"He left us his broken heart"

*In the interest of pushing more content to this blog given the glacial rate at which I am developing some longer, more formalized pieces, I am going to go ahead and offer some reflection on each week’s episode of Bryan Fuller’s beautiful Hannibal TV series on NBC.

"Hannibal Title Card." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Mar. 2014.

“Primavera” (aired 6/11/2015)

            This is how I expected season three of Hannibal to start. In “Primavera” we revisit the bloodbath at Hannibal’s house from the end of season two as Will is reunited with Abigail, only to lose her moments later when the doctor mortally wounds them both. Last episode we saw Bedelia sink into a blue sea, while this time Will drifts toward the bottom of a red one. Water imagery has been a big part of Hannibal previously but usually appears in the form of a quiet stream where Will happily fishes in his mind. Also in this episode, another key component of the show’s symbology returned in the form of the stag creature Will has been seeing in visions since the beginning of season one. The image of the stag (or of antlers) has played a significant role in the series, and in “Primavera” we see it dying on the floor in the kitchen in the flashback then reborn eight months later in a grotesque and unsettling new way from the corpse of Hannibal’s latest victim.

Initially the stag seemed to be a symbol of Hannibal himself since it was the elusive answer Will was hunting; however, the image of the wendigo came later, combining the deer motif with a humanoid shape, suggesting perhaps that Will was closing in on an answer, the stag resolving itself into the form of the killer. Of course, the wendigo has its one mythology—namely that of a cannibal monster. Although these two recurring “characters” (stag and wendigo) seemed to be one and the same at first by virtue of their similar appearances, it has become apparent that they are not. The stag, while a bit malevolent looking, has become more closely associated with Will, while Hannibal and the wendigo are directly connected when Will realizes the truth in season one, looks at his friend, and sees the monster instead. I really should re-watch the first two seasons of the show because I feel like I have forgotten a lot of the little important touches like the evolution of the stag imagery, but I feel pretty confident suggesting that Will and the stag are connected (like Hannibal is with the wendigo) because we see it bleeding out when Will is. If the stag was also Hannibal, this would make no sense. It may be that the stag partially symbolizes Will but largely represents his quest or goals. It may be Will’s teacup. While Hannibal connects the death of a dream with the shattering of a teacup (something we associate with refinement, or elegance), the more earthy and less stable Will goes to animal imagery. We see the teacup shatter this time and then reform, and we see the stag die and then reform from a corpse. Again, the imagery associated with Hannibal is all elegance, and Will is a little rougher around the edges.

Also, on the pure speculation front, I was looking around about the wendigo online, and supposedly (according to Robert A Brightman’s “The Windigo in the Material World” by way of Wikipedia) the possession by the demonic spirit of the wendigo that turns someone into one often happens in a dream. The stag and wendigo in Hannibal do share some similarities in appearance and also appear in Will’s dreams/visions, so does his close association with the former suggest that he is slowly becoming the latter? Food for thought.

I mentioned Hannibal’s teacup before. In the scene where it breaks and reforms it is clearly Will’s face (or just Will), and this makes sense given that A) Will is literally breaking (dying) on the floor and B) Hannibal’s teacup that shatters this time is his hope for a life with Will and Abigail. In “Antipasto” Hannibal confidently tells Bedelia that he only let Will see a bit of him, but that qualification is wholly missing in “Primavera’s” flashback. Hannibal simply tells Will, “I let you see me.” After gutting Will, Hannibal pulls him into an embrace and holds him almost tenderly. Although the juxtaposition of tenderness and extreme violence is supposed to horrify us (and does), I do think that Hannibal is genuinely hurt in this scene, though he expresses that grief with the same stoicism as he does everything else. As Gideon suggested previously, Hannibal doesn’t want to eat alone, and although we know he can easily throw a dinner party for a group of guests and have them not know what he’s really serving, we might suspect that he wants to be seen. He keeps Gideon alive as long as he does because he wants to eat with someone who knows who he is even if he isn’t always preparing human flesh. We know that Gideon was supposed to be a poor man’s substitute for Will, and it’s easy in light of this information to see Bedelia in a similar position this season. At the end of season two, I saw them together and assumed that there was a longstanding collusion between them, and while it’s obvious they know one another’s respective secrets, I now feel that Bedelia was not Hannibal’s first choice and that while she was a co-conspirator, she was only on that plane with Hannibal because Will and Abigail were not.

Is there some homoeroticism to Will and Hannibal’s dynamic? I have certainly seen some fan art that emphasizes that aspect of their relationship. I do not think that’s where Bryan Fuller and company are ultimately going with it, though I’m open to the idea. Mostly I think that Will and Hannibal’s relationship has the same subdued, dreamy, and stoic quality to it that the show revels in thematically and visually elsewhere. It’s hard to imagine a future where the two are ever explicitly together, but it’s equally hard to imagine Clarice, if she appears, coming between them. It would be downright weird to see Hannibal end up with anyone else, in fact. Given the way that the show is slowly but surely diverging from its source material, introducing Rinaldo Pazzi early, doing a version of the Freddy/Freddie Lounds flaming wheelchair scene before we even get to Red Dragon, sterilizing Margot Verger, it seems likely that the story will not end the way it does in Hannibal (the book). The changes are adding up, and it’s wonderful to imagine what exactly the outcome will be in the long-term. Hannibal is clearly willing to play a long game (a dangerous proposition for a TV series renewed on a yearly basis) by slowly turning itself into an art film while also distancing itself from its source material. On that particular note, though, I will add that I think Hannibal is better for its revisions to the stories it pulls from. Rather than make itself subservient to the books, resulting in little more than colorful fan service, it is more of a tribute to those stories. Furthermore, for anyone who has read the books by Thomas Harris, the fun of spotting the little nods to them or catching the moments where Hannibal subverts the originals can be very engaging. It also creates more uncertainty about the future of the story. Having read the books, I went into the show feeling that I knew where it would end up (where it had to end up), but now I am delighted to say I am significantly less sure.

And speaking of uncertainty—Man, Hannibal really hooked me in with Abigail surviving (glad to see she made it, a little suspicious that everyone seems to have survived the kitchen massacre), letting me believe that what I was seeing was true for much longer than most other series would dare before finally pulling out the rug and revealing the truth. I loved it. I hated to see Abigail die (the girl has had it rough from day one), but I love the fact that the show is creating this intense air of uncertainty and doubt. We have always seen strange things during this particular hour of television. Season one attempted to justify its visions and hallucinations with Will’s physical illness, but as the show has become increasingly willing to indulge itself, it has also dispensed with some of its former rationalizing. Granted, we are still seeing events unfold from Will’s point of view, and his abilities as an empath will always be a sort of justification for the strange sights and sounds of the show, but I like that Hannibal is generally embracing its weirdness. I keep alluding to the scene where Will sees the stag emerge from a corpse, and it really does defy description. It’s unsettling, creepy, and a little gross. And, again, I loved it. I am less sold on the possibility of Abigail lingering as a regular part of Will’s visions/the show’s overall weirdness, however.

On one level, I would like to see the character of Abigail find a measure of peace. She has suffered constant abuse ever since she was introduced. First, she was her father’s bait, which resulted in her throat being cut the first time, then she was Freddie’s chance to get at Will, then she was the adoptive daughter of one man who was slowly losing his mind and another who faked her death and essentially held her captive in his house for months before slitting her throat again to kill her. Her “ghost’s” lingering devotion to Hannibal, while unsettling to hear, was also saddening. Abigail continues to side with her abusers, and though there is probably some Stockholm syndrome at work there, I want her to finally get some rest, know some peace.

Also, the character only the protagonist can see and hear bit has been played out. Heroes did it. Dexter did it. Even The Following has done it. Unless Hannibal can do something new with the idea, I would be content just knowing that Abigail is finally free of all this madness.

That being said, I do like that Will introduces the idea of parallel but divergent universes here, no doubt as a coping device for what he knows to be true upon seeing “Abigail” enter his room at the hospital: that the girl he thought of as a daughter is dead. So while we can see Abigail as a ghost here or a vision in Will’s mind, it is also appropriate to consider the time we see them together in Italy as a glimpse into a divergent universe where Hannibal didn’t kill her and the two go to find him. In the prime universe, though, we know she’s gone. Let’s let her go. On a similar note, I am a bit put out that promos have spoiled the fact that Laurence Fishburne’s character is apparently still alive. Granted, his name is in the opening credits, but I still feel like that first “this season on Hannibal” sneak peek really took some of the tension out of “Primavera” and the episodes to follow. I can’t see the show pulling the same trick with Jack Crawford that it pulled with Abigail (would we fall for it twice?), so I have to assume that he’s alive and well. Caroline Dhavernas’s Alana Bloom is still MIA, though. I am hoping that Hannibal didn’t kill off two of its major female characters in one go since I don’t want to have to start looking askance at it the way that did with The Following (“Your misogyny is showing, dear”).

The last part of “Primavera” I want to mention is its treatment of God. The writers seem to have had a good time finding ways to say Hannibal is Satan without having someone outright call him the devil (which would be, shall we say, inelegant). Hannibal is not God, we learn, but he knows God intimately and feels strongly that he knows why God does what he does and what he enjoys about looking down on humanity. Hannibal is prideful like Lucifer then. While he may not be everyone’s god, though, Hannibal may be Will’s. After all, when Will is in the catacombs and finally tells an unseen Hannibal that he can forgive him, he is looking up. We have to wonder if he is finally praying and to whom. Hannibal slips away without answering, of course, and in his role as Will’s god he enacts what Will suggested earlier about God’s unwillingness to interfere in the lives of mortals because of its inelegance. Additionally, we have been told that Hannibal can only forgive Will by eating him, so even though their forgiveness regarding the events of season two is now mutual, there may be no returning to the idyllic days of old apart from the occasional trip to that room of Hannibal or Will’s memory palace.