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puppydoggraham · 7 months

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The first time Hannibal saw Primavera he was alone. Lonely, as he continued to be for most of his life. The painting filled the void of solitude. He spent copious hours in front of it. Drew it constantly. Murdered people in the style of it. He figured he would be lonely and misunderstood forever. That changes when he meets Will. His obsession with the painting becomes replaced by his obsession for Will (which doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love the painting). Loving Will feels…different. Deeper. Unconditional. Enduring. What he feels for Will challenges ideas he has ideas of himself. He’s not sure how to express it, so he expresses the same way he did over the painting: through violence. That’s how he knows how to express.

Hannibal wants to run away with Will. When thinking about it, he imagines taking Will to see the painting with him. Wouldn’t that be the most beautiful thing? He’s never gotten to share the experience with anyone before. It would be the first time he got to share something so intimate. He wants this so bad he doesn’t even require a sacrifice. Being with Will is enough. That’s all he wants.

But then Will betrays him. He robs him of this possibility. That’s part of why Hannibal is as broken as he is during Mizumono. Will affirmed what he already believed. That no one is so be trusted. That the world is a dangerous place. That you can only count on yourself. He thought Will was different but he’s not. He walks away even though all he wants to do is stay. Blames himself. This is what he gets for letting someone see him.

He believes that’s the last time he’ll see Will. Of course he wants Will to come after him, but after the choice of his betrayal, Hannibal has given up hope of that. This is a test that he’s sure of the answer already but part of him still has hope that Will might try to find him. Will realizes he’s fucked up. He’s consumed with regret. He makes sure he understands Hannibal before meeting up with him again. Will didn’t understand that Hannibal loves him. He figured Hannibal didn’t have the capability for love. Will needs to prove he understands Hannibal (and his own feelings towards Hannibal that he’s been in denial about for awhile). No more running from his feelings. No more running away from Hannibal. He’s done that already. Suppressed feelings that manifest as avoidance. Will comes to understand that he doesn’t want to be away from Hannibal. To Jack, he remarks "I wanted to run away with him". As he tells Jack in the same conversation, the decision to betray Hannibal wasn’t premeditated. He made the decision partly because he was too scared to face the truth of what he felt for Hannibal. It took losing Hannibal and Hannibal walking away and feeling that separation. That loss. To understand. To stop running. To have enough courage to face the truth. Not to mention it’s hard for Will. His life isn’t about what he wants. It’s about what he can do for others. How useful he can be. He doesn’t think about his desires. The very concept is foreign to him. This test is so important because Will needs to make the decision fully on his own. Not only make it, but actively seek to right his wrong. That would show Hannibal that he wants him. That fear just got in the way. Hannibal has done the chasing. It’s Will’s turn.

Hannibal returns to his original source of comfort to cope with the loss of Will. He gets to see his painting again. It’s beautiful like he remembered. After what he’s gone through, it offers solace. An old friend. He hears footsteps behind him. It’s Will. His Will. The intense emotions he must feel at this. Bewilderment. Amazement. Shock. Relief. Love.

He struggles to articulate (which doesn’t happen often). He didn’t think he would see Will again. Not after Mizumono. He figured that was it. Yet Will is here. In a way they did run away. Maybe not together, but they ended up in some far off land. Together. Will sailed all that way to find him. He took the time to intimately understand Hannibal before seeing him again. He put in the work. No one has done that before. He even strung up a body to pay tribute to Hannibal. His form of a gift. He showed Hannibal love in the way Hannibal would understand it. As awful as the betrayal was, in a way it’s more meaningful this way. The decision was fully thought about and had immense effort put into it. Hannibal realizes that letting Will see him wasn’t a mistake. Will knows him as intimately as if he was Hannibal himself. He knows his past. He knows his darkness. Yet he doesn’t turn away any longer. He’s here. He knows every rotten part of Hannibal and still looks to him with a smile.

"If I saw you every day forever, Will, I would remember this time". Hannibal knows that no matter what, this moment will stand out from every other moment they shared and will share. During the fall the image plays through his mind as he and Will descend. It brings him peace. Everything they’ve been through had been worth it because of that brief window of time that he got to experience the beauty of the painting he loves with the man he loves. Even after the betrayal where he was convinced that was it for him and he would be back to solitude, he got to experience beauty again, and at a greater level because he’s sharing it with Will. They experience a love that many people could only dream of. A love that surely isn’t made for a creature like Hannibal. A love thats beauty that comes from two people misunderstood. Two people who have been through a lot together. Two people conjoined who can’t survive being apart. Like the eternal beauty of Primavera, their love will live on even after they die.

"It’s beautiful."

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham #nbc hannibal #hannibal analysis #Hannibal dolce #I hope reading this destroys you as much as it destroyed me writing it #hannibal meta

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typicalher · 4 years

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An Analysis of Will's Moral Conflict

One of the key struggles for Will throughout the show concerns his reluctance to fully embrace his darkness. I completely acknowledge that this is a struggle that he deals with throughout, but the reasons for this struggle are more complicated than him simply having too strong of a good moral compass. When you actually look carefully at Will’s pattern of behavior, what you see is that Will’s moral struggle is really more about what he thinks he should feel or possibly even what he thinks he should want to feel. It is often argued that Will struggles with his internal conflict because he also wants justice or to stop Hannibal (and himself) from killing or hurting people. If Will is fighting his darker urges because he wants to protect people then that would be valid, but this is usually not the case when you actually look at his actions and the fallout. Will’s struggles don’t actually protect anyone (in fact his indecisiveness usually leads to tragic consequences) and when others do get hurt, he doesn’t actually react with genuine guilt or even make true changes to his behavior for the better.

In the beginning of the series, we do know that Will has a desire to be normal and because he isn’t he largely hides from social interaction. At first he is also not interested in socializing or even talking with Hannibal, but once Hannibal gets him to confess to enjoying killing Hobbs and then offers him acceptance at this confession, we see Will become much more comfortable having serious and personal conversations with him. Will enjoys the acceptance that Hannibal is offering him despite admitting to enjoying taking a life. Will is still very reluctant to admit this to anyone else; however, so he does recognize that it isn’t a normal feeling for him to have despite Hannibal’s lack of judgement (and even encouragement). He tells Abigail that killing her father was the “ugliest feeling in the world,” which we know is a lie and near the end of S1 he later confesses the truth about how he felt to her.

S2 is where we really get to see Will’s struggle begin though because it is during S2 that he is much more “awake” so to speak and he actually starts actively embracing more of his darker urges and recognizing them for what they are. He is angry at Hannibal because of Abigail’s death and the betrayal of lying about his illness and framing him, as well as the death of Beverly, which eventually leads to Will sending Matthew Brown to kill him. Will does not appear to feel any regret for this attempt at murder by proxy, or the fact that he was sending someone else off to potentially be sacrificed for this cause, and when Hannibal frees him from prison shortly afterwards, he also begins to understand some of Hannibal’s motivations for his S1 actions. However, he still starts off on a plan to get revenge and presumably attempt to bring Hannibal to justice. This brings us to the question of why is Will really doing all of this. Jack certainly seems to think it is for justice, but we eventually see that Will is lying throughout the “investigation.” Will was, for instance, supposed to manipulate Hannibal into trying to kill Mason but arrest him in the act. At least that is what Will tells Jack. However, Will also doesn’t tell Jack anything about his personal connection to the Mason Verger plot and what happened to Margot. He also manipulates Mason against Hannibal, but in the end he frees Hannibal allowing him to kill his way out of Muskrat Farm. He also just ends up watching Hannibal snap Mason’s neck and doesn’t tell Jack anything about what actually happened, which is why they have to resort to the planned entrapment dinner. Based on his actions and not just on what Jack believes are his intentions, there isn’t really any indication that Will’s motivations are anything but personal. He is upset by Hannibal’s actions in S1, but he is mostly still upset about what happened to Abigail. He brings her death up to Freddie twice and questions Hannibal directly about it. Even before the rest of the FBI closes in and Will is forced to make a choice, he burns Hannibal’s psychiatric notes about him. The file even contains the real clock that Will drew when he was ill. Will burns it willingly when he could have attempted to keep it. Hannibal doesn’t seem concerned at all that Will has it in his hands. Why does he destroy valuable evidence if he wants justice? In the end, Will disregards even Abigail’s death when he calls Hannibal to warn him. Even if Will wasn’t planning to run with Hannibal when he got to the house (though we know he at least wanted to based on his later confession to Jack) he wanted Hannibal to leave. He wanted him to go free. This wasn’t about justice. It was about what had personally happened between the two of them and he was apparently okay with Hannibal leaving and going to potentially kill other people somewhere else. Later when Will is in the hospital and Chilton tells him this is his best possible world, Will imagines if he had killed Jack with Hannibal that night, which shows us that Will’s regrets over Mizumono aren’t that he failed to stop Hannibal and bring him to justice but that he didn’t commit to Hannibal sooner and that they didn’t get to go through with killing Jack together.

When we get to S3, Will’s conflict eventually shifts away from being about what Hannibal has done to hurt him and more about Will’s so called morality. This is where Will starts to get a bit more difficult to follow in terms of motivation because Will is pretty hypocritical about all of it. At the beginning of the season, Will is mourning the loss of the family that he, Hannibal, and Abigail could have been together. He is worried that Hannibal may just be playing with him, but he also wants to go to Hannibal. This is explicitly stated more than once when he talks to “Abigail” who is really just a representation of his own thoughts. At the end of the episode, he forgives Hannibal, and I think this is where we start to get a bit of a shift in Will’s conflict. Will goes to Hannibal’s childhood home, which is where he encounters Chiyoh. Will now sees someone Hannibal has “tested” and seemingly has left behind. Will was already worried in Primavera that Hannibal was simply playing with him, but now he sees someone that Hannibal was able to walk away from and he likely becomes concerned that Hannibal sees him the same way. Afterall, Hannibal gutted him and walked away and Will only has the broken heart as a sign that Hannibal hasn’t just moved on. What if Hannibal was just mocking him? Will’s insecurities are somewhat understandable here. What is telling though is how Will treats what he should logically see as another of Hannibal’s “victims.” He treats Chiyoh in a very Hannibal-like manner. He tests her to see if she will kill and she does in self-defense. While he does take the prisoner away from the castle initially, when Chiyoh screams, we get a shot of Will off in the woods. His reaction is stone cold and there is no surprise at all on his face, so he must have expected the prisoner to come back after her. Chiyoh also makes sure to call him out on his real intentions. Later when they are riding the train together, he still shows no remorse for what he did to her, and instead rather coldly questions her about taking a life. He asks her if she sees herself killing the prisoner over and over and she replies no that she sees him and his response is just to grin at her as if he enjoys the thought of what he has made her do. Later in the same episode, she states that he feels like he needs to kill Hannibal or he will become him and Will says yes. It is here that the story somewhat shifts from Will possibly wanting to go be with Hannibal again to feeling like now he needs to kill Hannibal in order to “save himself” from Becoming like him. What changed? I think Chiyoh and thinking Hannibal just saw her as disposable is part of it, but I think the fact that he was able to really forgive Hannibal for what happened between them before and Abigail is also apart of it. If Will can forgive Hannibal for killing their daughter and gutting him and still wants to go to him, what does that say about Will himself and the type of person he is? This isn’t the way normal people love. I think this realization, combined with the fear that Hannibal doesn’t really care about him, causes Will to get a bit spooked and regress in his own self-acceptance a bit. Seeing Bedelia and realizing she took his place also helped solidify this belief on his part.

However, lets look a little more closely at Will’s apparent motivation and the belief he needs to kill Hannibal for this reason. Is it to bring him to justice? Is it to stop Hannibal from killing others? No, it is all about Will and his attempts to possibly control his own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Keep in mind that at this point, Hannibal has left Will alone for eight months. He did leave the broken heart, but Will had to travel across the ocean to see that. Will is going after Hannibal; Hannibal is not going to Will. The idea that Will must kill Hannibal to stop his own dark desires is pretty illogical on Will’s part, and Chiyoh tries to point out to him that there are flaws in his thinking because she follows up by telling him there are means of influence other than violence, but this is also where Will really starts twisting himself up in knots to lie to himself. (For the record, I do think there is more to Will’s motivations than just wanting to kill Hannibal just like there was much more to Hannibal’s attempt at the head sawing. For one, I think they are both afraid of being the vulnerable one in the relationship because at this point in their relationship, there is a lot of violence, physical and emotional, between them. I also doubt Will would have gone through with it. He pulled a tiny knife in the middle of a public street and Will has never before or after this, been able to actually go through with killing Hannibal or letting anyone else do it, but I digress.) It should also be noted that Will didn’t go to Italy in the first place to attempt to bring Hannibal to justice. He goes to Italy to deal with his feelings for Hannibal just like he “resumed therapy” to deal with his feelings for Hannibal. We can see proof of this in his interaction with Pazzi who wants his help as an officer of the law to find Hannibal, and Will not only isn’t interested in really helping him, he starts to deliberately act creepy around him including taunting him by asking him if he knows whose side he is really on. When Will meets up with Jack later, even though he goes with him to the apartment where they find Bedelia, Will also slips out by himself and doesn’t tell Jack he knows where to find Hannibal, so again he sees finding Hannibal as something personal and not a matter of law enforcement.

Then we arrive at the Digestivo break up. Will is clearly exhausted during this episode. He does bite Cordell’s cheek and look to Hannibal for approval and help talk Alana into freeing them, but you can tell he is tired. This is when he tells Hannibal to leave and he doesn’t want to know where he is. Let’s break this action down. There are two valid interpretations to this: Will deliberately manipulated Hannibal into surrendering (which he later claims) or Will thought Hannibal would really leave and was surprised that Hannibal turned himself in. If Will did deliberately manipulate Hannibal into turning himself in, we can say from his later actions that he was essentially keeping Hannibal on the hook until Will was ready to return to him. Will is giving himself a break from the drama that is their relationship and giving himself some space (even though Will was the one to seek out Hannibal again and not the other way around). If Will didn’t manipulate him on purpose then Will once again is apparently fine with Hannibal leaving and killing other people. The implication then is that it would apparently be okay as long as Hannibal wasn’t killing people he knew and Will wasn’t tempted to give in to his own dark urges by being around Hannibal. Hannibal killing only seems to be an issue for Will when he is personally connected to it, and even then only to a point. The only one of Hannibal’s victims he really seems to care about is Abigail (who he forgave Hannibal for) and Beverly for a short period of time before he seemingly forgot about her entirely (and this is arguably Will being angry at Hannibal taking something else away from him. Will tends to get upset when he believes this is what Hannibal is doing. We see it with Abigail, Margot’s baby, and later when he accuses Hannibal of this concerning Molly and Walter during his conversation with Bedelia.) We can also see the way Will treats one of Hannibal’s surviving victims, Alana. Alana is manipulated by Hannibal, and unlike Will himself, is considered disposable. Alana actually does try to stop Hannibal by pulling the trigger and attempting to shoot him, but she fails. She is a victim of Hannibal’s manipulations and suffers a serious injury and almost dies because of Hannibal. And how does Will treat her? He doesn’t even want her around him. He would rather pine for Hannibal and Abigail in Hannibal’s kitchen than even talk to her. They could have come together to bond over their trauma, but instead he rejects her entirely and tells her to leave him alone. He doesn’t even have a logical reason to be so put off by her in their scene in the kitchen.

We then arrive at the Red Dragon arc where Will’s “moral conflict” reaches its most hypocritical levels. First, we have how he treats Bedelia. Will is blatantly jealous, but even setting aside his hatred of her as a potential rival, his attitude towards her is outrageously hypocritical. He was upset no one would believe him about Hannibal in the first half of S2, but he never even gives her story the benefit of the doubt for a second (even openly mocking her with his “I don’t believe you.”) He also tells her she would deserve to be eaten by Hannibal and later threatens her again in TWOTL. This is the man who tried to shoot someone in cold blood, mutilated a corpse, set someone up to kill and mutilated another corpse, and tried to help Hannibal escape at least once. Will has done more criminal acts and gotten away with them than Bedelia is even capable of doing in the first place. Remember when Will was going to be arrested for killing and mutilating Randall Tier? Apparently Will just got away with that completely once the FBI was distracted by Hannibal being the real Ripper. Bedelia has nothing on Will.

We also have Will’s family, which is often used as an example of Will trying to be a good man and resist his darkness, but let’s look at how this is presented. Parallels are actually drawn between Will choosing his family and how Dolarhyde chooses his victims. Hannibal points out that Dolarhyde is like Will and “needs a family to escape what is inside of him.” When Hannibal tells him he picked a readymade family “to serve his needs” because he knows better than to breed, Will is called out for basically having a beard family (in more than one way). It is worth noting that Will does not even try to argue with Hannibal about this, which is basically accepting the truth of the statement. Will doesn’t have a problem with calling Hannibal out when he feels he deserves it. What we are shown of Will’s relationship with Molly is also quite shallow. We have no reason to believe he has been honest about himself with her. She believes he is motivated by wanting to save lives, but as we have seen he is fine putting people in danger and doesn’t seem to care about Hannibal killing people he doesn’t care about. She also jokes about his criminal mind and he shuts the conversation down. There has been discussion about whether or not Will was purposely putting Molly and Walter in danger. I don’t think he did this consciously, but I do believe he was very selfish to use them for a “normal” life while he is essentially keeping Hannibal waiting in prison. It is also very odd that Will is supposed to be so good at reading killers, but he “doesn’t” pick up on the obvious hints Hannibal gives him about Dolarhyde coming after Molly and Walter next. By involving them, and not being honest with them, he at least was pulling them into a world they weren’t prepared for. We also never see them again after they are attacked. Will mainly seems upset that Hannibal tried to take something away from him again since that has been an issue for Will throughout their relationship and even in the scene where he confronts Hannibal about it he doesn’t even stay angry for the entire scene. (Also, the accusation that Hannibal gave Will three years to build a family just so he could take them away is pretty bizarre logic as well. Hannibal didn’t know what Will was going to do while he was in prison.) If Will actually wanted to be with them though, it is odd that this was enough to destroy the relationship. As if he wanted to live in an illusion and once the illusion is shattered he has no need for it. Some argue that Will’s motivations are to protect Molly and Walter in the finale, but if that is the case why do we never see them again? Molly is only brought up in the finale as a way for Will to try and hurt Hannibal. If Will truly cared beyond the destruction of his attempt at a normal life, then why do we not get more of a real moment between Will and Molly after the hospital scene? Instead, Will is back to focusing on the personal conflict of he and Hannibal’s relationship and the new confirmation that Hannibal is in love with him and what he feels in return and what he is going to do about it. In fact, Will was the one who decided to involve Hannibal in the case before it was even necessary. If Will believes Hannibal is so dangerous for himself and the world at large, why doesn’t he leave Hannibal to rot alone in his cell until it is absolutely necessary to interact with him? Bedelia calls him out for just missing Hannibal and wanting to see him, but you also have to wonder if Will wants to give Hannibal the chance to act in some way and get involved. Hannibal didn’t even need to know Will had a family at all for the purposes of this case, so Will agreeing with Bedelia that Hannibal was going to let Will have something knowing he could take it away is odd. The whole situation is another example of Will coming to Hannibal instead of Hannibal coming to Will. Will had to want Hannibal involved.

We then come to Chilton and Will’s role in what happens to him. Will does appear upset at seeing what happened to Chilton in the FBI office, but when we cut to him with Bedelia, the one he can be more honest with, we see a very different side of him, and when she asks if he wants to talk about it he responds with “the divine punishment of a sinner mirrors the sin being punished” and “Damned if I’ll feel.” When she asks if he has to wonder if he put Chilton at risk he says no and with a cocky eyebrow raise, he responds to her asking if she expected this to happen to Chilton by saying “I can’t say I’m surprised.” We aren’t seeing any real remorse here and after imagining himself lighting the match that burned Chilton, he easily lies to Jack in the next scene and blames it all on Hannibal, which is a deliberate attempt on his part to deflect the blame he was just taking responsibility for with Bedelia.

Will’s actions in The Wrath of the Lamb are ambiguous to a point, and there are multiple interpretations of what his intentions were. What we can say for certain is that Will lies to Jack and acts like he didn’t know Dolarhyde was alive until after the rest of them learn that news as well. He never reveals that he has already put a plot into motion involving Dolarhyde. So what is Will’s motivation? There are different options. None of them actually make Will look good or heroic at all. One interpretation is that Will has decided that too many lines have been crossed by himself and he needs to put an end to it, so he is going to have Dolarhyde kill Hannibal. If this is Will’s motivation, then it means that Will is essentially blaming giving in to his own darkness on Hannibal simply existing. Hannibal is in a cell and while he did find a way to be something of a danger thanks to Dolarhyde, that avenue is now cut off to him. It doesn’t make logical sense for Will to decide to use another serial killer to kill Hannibal because Will has given into his darkness enough to now be willing to do things like set up Chilton and not feel bad about it. If this is Will’s genuine plan, it also means he is willing to lie to Jack and the others and put many people in danger for his own personal issues. The officers escorting them are killed, and it can be easily assumed that Will helped Dolarhyde know where they would be (how else did he find out?) so that it would just be Will and Hannibal against Dolarhyde alone, which was not Jack’s plan at all. Even if Will didn’t intend for the police officers to die, he was deliberately endangering others with his plan and they die because of his manipulations. Will also shows no remorse over this (he even steals a gun off of a corpse) even though it is a much worse act than killing a family annihilator with Hannibal. If Will’s moral conflict doesn’t include caring about the lives of innocent officers, what exactly is he trying to stop himself from Becoming and how will Hannibal being dead help? The most “heroic” take on Will’s plan is that he wanted to put an end to Dolarhyde and Hannibal (and possibly himself) to end all the evil and maybe stop himself from becoming a killer. However, Will’s plan involves lying to Jack, manipulating people, and getting innocent bystanders killed. This isn’t logical and if this was Will’s conscious plan he is a hypocrite who is more concerned with saving a perception of himself that he believes should exist than actually being a hero. If Will really wanted to put an end to things, he could also have helped Jack find Dolarhyde and then turn himself in for his own crimes or had himself committed to protect others from himself. Will instead picks the most reckless and dangerous plan he could. Even his attempt at ending both he and Hannibal isn’t a full commitment to the act. There was still a gun available. He could have put a bullet in Hannibal’s brain when he was vulnerable and then ended himself. Instead, Will pushes them off a cliff that Hannibal already told him had an eroding bluff. He is leaving it up to chance, likely because he doesn’t really want to die, but he believes dying is what he should want to do. Keep in mind, this last push isn’t motivated by the fact that his plotting led to the death of several innocent people. He is motivated to do this because of how Good and Right it feels killing with Hannibal.

For the record, I believe that Will really wanted to free Hannibal and kill with him. I do think it is very possible that Will told himself his motivations were what I outlined above, but because those motivations are so illogical, I believe this was just his excuse to create a situation where he and Hannibal had to fight and kill Dolarhyde alone together because what he really wanted was that experience (after all, he tells Bedelia his plan and threatens her with Hannibal coming after her, which doesn’t make sense if he really plans for them to all be dead). However, if the above were his motivations, and Will truly wanted to let Dolarhyde kill Hannibal for him right up until the moment he couldn’t actually let it happen, then Will is someone who is willing to blame someone else for his own actions, unnecessarily endanger bystanders to “save” himself, and then attempt to use someone else for murder by proxy (again). None of that is heroic and none of that demonstrates that Will is driven by a genuine attempt to be moral. It is a surface level morality that doesn’t add up to much at all.

Even the narrative tends to tell Will that his fight to preserve his “morality” is dangerous to others. The more Will fights, the more indecisiveness he shows, the more he gets other people hurt. His insistence that he just kept lying to Hannibal (as he tells himself in Primavera) helped lead to the tragedy of Mizumono. While Hannibal is responsible for his own actions, Will is also responsible for the part he plays and his inability to pick a side until it was too late (and even then in a way ambiguous enough that Hannibal did not seem to get the message.) When Will is unsure of himself and gives into his impulses without being sure of what he wants, we end up with situations like Chilton and the unnecessary deaths in TWOTL. Will’s moral conflict never actually leads to anything good in the show, and a lot of the negative consequences are caused by Will’s inability to seemingly be honest even with himself. Will’s moral conflict is something he does struggle with, but ultimately it does not lead to him actually changing for the better or showing genuine remorse for his actions. His conflict only leads to him being more reckless and endangering even more people. It is a false conflict that is based on Will believing he should be a certain way because of society’s expectations (and it is in this that the closeted subtext makes the most sense) rather than real guilt or a desire to be good for its own sake. I do hope and believe that surviving the Fall was what Will needed to finally let go of these issues so that he can finally be happy with himself and Hannibal.

#hannibal #spoilers #will graham #meta #hannigran #hannibal lecter

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k-s-morgan · 4 years

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I'm a Reddit lurker, no account, and since the Netflix update am posts daily here and in reddit. A recent post on S3 caught my attention. Don't you feel that in S3 Hannibal's struggle at 'moving on' in Italy was far more intense that Will's? I agree with that poster that Will looked ok - readily gets married.. wife, kid. There were subtle things, true not touching, weak communication but he could have carried on fine. I didn't see him suffering the way Hannibal was. And felt angry at him.

Hello! Oh, I definitely agree that Will is frustrating to the point of being maddening. I think it goes back to his versus Hannibal's ways of expressing emotions. Will's been spending the majority of his life in denial in several respects at once, and his feelings for Hannibal is something he struggles with displaying. However, I think we still see enough of his struggles, and I don't believe he would ever succeed in carrying on without Hannibal indefinitely.

Will's journey is divided into 2 parts in S3: post-Mizumono and post-Digestivo.

Post-Mizumono

In the first part, Will is operating under the knowledge that Hannibal loves him, and his emotions come to the surface more openly. He can't and doesn't want to move on: the first thing he does upon waking up is voicing his pain at Hannibal leaving him to die, then berating himself for lying to him, then realizing Hannibal left him alive deliberately and that he wants to be found. Will begins to analyze their conversations and quickly figures out where he should go to look for him. After being released from the hospital, he starts building a boat to travel to Hannibal by sea. The nature of this action is romantic by itself - also, this scene is intercut with his Mizumono memories, namely, with Hannibal's face that emerges every time he moves yet another part of the engine. This is a vivid demonstration of Will trying to repair what is now broken. He openly admits to Jack that he wanted to run away with Hannibal.

Similarly, Will spends some time sitting in Hannibal's empty house. When Alana tries to reach out for him, he rejects her soundly and asks her to leave. He basically admits that he still loves Hannibal in their conversation, telling Alana about their pact of ignoring "the worst in one another in order to continue enjoying the best." These instances show that Will is pining hard, that his feelings are so intense that he no longer even bothers to hide them from Alana and Jack. The whole E2 is Will's love letter to Hannibal - he's reverent about him, he thinks about him non-stop, and he tries to find him very hard, even literally chasing him down. He even lies at the place where Hannibal left him his "broken heart," as if needing closer physical contact.

Things begin to shift as Will meets Chiyoh. It deserves a separate meta, but I feel like Will starts drawing comparisons between them and comes to a conclusion that Hannibal doesn't love him after all. That if he abandoned Chiyoh, whom he was supposed to love, so easily, for so many years, without bothering to return to her, then maybe he's just not capable of love. Seeing Bedelia as his replacement just reinforced this idea, so Will returned to his bitter and vengeful state, hence his attempt with a knife in Dolce. The end of Dolce and the whole Digestivo put Will through hell, and by the end of it, he's absolutely done. A big part of him doesn't believe Hannibal loves him, and at this point, he's no longer motivated to find out whether it's so. Will of Digestivo is a huge contrast to Will as he was in Primavera: the hope, the glow are gone, he retreats into his shell again.

Post-Digestivo

Fast forward 3 years and Will is still a shell. He might be married, he might share some lovely moments and jokes with Molly, but he's not happy. The first time we see their family, they are apart - and not just apart, Molly and Walter are actually fishing, something Will loves, while Will chose to stay alone and brood. Jack comes to find him and that's where everything starts.

First, let's consider the fact that Will didn't hide away from Jack even though he could. If he truly wanted the old life to be over, he'd have moved somewhere where neither Jack nor the FBI would be able to find him, cutting all ties. He could do it. Instead, he remained more or less visible. Instead of kicking Jack out, Will allows him to share the details about the case with him despite his half-hearted protests. Will is not a malleable person who's easily subdued or intimidated: he might go with the flow because he finds it more comfortable, but he's more than capable of sending someone to hell, especially now. This Will is the one who lied to Jack repeatedly, who chose to beat a man almost to death instead of shooting him, who mutilated his body and ate it, using his suit as a trophy. This Will chose Hannibal over everyone else, ignored the fact that people like Jack and Alana suffered and forgave him, hinted to Pazzi that he might join Hannibal in killing him, coldly set up Chiyoh to kill or be killed, made a display from the body of a person who might have been innocent, for all he knew, and so on. So, this Will was fully capable of laughing in Jack's face and telling him to leave. He doesn’t do it.

More than that, Will told Jack to not show photos to Molly and then somehow ended up having him for dinner with them. In the middle of it, he conveniently gets up to follow Walter outside, leaving Molly and Jack alone. Like... come on. Will knew perfectly well what Jack was going to do. He *wanted* him to do it because he wanted to go. He was bored with this fake life, he "craved change", like Hannibal tells him later. Will manipulated the situation from the start, though how conscious this manipulation was remains ambiguous.

He lies to Jack about having to see Hannibal to restore his mindset even though we saw how perfectly he recreated everything just a few scenes ago. Will didn't bother to wait even for a week, he demanded a meeting with Hannibal right away. This betrays his impatience and his longing. Soon after that, he hunts Bedelia down and verbally attacks her. He's openly jealous and he's trying to establish what relationship she shared with Hannibal. "Is Hannibal in love with me?" is a very important question for Will because here, he finally admits to himself once and for all that yes, Hannibal does love him, that he (Will) does have complete influence over him.

So, these three years was Will taking a break from wondering about Hannibal's feelings, their history, and trying to pretend to live a normal life for the last time. A part of Will had to know it was doomed to fail, but he still gave it a half-hearted attempt. He wasn't okay, though, and based on everything, I'd say he was getting close to snapping again. Maybe he'd live with his family for several more years, but the boredom would get to him eventually, and the longing to finally figure out whether Hannibal loves him or not, the need to be his true self and Become would drive him back into Hannibal's world.

We don't see the intensity of Will's suffering for the most part because we almost never saw him in any other state, so we find it familiar. He lived his whole life surrounded by lies, denial, and self-hatred. He's used to not being happy and complete. He was most open in the post-Mizumono period because he allowed himself to hope for something then. In all other instances, he's stiff and very reserved.

I'm annoyed at Will as well because his inability to decide on something and the whole miscommunication thing start to drive me crazy in S3, but I understand his conflict and I accept that he and Hannibal have very different ways of showing their feelings. I do hope that if there is S4, we'll get to see Will appreciate and love Hannibal more openly. Happy Will should be a big contrast to every other state we’ve seen him in.

#hannibal #will graham #hannigram

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hanniba1 · 4 years

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i was tagged by @matthewbrown and @cannnibal for these super fun hannibal questions!! thank you both so much i always love gushing about this show as we know

Favourite episode and why: oh god okay, if i HAD to pick one it’s mizumono. it’s just such a Perfect episode, it’s so ridiculously beautiful down to the tiniest detail, like the ticking clock sound that plays through most the episode???? love it. my other top favorite episodes are secondo, primavera, shiizakana, dolce, naka choko, appertivo, tome wan, trou normand, the wrath of the lamb, the number of the beast is 666, contorno, mukōzuke and su-zakana.

Least favourite episode and why: uhhh, i honestly love them all?? i guess probably either hassun or takiawase?? just they feel the slowest to me i guess.

Favourite side character: jimmy price!!!! i love him so much. i’d say beverly but she’s not a side character in my eyes.

If you could bring back one character who died, who would it be?: abigail because she didn’t deserve to die. i know it held value for the story but i really wish she hadn’t, especially in that way. it’s beautifully tragic and painful but she as a person deserved better.

Dish prepared in the show that you would like to try eating/ making: all of it except the weird ass nietzschean trout and that disgusting jello with the fish in it because those look DISGUSTING. and the frois gras for the same reason as bella. everything else i would try, can’t promise i’d like it but i’d definitely try it.

Which side character would you kill off?: chilton just because for god’s sake just let the man DIE ALREADY poor guy

Was there any scene that you didn’t like to look at?: i’ve talked about it before but the intubation scene is by far the scene that causes me the most discomfort. it feels so much like a rape scene and the symbolism of it, it Is a rape scene, a violation of will’s body. the way hannibal strokes his face i just. yeah. also the lobotomy scene but i have a thing with eyes. other than that the gore never bothers me much, at least not anymore i’ve seen it some many times.

Biggest ship: hannigram obviously like..... why is this even a question

Why did you start watching Hannibal?: i have always been a big fan of the hannibal films, and red dragon was always my favorite so when i found out they were doing a show i was stoked! i watched the first two seasons when it first aired but i lost cable around the time season 3 aired so i didn’t end up finishing it until 2016. so yes, i ended on MIZUMONO and didn’t see any more for TWO YEARS. it was traumatic.

Favourite Hannibal fic if you’ve read any?: okay i went through a period of like 3 months where i just Binge read them and they were all good but they’ve sort of blurred together. but a few that really stuck out for me were

Blackbird

Two Solitudes

As soft, as wide as air

Of Putrefaction, Saccharine (lol this one fucked me UP and i CRIED)

I Didn’t Know It Could Be Like This (part 1) & If The World Burned to Ash, Still We Would Remain (part 2)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Blood (i never read the second part bc it’s not finished, and i REFUSE to start a incomplete fic)

Change Me (If You Dare)

Have you watched any of the Hannibal films?: yes!! i grew up watching red dragon, silence of the lambs and hannibal. i think i watched silence of the lambs for the first time when i was like 7 or 8 LMAO which explains a lot. the only ones i haven’t seen are hannibal rising and i really wanna watch manhunter!

Have you read the Thomas Harris books?: i’m in the process of reading red dragon, but i most definitely prefer the show.

Favourite murder tableau: in the whole show it’s the prisoner, because the significance it holds for will’s character arc. but if we’re talking about the more traditional murder tableau’s i’m gonna go with cassie boyle’s it’s visually very striking and beautiful in a horribly morbid way.

Favourite blood spill: oh god a lot of them but uhhh, obviously the slaying of the dragon, will imaging slitting hannibal’s throat in tome wan, and then i completely loose my damn mind over will imaging being randall tier in shiizakana when he’s covered in blood and has the antlers coming out of his back i— 👁👄👁

What’re some of your headcanons?: it’s not necessarily a headcanon and more of an analysis but i go absolutely FERAL when i read any meta talking about will holding a more traditionally feminine role in the story of the show, especially talking about him being a gothic heroine. it’s why i loose my mind over any comparisons of hannibal and dracula and will being mina i just [incoherent screaming]. i also obviously love any headcanon’s of dark will graham. it’s something i post about myself a lot because to me it’s not headcanon, it is canon supported throughout the show, that will is killer who wears a person suit the same as hannibal. he’s not just a righteous killer, he has the exact same capacity for violence as hannibal. he just had a harder time accepting it.

i tag (and once again if i double tag y’all i’m sorry!!) @aragima @arunima @horrorcupid @nietzscheantrout @honnibal @hughdancyx @marg0t-verger @serialcannibal @hotgirlhannibal @francisforever and anyone else who wants to do it obviously xx

#🦂#some of my answers are too long oops #tag games #hannibal #long post /

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selfindulgentfandomstuff · 3 years

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Reworked Jophiel timeline

this is a selfshipping AU!! Please don’t give me flack for this! Its MY mental illness and I get to choose the coping mechanism adfasdasdkj

Season 1

-Apéritif begins similarly to canon except Hannibal never gets the chance to call Garret Jacob Hobbs and warn him

-Abigail is alive and goes her separate way, to college and lives a long happy life, ultimately leaving the tragedy of her father’s action behind

-Jack still insists that Will see Hannibal for psychiatric assistance and so the two bond anyway, even in the absence of Abigail

-it isn’t until Amuse Bouche that Jophiel is introduced

-this introduction happens the same as how I’ve written it before, that aspect of this AU hasn’t changed

-Hannibal comes over to Will’s house in the night to see Jophiel, as Will isn’t exactly sure what to do with her

-Potage, instead of detailing Jack’s suspicions of Abigail’s involvement in her father’s murders, explores the possibility that Jophiel was somehow responsible for the murders in the last episode

-Oeuf goes similarly to canon

-Coquilles goes the same as canon with the addition of twisted irony in that they had just found what appeared to be a biblical angel of sorts and they were also finding the victims, cut and made to mimic an angel’s appearance

-Entree goes similarly to canon

-Sorbet goes similarly to canon

-Fromage goes the same except instead of turning to Alana, he turns to Jophiel, romantically, she reciprocates

-Trou Normand, Buffet Froid, and Roti all go similarly to canon

-Releves and Savoureux see the continuing descent of Will into insanity due to encephalitis and Jophiel’s increasing desperation to help her friend, something which Hannibal capitalizes on. eventually Will is arrested and Jophiel has to be pried away from him. Hannibal decided it was only necessary to incriminate one of them, Will.

Season 2

-All episodes up until Futamono go similarly to canon

-Futamono (and all the other interactions with each other leading up to it) result in Jophiel becoming much closer to Hannibal (Will, Hannibal and Jophiel have all expressed romantic interest, overtly or not, in each other over the course of the series, but only Jophiel has been one to take any action on it)

-Yakimono goes similarly to canon with the addition of Jophiel’s overjoyed reaction to Will’s exoneration

-Su-zakana goes similarly to canon with the addition of Will, Hannibal and Jophiel all actually talking about how they feel about each other, to each other

-Shiizakana, Naka-choko, Ko No Mono and Tome-wan go similarly to canon

-Mizumono plays out similarly except it is Jophiel who Hannibal had contacted previously, asking her to run away with him and Will. it is Jophiel who sorrowfully shoves Alana out the window. Hannibal, knife in hand, ready to gut Will, hesitates, just long enough for Will to lean in and kiss him, passionately, hungrily as if he’d been waiting to do this since the beginning of time. Hannibal lets go, the knife clattering to the floor. Will finally pulls away only for Jophiel to kiss him the same way he kissed Hannibal. Hannibal, for the first time, in a long time, lets a few tears stream down his face. They are tears of happiness. His little family together, time reverses, the shattered teacup does reform.

Season 3

-Antipasto begins with a beautiful view overlooking Florence in the early morning, it is very early and the sun is just barely beginning to rise. the camera cuts to a view of the three laying peacefully in bed, all asleep. The domesticity of the whole thing is palpable. Primavera is much of the same thing.

-Secondo is when Jack arrives in Italy, searching for Will and teams up with Detective Pazzi in order to arrest Hannibal

-Aperitivo, Contorno, and Dolce all detail the events leading up to Mason Verger’s capture of Hannibal, Will and Jophiel

-Digestivo reminds us that it was never Mason’s intention to capture Jophiel as she was not directly involved with his mutilation, but he realizes that she is a valuable torture tool in the way that her pain will cause Hannibal and Will’s pain. the rest of the episode goes similarly to canon, with Hannibal, Will and Jophiel, escaping and Margot and Alana killing Mason. Ultimately, Hannibal surrenders to arrest, telling Will and Jophiel that they’ll always know where to find him, should they want to

-The Great Red Dragon begins, revealing its been 3 years and the three have split apart. Hannibal is shown to be imprisoned at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Will has settled down and gotten married to Molly. They have a son. The whereabouts of Jophiel are unknown and it is implied that she is dead or has disappeared so well that we will never see her again. The rest of the episode goes similarly to canon.

-And the Woman Clothed With The Sun reveals that Will has sought out Hannibal’s help in catching Francis Dolarhyde

-And the Woman Clothed In Sun shows Will and Hannibal reconnecting on a level deeper than Will had anticipated

-And the Beast From the Sea goes similarly to canon

-The Number of the Beast is 666 goes similarly to canon

-The Wrath of the Lamb goes similarly to canon. At the end when Hannibal and Will fall off the cliff, the credits roll and then instead of the post credits scene with Bedelia, we get a post credit scene of Jophiel in her true form looming over Hannibal and Will’s bodies, the implication being that they will live, because of Jophiel’s innate healing powers.

Extra

cue the fanfics of them just vibing in Cuba!!

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