode of Hannibal Season 2, I felt physically exhausted; whilst the first season was itself superb, the second series was really where things really began to drop into place for me, and the ever-complicating relationship between Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) reached such a crescendo of violence in the ultimate episode that it was almost painful to watch. As if that wasn’t enough, creator Bryan Fuller then threw us a massive curveball; perhaps psychiatrist Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) wasn’t as fearful as she had seemed. How else could she come to be placidly sipping champagne with an at-large psychopath?
We had to wait, and wait, to find out. We also got hit with the news that there would in all likelihood be no Season 4 of Hannibal, meaning that any story arcs would have to be done and dusted in the newest episodes. Or, so we may have thought…
Season 3 was, certainly in its first five episodes, a challenging lull in the pace and energy of the series which had preceded it. Hannibal, still at large and still accompanied by Bedelia, had rocked up in Italy, where he first set about masquerading as an academic (deceased) – with Bedelia playing the part of the dutiful academic’s wife. Whilst a beautiful backdrop for filming, these early episodes felt rather aimless; whilst we did find out how and when Bedelia happened upon Hannibal after the bloodbath of the S2 finale, it rang rather hollow to me in terms of her own reasoning, and Bedelia’s conversation – her constant slew of dreamily-delivered platitudes – was a definite turn-off. Still, seeing Mads in leathers on a motorbike provided some levity, and almost made up for the sad lack of haute cuisine on offer in S3. Part of the series’ great appeals for me has always been the way it makes cannibalism almost appetising. And we do love to see a man cook.
What we saw plenty of in S3 was people somehow surviving incredible injuries; oh, I know there’s limited realism in many respects in Hannibal (S1 and S2 contained murders which were more like improbable, but oddly beautiful sculptures) but bless Will Graham. Whatever the hell that man’s made of, market that stuff. Ditto Dr Chilton! Recovering in hospital after he and his colleagues were almost-but-not-quite killed by Hannibal, Will begins piecing together the events of that night, and ruminating on his peculiar, almost intimate relationship with his former doctor. Travelling to Italy upon his recovery, alongside Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) Will is compelled to tell Hannibal that he ‘forgives’ him, having worked out where to find him by decoding clues left to him. It’s not that straightforward, however, and the series spends some time almost itself pondering – should Will try to capture Hannibal, or not? Whilst some have applauded the art-house sensibilities at play in the Italian episodes, episodes which abound with altered states and non-sequiturs, I can’t help but think it would have been better condensed into one or maybe two episodes, allowing the (to my mind) far more engaging Red Dragon arc to flourish.
S3 really does feel like it splits into two different seasons, so different in tone is the Great Red Dragon storyline. Having moved on in time by three years, via a dismal death for the maniacal Mason Verger, who had attempted to avenge himself on Lecter, we now see Hannibal – who after everything handed himself in so that Will would always know where he was – in a situation which has already been seen on film, though it’s a credit to Mikkelsen that I now feel the role of Lecter is his utterly, however iconic Anthony Hopkins. Will Graham, married and a father in the intervening years, is enticed back to his old job by the presence of a new serial killer, identified by the moniker ‘The Tooth Fairy’ (before some careful re-branding goes on). Will has tried to excise that part of his brain which allows him to place himself on a par with killers, but the way in which the Dragon targets families gets to him, and so before long he’s back, asking Lecter to help him. Lecter takes this opportunity to toy with his old friend, putting him in grave danger, perhaps simply – as he explained in S1 – to see what would happen. However, all of this is part of a learning curve for Will. Perhaps his fate is entwined with Lecter. The finale spells out just how much this is true.
Happily, I felt that the end episode of S3 was redemptive of the series as a whole, on many levels. I’d almost been dreading it, in case it didn’t give us any closure and didn’t give us any shocks; too much more of the platitudes and the lulls would have broken the spell of the series completely, but the presence of the deeply creepy, but also oddly vulnerable Dragon added impetus and drama where it was needed, and again, by the final episode, I was as gripped as I’d been with S2. The end episode contains some neat twists, although they’re signposted to an extent, and what Lecter refers to as the ‘mic drop’ – Will’s fatal flaw, a moment of humanity in a world of artifice – adds substantial depth here. As Will and Lecter disappeared from the screen, I couldn’t help feeling sad; it’s a credit to Fuller that he’s humanised a psychopath to such an extent that you actively want Lecter to prevail. Furthermore, S3 taught me that you have to be in it for the long game with Hannibal, and digest the story as a whole, not necessarily as neat component parts. Despite my misgivings regarding the early episodes of this series, overall it did far more well than it did them badly. Telling stories in this adventurous, ambitious manner is always going to be a risk where TV and ratings are concerned, and Fuller deserves credit for doing it his way. Hannibal rewards your patience.
So is that really it, for Hannibal? Certainly the conclusion which S3 came to points that way, and makes for a poignant swansong too. But should these characters get resurrected in future – on TV or in film – there’d be a receptive and grateful audience, self very much included. Oh, and one more thing: knowing that this series plays fast and loose with time structure, I probably shouldn’t pin too much on the closing scene, but seeing Bedelia fulfilling her destiny in such a macabre, eroticised way in the end fills me with an odd sort of optimism that I probably wouldn’t get any place else, and certainly not from that subject matter! Bravo, Hannibal – you’ve made cannibalism into a virtuoso art-form, and far more besides.