#hannibal 3.11

[arkashas]

3.08 | 3.11 parallels

Will and Molly failing to find refuge in each other during a difficult time in their lives, and turning to their first, or "true" loves as a source of comfort instead.

[bloodydancy]

Hannibal 3.11 And the beast from the sea

[bob-belcher]

HANNIBAL 3.11 - ... And the Beast From the Sea

[grahamdolce]

Hannibal 3.11 …and the beast from the sea

[fixedteacup]

"Came to get the old scent again. Why don't you just smell yourself?"

chappell roan's "good luck, babe" || hannibal 3.08, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13

[gilligould]

Breaking Bad — 3.11 / Hannibal — 2.13

[dearpercocet]

Will and Hannibal stand sooooo close to each other on either side of the glass at the end of 3.11

[sakurasacrifice]

I smelled B a few days ago, maybe it was when I was ovulating. He was in my area and he passed by me and I sniffed him like Hannibal does Will. I says, you smell good, he turns around and says "I'm not wearing any cologne" he didn't realize I love the smell of his natural odor without the cologne. Maybe he ignored it, but Gods his pheromones drive me insane. I love that man on a biological level. It's so pathetic that I'll never be able to be with him. We kissed that one last time in my car. When we'd go to the park and it would be raining. And I looked into his eyes and we both kept saying I love u while making out. And I gave him head. And I would play with myself for months just at the thoughts of that day. He would stick his finger in my ass while I sucked him, God that was my favorite. Fukkkkk

3.11 (forever BDE)

[fatalism-and-villainy]

These thoughts are somewhat tangential to this specific scene, but I’m returning to this because rewatching this arc has me thinking about what I alluded to in the parenthetical in my OP - the adaptational move the show makes in reorienting the Red Dragon arc away from the forensics-and-evidence-based narrative scaffolding, and towards the exploration of the Will’s character and him embracing his darker side, and how Will himself pivots from one point to the other as well.

As I argued in the OP, the end of episode 3.11, in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Will’s family, marks something of a turning point in that regard. But a lot of the seeds for that are sewn in 3.10.

The therapy scenes with Bedelia are a bit siloed from rest of the episode, but the common thread I noticed tying that to the plot is Will consciously coming back to himself - or the self he knew when he was with Hannibal. His session with Bedelia is centered on both of them calling each other out for their histories with Hannibal, and the lies they tell other people about those histories. Bedelia, interestingly, doesn’t call Will out on his capacity to be a killer, but on his feelings for Hannibal (her “is your wife aware…” line, tellingly, is a means of deflecting Will’s question as to why she didn’t just kill Hannibal). She also pushes him to take out his “righteous violence” on someone he feels compelled to save, almost certainly referring both to Dolarhyde and Hannibal - and Dolarhyde does seem like the first killer Will’s gestured towards intending to save, if his comments to Wally about putting him in a mental institution are any indication. It’s an approach that displays a lot more institutional trust than he’s ever displayed before, and obviously one he fails to cling to by the show’s denouement.

(That said, I do believe Bedelia’s a bit off the mark when she says “you couldn’t save Hannibal” - Will never intended to “save” Hannibal in Italy, if you take “save” as “rehabilitate”. His options there were always “kill/incarcerate Hannibal or become him,” and Bedelia might have been projecting her own intentions a bit there.)

And then there’s Will’s exchange with Hannibal before the sequence at the museum, which once again brings up the dropped thread of Will’s search for a commonality between the families:

Will: I have to believe there is a common factor. And we will find it - soon. Hannibal: Otherwise you have to enter more houses and see what the Dragon has left for you.

It’s telling that Hannibal doesn’t goad Will with the possibility of having blood on his hands. His tack isn’t “otherwise more families will die” (the angle Jack would take). It’s continuing to immerse himself in the killer’s mindset that Hannibal identifies as what Will is most averse to - and he does it in a way that centres Will specifically in Dolarhyde’s motivations. And Hannibal will, of course, be instrumental in making Dolarhyde’s crimes about Will, just as Hannibal’s own crimes began to reflect an awareness of Will’s gaze.

Will wanting to focus on the evidence, take a conventional approach to investigation, and invoke institutional criminal justice with Dolarhyde is a manifestation of his desire to remain at a remove from the case - to use his abilities for the pursuit of justice without getting personally entangled. But this has consistently been impossible for him to do, and returning to Hannibal’s orbit and facing his feelings for Hannibal forces him to face the part of himself that can intuitively understand killers.

And the fact that he does turn to murder as a way of dealing with Dolarhyde, as opposed to having him put in a mental hospital, has an interesting parallel to the end of 3A and the other partnership that gets forged through murder there. Alana can’t just send Mason Verger off to prison and wash her hands of him, but has to kill him herself and own her role in what has transpired; Will, similarly, can’t hand over Dolarhyde to the criminal justice system, but has to confront and kill him himself. Observing is participating, by the moral logic of the Hannibal universe, and who has observed more, has seen more probingly, than Will?

I am having so many profoundly insane thoughts about Will and Hannibal’s dynamic in the Red Dragon arc - the way their affect is so tense and jagged-edged when they’re together, the warmth they shared gone, but with residual intimacy that allows them to hit each other where it hurts. But what I’m thinking about specifically is the fact that the moment in which they connect the most and start to fall into their old dynamic together is in their most antagonistic moment at that point in the arc - at the end of And the Beast from the Sea, in the wake of the Dragon’s attack on Will’s family.

It’s that scene, where Will gets angry at Hannibal for the first time (and Hannibal is forthcoming but tense and guarded, not delighting in his evils the way he so often does with Alana and Jack) where they recapture their old rapport. The confrontation yields a dialogue where they build off each other and Hannibal guides Will towards a breakthrough in understanding. Will starts off angry, and when Hannibal starts to discuss Dolarhyde’s personality, Will angrily responds, “And now he thinks he can do anything! Anything!” Hannibal continues from that train of thought, but in another direction - he explains that “the dragon represents freedom” to Dolarhyde, turning Will’s line that “he thinks he can do anything” from an angry outburst to the literal truth, that Dolarhyde’s murders convey power and invincibility to him in his mind. Then, when Hannibal says, “he craves change,” Will (with the anger abating somewhat) comes to the epiphany that Dolarhyde thinks of killing the families as “changing” them*. This kind of exchange is the marker of so much about how they communicate earlier in the show - their back-and-forth involves a lot of quick subject changes and shifts in tack, but the underlying development of ideas remains the same and is understood subliminally by both of them.

(*And there’s an interesting meta quality to that shift - the show is much more concerned with empathic understanding of killers, the narrative and aesthetic symbolism of their crimes, than the practical forensic process of finding them, and that’s reflected in the show’s adaptational approach to the book. The book’s plot centers heavily on the question of how Dolarhyde chose his families, and it’s key to finding him, but here’s it’s less important than their emotional significance to him, his drive in preying on them. Will has been prioritizing the former in an effort to stay emotionally detached, but narratively, in terms of his character arc, understanding the latter, being able to operate on Dolarhyde’s level, is more significant - and this is the moment, rebuilding his connection to Hannibal again, where he starts to lean into that more.)

And Hannibal’s ability to steer Will towards a shared understanding, the way they both speak the same language in how they communicate and how they interpret others, has been key to the unique bond they share. This scene shows that the dialectic is still there even when their dynamic is suffused with bitterness. And Hannibal is able to guess at Will’s darker impulses, specifically his nightmares and counter-fantasies about killing Molly, when he asks “When you look at her, what do you see?” and Will answers “You know what I see.” And even though Will is angry at him, there’s a kind of relief, I think, that Hannibal instinctively recognizes this side of him, and that he’s able to admit it freely.

Furthermore, what Hannibal did is a continuation of the games they used to play, where they used third party proxies to unleash violence on each other. Hannibal has turned Dolarhyde into yet another figure to be manipulated into facilitating the charge in Hannibal and Will’s partnership/rivalry. Except it’s different now, because now Will has a life outside of Hannibal, and there are innocent people outside of the show’s bizarre murderous otherworld involved. Hannibal quotes “Two souls, alas, are dwelling my breast,” referring to the two sides of Dolarhyde vying for control, but of course he’s also obliquely referring to Will, which is made explicit in the last line, when he asks, “Don’t you crave change, Will?” Will split himself in two as well - he built a life away from everything to do with Hannibal and the FBI, but he chose to come back and seek out Hannibal, and Hannibal forces him to reckon with those two allegiances. (Suitably, Will walking out of Molly’s hospital room is edited to merge seamlessly into him walking up to confront Hannibal.) The attack on Molly and Walter draws Will’s internal conflict outside of him, reminding him what he’s known already (as he’s been having nightmares about killing Molly even before this): that he can’t cut this part of himself out. But it’s also a reminder of what Will and Hannibal could have again, if Will would come back to Hannibal. (It’s hilarious that Will responds to Hannibal saying Dolarhyde probably thinks Will is as evil as Will thinks Dolarhyde is with “Is this a competition?” Of course it is, Will! You know it is! Hannibal loves to pit his murder protégés against each other. You’ve been here before.)

So with that said, it’s telling that when Will is the angriest at Hannibal for interfering with this other life he’s made for himself, it’s also, simultaneously, the moment when he manages to recreate the intimacy he shared with Hannibal, the reminder of the dangerous games they used to play with each other, and the uncomfortable fact that he found those games exciting and pleasurable. This is probably on his mind when orchestrating the triangular murder showdown with Hannibal and Dolarhyde in the finale. He picks up the gauntlet Hannibal threw down and deploys Dolarhyde for his aims in getting revenge against Hannibal, and, of course, ends up teaming up with Hannibal and loving it. [Bedelia voice] that’s reciprocity.

[nikkiwriteswords]

Do you ever just think about Bedelia’s after-credit scene or

I’ve been stewing on this theory for a while. When I first watched that last episode, I was an emotional wreck (and I’m still not over it, okay). But what stuck in my head was the song lyrics. 

I will survive. Live and thrive... (3.13)

That lyric, and watching Bedelia dine on her own leg in triumph... My brain immediately went, “wendigo.”

Now, although I’ve not read much in the way of the Hannibal wendigo theories, and what I do know of wendigo lore comes from that one episode of Supernatural and Until Dawn, I couldn’t help but recall the Hannibal’s earlier off-hand comment to Dolahyde: 

“You can always toss the Dragon to someone else.” (3.11)

If the wendigo of Will’s hallucinations symbolises the “evil mind”, and it symbolises not Hannibal (although it is inextricably linked to him in Will’s psyche), but a more abstract criminality encroaching on Will throughout the series... who is to say that the instinct dies with them?

In UD, you must not kill a wendigo, or you release its spirit to inhabit its next victim, who will then turn into a wendigo upon eating human flesh. It just makes sense to me - the comment about passing on the Dragon, Bedelia taking up the cannibalistic mantle as Hannibal dies, and the lyrics 'I will survive...' The “wendigo” will always find a new body to inhabit. NB: I’m not saying the wendigo is an actual monster in the show. It’s in Will’s head. It’s completely symbolic. But you can’t deny the dark, Grimm-esque fantasy tone of the season. So with that... is it too far-fetched to imagine Bedelia taking on Hannibal’s design in Will’s stead?

[kiss-my-freckle]

“I don't care about the lives you save. I care about your life.” Hannibal keeping it real. He’s tired of Will putting his own life on the line for everyone else. He didn’t surrender for everyone else, he surrendered for Will. 

[bloodydancy]

Hannibal 2.05 Mukōzuke | 3.11 And the Beast from the Sea | 3.13 The Wrath of the Lamb

[klina12]

That Hannibal, always the trouble-maker....

Art by @byk23

1x01 || 3x11

[amatesura]

Hannibal 3.11 ... And the Beast From the Sea

[roselevesque]

Hannibal 2.08: Su-Zakana // Hannibal 3.08: The Great Red Dragon // Hannibal 3.11: ...And The Beast From The Sea

[mostly-hannibal-memes]

Hannibal Fic Recommendation List - Season 3

Season 3 fics

Back to Overview

Riot by TheStag An unusual crime is committed during a prison riot at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. When Will is brought in to solve it he’s unfortunately drawn once more into the sphere of Hannibal Lecter. Words: 9,975 Chapters: 3/3 Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

we rise in the dying by euphrasie “Sexual assault was just something that happened to the victims I studied. It was never personal,” Will said, walking over to his makeshift evidence board. He touched the thin red string and followed the length of it; from his decision to stop off on the way home, to the sad box of a room he had woken up in, covered in the marks of men he couldn’t remember. “Sometimes I think maybe it didn’t happen, maybe I’m making this shit up.” --- It was a week before Hannibal’s trial when Will awoke from an attack he couldn't remember. Words: 63,374 Chapters: 9/9 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con

Biting Your Tail by strangestorys Will makes good use of those breathing holes to get his revenge on Hannibal after the Dragon's attack on Molly. Alternate ending for episode 3.11. “Are you enjoying this?” Hannibal could just grunt and nod in answer, overwhelmed with the small amount of contact Will was giving him and pushing forward into Will’s warm hand. “I can’t hear you, Hannibal. I said, Are you enjoying this?” Words: 1,444 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

come around again (only want to say goodbye) by hito, Yaegaki, captainsilent, dodificus Hannibal is locked up in the Baltimore Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Supposedly he's in maximum security but he pretty much just breaks out and leaves any time it suits him.And it suits him to break out whenever he thinks Will needs him. I mean, they forgot Will's birthday! Come on, wouldn't you? Fill for the meme. Words: 8114 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Bound by Reneehart Hannibal shifts against his bindings, something like a growl vibrating in his chest. But it’s never realized, and Will’s grin widens. “You must be so desperate for it,” he muses, pausing a moment before he adds, “for me.”And then he pulls away, dropping to his knees before he can second-guess himself- the thrill of Hannibal’s torture too much to deny. He grasps Hannibal’s thighs, holding him at his bound hips. The dolly creaks, Hannibal trying to push away from the contraption but unable to so much as gaze down at Will, held at the angle of the brakes. Or, Hannibal will only agree to help if Will says 'please.' So Will shows him how good he can beg. Words: 1,244 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

reflection by murdertrout Will sneaks out of bed with Molly and jerks off thinking about Hannibal. Words: 897 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Mature Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

The Sweater by frogo When Will has a bad day - be it stressful, emotionally taxing, or haunted by specters of his past - he drags out a red sweater he keeps locked up in the guest bedroom’s closet. It’s well cared for, well-worn, and not his. The fact that it is technically illegal for him to possess an artifact from the FBI’s evidence stores means nothing to him, because the sweater is his in every way that matters. Words: 4051 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

In the Mood for Love by extremelyperturbed Chilton survives, has his name cleared, and he and Will bond while recovering in the hospital over their shared love of sarcasm and desire to see Hannibal behind bars. They know Hannibal is a possessive narcissist who hates being upstaged, so they decide the best way to draw him out is to pretend very publicly that they're dating, The rest of the prompt is at the link Words: 1491 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply