#POI Quote

[this-is-krikkit]

"someone once asked me if i had learned anything from it all, so let me tell you what i learned i learned... everyone dies alone. but if you meant something to someone, if you helped someone, or loved someone if even a single person remembers you, then maybe you never really die. and, maybe... this isn't the end at all."

[linusbenjamin]

Person of Interest | 2.18 'All In'

[onceandfuturemoron]

Nobody:

My otps: it's always you. You keep me right.

[alien-slushie]

Random Shop Owner: I'd offer you something to eat but we only have dog treats.

Choi Han: I'd try a dog treat.

Cale: Choi Han No.

[chick-with-wifi]

Root: Trust me Shaw: I wouldn't trust you to tie my shoes without stealing the laces Shaw: *does what Root says anyway*

[julesnichols]

"I suppose everyone feels that he's the hero in his own story, but there are no heroes, no villains, just people doing the best they can."

-Harold Finch

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott

[saspas-library-of-craziness]

Incorrect POI quotes:

"I don't get people who like to get their veins to pop- makes it easier for people like me to kill them."

"That's... very morbid, Mr. Reese."

[l-justnoiseinthesystem-l]

Finch: Remember everyone, violence is never the answer.

John: You’re right, Finch... Violence can’t be the answer.

Finch: Correct, John. Now, on to the next lesso-

John: Violence is the question.

John: And the answer is yes!

Finch: John, no!!

John, trying to comfort Carter: What’s the problem? Anxiety? Low self-esteem? Obsessive thoughts of random arson? I’ve been there.

Shaw: We need to open this locked door. Finch, give me your credit card.

Finch: Here.

Shaw, pocketing it: Thanks. Root, break down the door.

[totally-not-poi-quotes]

"There are some things it doesn’t help to know more about."

[onceandfuturemoron]

John Reese and Arthur Pendragon: *pushing Harold and Merlin out of the way first thing upon facing danger (mostly behind themselves, shielding them)

John and Arthur: hurt me all you want but touch him and I'll burn you

Merlin and Harold that are basically criminals and very dangerous when they want to be: my boyfriend will destroy you bitch

[intuizioni]

dostoevskij che scrive del femminismo liberale contemporaneo nell'anno 1866

[tenrose]

You know Collier's methods are shit, but the fact that he thought he was exposing the whole conspiracy to the world, and that all in all his cause was right, just to find out he's been a pawn for the very thing he fought against is so fucked up. This show likes to make everyone a perpetrator and a victim at the same time.

[l-justnoiseinthesystem-l]

Root: I baked you a pie!

Fusco: Really?! What flavor?

Root: *pulls gun out of the pie* DEATH!

Root: Made you all playlists!

Root: Shaw, yours has only heavy metal, and is dark like your soul.

Root: John, yours has sad songs and blues to pair with your crippling depression.

Root: And Fusco has the ABBA Gold album.

Root: Five little monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and…

Shaw: Was diagnosed with mesothelioma.

Root: Mamma called the doctor and the doctor said…

Finch: You might be entitled to financial compensation if he or a loved one dies.

[milkfordragons]

So did he ache for Hannibal, after all?

This iconic line originates from Dante’s La Vita Nuova:

"He woke her then, and trembling and obedient, she ate that burning heart out of his hand. Weeping, I saw him then depart from me. Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her? Find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight, and ache for him?"

Bedelia paraphrases this passage in the show, but its origins trace back to the Hannibal novel and film, where Hannibal himself quotes it in reference to Clarice. The show repurposes this to textualize his love for Will, drawing a direct parallel between his relationship with Will and his relationship with Clarice in the books.

Hannibal explicitly recites the original Dante passage in the first episode of season three:

"Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea: appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo."

Roughly translated:

"He seemed happy, but carrying my heart in his hand; on his arm I saw my lady wrapped in a veil, sleeping. He woke her, and trembling, she humbly and fearfully ate the burning heart. Then Love departed, weeping."

In the poem, the he is *Amor* (Love) personified, holding Dante’s heart in one hand and Beatrice, veiled and sleeping, in the other. Love wakes Beatrice, and she consumes Dante’s burning heart before Love departs in sorrow.

This perfectly mirrors Hannibal’s situation: he fell in love with Will at first sight, and when he "awoke" Will to his own darkness, Will metaphorically consumed his heart. The episode reinforces this imagery when Hannibal murders a man that looks like Will and transforms his body into a visual representation of his own shattered heart.

The rest of the season hinges on the question in Bedelia’s line: Can Will see through the bars of Hannibal’s plight?

"Plight" refers to a miserable, inescapable condition...an interesting choice of words to remove from the adaptation, especially since Bedelia, who is delivering the line, would never openly admit to Will that Hannibal is suffering.

But why include "ache"? Why not simply ask if Will was in love?

Because in the poem, the heart is consumed, Love weeps, and what remains is hunger. "Ache" here means to feel intense desire for, aligning with the show’s (and the line) recurring themes of hunger and nourishment. Bedelia is not asking if Will loves Hannibal in a traditional sense, she is asking if he craves him.

When Will is sailing toward Hannibal, the script describes his expression as "almost hungry." Later, when he and Jack track Hannibal across Europe, he stands in a way that creates an optical illusion for the camera, and the script refers to this effect as him standing in a “starvation cage.”

So, does Will ache for Hannibal?

Yes. Canon explicitly confirms it. And to ache, to crave, is visceral, carnal. It cannot be downplayed as something else. Will craves Hannibal so intensely that, after three years of "starvation," he barely resists finding an excuse to see him the moment he rejoins Jack’s team. And I think his face says it all:

[totally-not-poi-quotes]

"I don’t know who here is a victim of it, and who is an agent."