So, I finished it. I'm done with Hannibal...but to be honest, guys, I don't think it's done with me. I sincerely feel changed after binging that show. Like, I don't even know if I want to talk or rant about it, but I feel like I have to ruminate on it. I mean, fuck. I've never been so torn while watching a show. Even knowing the end, when I started, I wanted to see it make sense, and very early on, it did.

Hannibal & Will are like any leads of tragic romances of literature, though crueler and more unforgivable than most pairings. They're marked from their introduction, sworn to another within a moment. There is no end while they both live, yet the end would be false and unsatisfying if one survived the other. It's impossible to fathom that frayed thread of fate snapping with finality through one lonely death. They had to go out together.

Will knew it from the moment he proposed they fake Hannibal's escape; it was going to end with the two of them, and he was willing, ready, even eager to surrender himself to dying with Hannibal.

I think the only thing that terrified Will more than Hannibal getting away to haunt his mind, was the fear of what it would feel like to kill Hannibal and have to continue being haunted by him still. The loneliness of it would break his mind. Hannibal had been in there too long; he always knew the best times to move and work around Will, and the perfect moments to hook his claws in whenever Will wanted to shake him loose.

Hannibal showed it clear as day when he surrendered after Will said goodbye. 'I won't let you let me go.'

Hannibal carved out his own wing in Will's memory palace. By the time of the events of Red Dragon, Will's realized that he'll never escape Hannibal, and by the finale, he accepts that he won't survive him either.