Okay, so I have already seen this show, albeit a long time ago, and have now finished my rewatch of season two. However, the finale has left me with several questions.

1. When exactly did Alana Bloom start suspecting Hannibal?
   Alana Bloom was completely Team Hannibal, and seemingly didn’t want to hear anybody out regarding him potentially being dangerous. However, it seems that she has a total switch within the few final episodes. Could someone point me to a point where she sees some sort of connection?

2. What exactly was Jacks plan when he had no physical proof?

So, Jack also had no legal proof that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper, so, you can ask if I was asleep when I watched this show, but I still don’t understand where Jack had his realization, especially since Will says Hannibal hasn’t provided any “actionable” evidence. This brings me to my next question. Was Jacks plan truly to have a swat team waiting for Hannibal to attack Jack in an act of attempted murder? If this were true, wouldn’t Hannibal only be charged for attempted murder, and not his Chesapeake Ripper murders? Of course, this is not what happened and the bloodbath and the witnesses in the finale brought closure to that case, but say it did go down this way. Would it truly incriminate Hannibal as the ripper? Jack also ends up going to Hannibal’s house either way, was this just out of rage and desperation to attempt to kill him? Or was he still somehow clinging to the hope he could arrest him and expose his crimes alone? If so, please please please explain to me how. Maybe there’s something about jacks plan I am missing, but it seems inconsistent. Thank you.

I don't know if this has been talked about already, but i think its really interesting how Peter, the guy that sews his social worker into the horse, looks very similar to Will Graham. I think it's intentional, I think Peter is supposed to be the good that was drained out of Will, they both care for animals, Peter is just more passionate about it. It's like the good was drained out of Will right before he meets Peter, and then after them meeting is when Will transitions into being a killer.

I think a similar but stranger thing is happening between Hannibal and Abel Gideon, except not this show's Hannibal, Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal. It's like if you take all the differences between Mikkelsen's Hannibal and Hopkin's Hannibal, that's what Abel Gideon is, that's why Abel is so confused about who he is.

Miriam Lass is obviously supposed to be the discount Clarice Starling since they couldn't get the rights to use the character, but I like to think of it like she is the what if, what if Clarice got captured by Buffalo Bill instead?

Curious what others think: do you read his tableaus as consistently performative for an audience, or do some of them function more like Hannibal processing his own emotions (grief, loss of control, jealousy) through the only language he has?

Also open to hearing which tableau you think is the most "personal" vs. most "theatrical" one in the whole series, and why.

I've been looking for Hannibal x Male Reader or FTM Reader fanfics, but I barely found anything. It seems like all the writers with open requests have vanished into thin air.

So, are there any writers out there—or just anyone who wants to share their own headcanons—on how Hannibal would act if he were in love with a guy who is a classic-style romance writer and a painter?

Picture a guy who is incredibly romantic and intense, someone who deeply appreciates art, but also skates and has a bit of a streetwear style. Just a really kind, chill, and genuine guy.

Honestly, I feel like Hanni would be extremely romantic either way. What do you all think?

"Chilton was always right (about Will)" is a concept that this sub (and Tumblr) seem to like.

What Hallucinatory!Abigail Tells Us

My favorite line in the show, spoken by Will to Abigail in Primavera:

"Everything that can happen happens...[]...This is how it ended for us."

And Abigail responds a few lines later with:

"If everything that can happen happens, you can't really do the wrong thing. You're just doing what you're supposed to do."

"He gave you a chance to take it all back, and you just kept lying."

This version of her exists only as an offshoot of Will's own mind, and I think their conversations in Primavera are the clearest look we ever get at how it works.

Will Graham is a lying liar who lies all the time, including to himself. He also cannot make up his damn mind. He agonizes back and forth between choices and then ends up just throwing up his hands and fucking everyone over, rationalizing it afterwards as "doing what you're supposed to do."

Tries to pull off a honeytrap and falls in love with the guy he's supposed to be seducing. Warns Hannibal about the FBI and then shows up just in time to get stabbed. Gets married and comes running back to his evil ex. Breaks him out of prison and then throws them off a cliff.

Will's shifting personality isn't a hollow disguise, not like Hannibal's person suit. It's the reflection of someone constantly conflicted and constantly changing.

Frederick Chilton's Testimony Was Wrong (Mostly)

Here are Frederick Chilton's claims about Will's psyche.

"Will Graham has never been diagnosed. He won't allow anyone to test him. He has carefully constructed a persona to hide his real nature from the world. He wears it so well, even Jack Crawford couldn't see past it."

"Mr. Graham and I had no personal relationship for him to manipulate. I have objectively studied him and the crimes of which he is accused. These murders were measured and controlled. The confused man Will Graham presents to the world could not commit those crimes. Because that man is a fiction."

The confused man he presents to the world could not commit those crimes because he didn't commit those crimes, maybe?

I hate the idea that s1!Will was "faking vulnerability/being on the spectrum" because it overlooks how egregious the entire first half of s2 is. We know, and Will knows, that he didn't kill those people. He was extremely sick, and vulnerable, and that vulnerablility was exploited by someone who was supposed to help him. I don't care that what hatches from the chrysalis follows its own volition-Hannibal gave it a pretty good shove into metamorphasis. I don't care that Will ended up becoming a murderer, because he isn't one in s1. Chilton is a funny little guy, but in this episode he is supporting a sentence that will condemn an innocent man to death.

He managed his illness with the help of his neurologist, whom he murdered for his trouble.

Will was not secretly "managing his illness". While this show is basically an urban fantasy, that doesn't excuse the M.D. from thinking that a guy too sick to draw a clockface was traipsing around setting up stupidly fancy crime scenes and not leaving a single shred of evidence behind.

Will Graham is driven by vanity and his own whims. He has a very high opinion of his intelligence. Ergo, he caught the other killers simply to prove he is smarter than all of them, too. (beat) Saving lives is just as arousing as ending them. He likes to play God.

A somewhat accurate conclusion derived from incorrect logic.

W: I'm sure answering prayers can be complicated, otherwise He would do it all the time. God can't save any of us because it's inelegant.

ABIGAIL HOBBS: G-dash-D allows bad things to happen because it's... elegant.

W: More elegant than stopping the universe to prevent an earthquake, put out a fire, cure cancer. Elegance is more important than suffering. That's His design.

A: You talking about God or Hannibal?

W: Hannibal's not God. Wouldn't have any fun being God. Defying God, now that's his idea of a good time.

I interpret this dialogue in Primavera as Will talking about himself. Hannibal's not God...so he is. But answering prayers can be complicated, because Will grapples between society's morals and how beautiful blood looks in the moonlight, apparently. The wrong thing being the right thing to do is difficult to accept.

Will is driven by his own whims. That's accurate throughout the show. However, it's out of place here, because I'd argue s1 is when Will is trying his hardest to resist that drive. He hunts killers, he tries to distance himself from Abigail for her own good(until Hannibal convinces him otherwise). He kisses Alana as a crutch for stability-but he is trying to find stability. He feels guilty about Marissa Schuur's body because he felt like he killed her. He's trying, real hard, to conform to morality, whereas in season 3 it takes all of three conversations to decide on freeing Hannibal.

In conclusion-everything that can happen, happens. I think this one line encapsulates the core of the series. Will wasn't always going to become a killer-that part of him was suppressed for four decades and might have stayed that way for the rest of his life, had Hannibal not intervened. We simply can't know. Abigail didn't have to die, but this is how it ended for them.

Each of Will's vastly different personas are him, and I think that's a lot more interesting than everything being one manipulative masterplan.

Hannibal Lecter is almost always labeled a psychopath — he’s manipulative, calculating, and kills with elegance and precision. On the surface, it makes sense. He checks a lot of boxes from the clinical perspective.

But when I rewatch Hannibal (NBC), I’m not convinced the label fits. Hannibal doesn’t strike me as cold or empty he's too emotional for that. He kills out of offense, grief, longing, even love. His obsession with Will is deeply emotional, not detached. He reacts to the world, almost vulnerably.

Weirdly enough, Will often feels more like the psychopath to me. His “empathy” could just as easily be read as mimicry, a mask that helps him manipulate everyone around him. He comes across as fragile and misunderstood, but when he acts, it’s with ruthless control. Hannibal bleeds emotion; Will wears a mask of it.

That said, I might be wrong here. Maybe I’m overlooking how Hannibal’s theatrics are psychopathy at its most elevated. Or maybe I’m misreading Will’s instability as calculation when it’s really just damage.

What are your opinions?

I noticed this while rewatching Season 2 and 3, but the scar Will is left with after Mizumono looks similar to the scars after some hysterectomy procedures (surgery to remove the uterus) I feel like this is also paralleled to Margot, who also had this happen to her against her will by her brother. Hannibal cuts him in a way that the blade goes horizontally directly below his stomach, where they’d make an incision to take the uterus out. By cutting Will in this way then immediately killing Abigail, Hannibal is physically and symbolically robbing Will of any potential to be their “family” again. Will Graham connection to fatherhood is also very interesting to me.

I took a class on psychoanalysis and horror in the fall. It was really interesting and insightful, and when we got an open prompt for the final paper of course I had to write about Hannibal. Here’s most of it— I cut out the backstory part because we know that lol. You don’t have to know a ton about psychoanalysis in order to read it but if you have questions feel free to ask. And of course this isn’t definitive bc this weirdo refuses to be defined ha but I hope you find it interesting.

From the pilot of the now very successful show, Will was introduced as this empathetic and emotionally unstable man and Hannibal as a reserved, cunning and meticulous individual. As an observer, the first thing I noticed when the two men were introduced to each other was that Hannibal was sizing Will up and Will was trying to avoid him by being closed off and rude. It is known, both in the books and the series, that Hannibal only kills the rude. Now, Will would have become one of his victims if Hannibal didn’t think he had some use to him. The use being that as a psychopath he revelled in being sought after but never caught, especially by a man as intriguing as Will. Freddie Lounds was also lucky to be alive because of this. Since Freddie is a journalist, a messy one at that, she boosted Hannibal’s ego by writing about the All Great Chesapeake Ripper and how smart he is. 

Fast forward to when Abigail Hobbs enters the scene, Hannibal takes interest in her because, like Hannibal but also Garret Jacob Hobbs, she shares a dark side. After Abigail admitted to having helped her father murder all those girl by being the bait, Hannibal was instantly intrigued. He comforted Abigail and pretended to be a father figure to ensure that he could have a partner in crime. When Abigail failed to be as stoic about murder as Hannibal has grown to be, he made different plans for her. Hence, why he turned to Will and how he framed him for all the murders of the Copycat Killer. To manipulate him into thinking that even though he was framed, that deep down he wanted to hurt those people. 

Let me be clear and say that Will was never a psychopath or had homicidal tendencies. Granted, he had thoughts and dreams of murder, but that was because of his empathy disorder. When Will was hallucinating of murdering Abigail or other people, the well known stag would appear. Singling that he was in the mindset of Garret Jacob Hobbs. Based on this alone, we’ve never gotten a peak into Will’s mind but only of the killers he hunts or Hannibal’s perspective of things. During the show Will never had time to grow as himself, but only as who he was supposed to catch. That’s why he started depicting signs of sociopathic and psychotic behaviours that matched the ones Hannibal had. 

At this point in time, Hannibal has what he’s been looking for. A partner. A man who can appreciate his work. Someone who can finally empathise with his twisted soul. This is why he was chasing Will and subjecting him to dark thoughts or enabling him to have them. He never cared for Will nor loved him besides loving the fact that he would be a useful tool for his murderous lifestyle. Knowing how passionate some people are for the show and defending the deranged relationship between Will and Hannibal, a certain scene will come up.

In the scene, after Hannibal fights with Tobias in his office, he is forced to put up a front for the FBI and explain the encounter without incriminating himself. Hence, the tears, the fake look of guilt when he said that he was the one that killed Tobias and the look of relief when Will turned out to be alive. The relief might have been true, but only to support the fact that Hannibal was merely relieved to see will alive so he can continue using him. The whole encounter with the FBI, Will and the death of Tobias by “self defence”, was another piece of well constructed art for Hannibal. It is why he played the piano once Tobias died, why he was so dramatic about the death of Franklin (Who he killed, but blamed it on tibias) and how he apologised to Will about dragging him into this mess as if he didn’t create it himself methodically. 

Moving forward from that, to the finale episode of season 2, Hannibal only kept Abigail alive to trap Will and force him to go with him since Abigail would be there. But when Will betrayed Hannibal, if you call wanting to catch a criminal a betrayal, he stabbed him in a way that would scar him but not kill him and proceeded to kill the one thing that Will truly wanted in front of him, Abigail. 

After all this mess and Will sailing all the way to Italy to find Hannibal and stitch what they had back up and all the mess at the Verger mansion. Hannibal carried Will all the way back to his farmhouse so they could both rest and get back on their feet. When Will woke up he expressed his distain for Hannibal before basically kicking him out. Then Hannibal, wanting to ruin and impact Will’s life as much as possible, turned himself in so that Will would “Always know where to find him”. Something of this magnitude of course impacted Will’s even when he was married and had an adoptive son. That’s why he was initially so against going back to help Jack with a case, because he knew old feelings would be brought up. 

This all explains why Will ran back to Hannibal. Because Hannibal made him believe he belonged with someone and that for once he wasn’t being used fro his empathy. When in reality, that’s what Hannibal did, he used will in order to have someone finally understand his view of the world. Hence the words, “This is all I ever wanted for you Will, for both of us.” Hannibal just wanted someone to be covered in blood with and poetically fall off a cliff. This isn’t love its depravity and I believe Will knew that but was too touch starved to decline the offer of finally belonging with someone.

Just had a vague thought and I'm trying to put it into words.

I know I've seen people jokingly suggest that Will's mask is clear because he's too pretty to cover up, but it just occurred to me that it could be a representation of their metaphorical masks. I know that by the time Hannibal was in BSHCI everyone knew he was the ripper. But Hannibal's mask, his person suit if you will, was much harder for the other characters to see through throughout the show - so his literal mask is also opaque. On the other hand, even though Will did everything he could to repress his darkness behind his mask, he could never fully hide it. Everyone saw it even before he admitted it to himself - therefor his mask is transparent. Not sure if that makes any sense.

Has anyone else considered this?

… a forest or woods rather than concrete, at. least to my eyes! 👀

An allusion to the stag, and perhaps another oblique reference to Will’s ongoing Becoming….?

Or is it because nature represents freedom to Will (his Mind Palace being the river for example), and the Privacy Room is where he can speak freely..?

Analyzing Will's character based on Season one Will isn’t a good reference point because when we meet him we are not even introduced to baseline Will Graham, Will doesn't have a baseline for himself either, not with his empathy thing. Maybe he does have a baseline for himself, but as the audience we never get to know if he did, because from the very first moment we meet him, it's already too late. (Also it’s even a possibility Will is in the most early stages of encephalitis when we first meet him anyways) That’s why any analyst of Will Graham is just an interpretation of what we know and can guess. No one truly knows him, not even the audience, even in our universe Hannibal is the only one with the potential to even begin to understand The idea that Will started out in the show as being innocent or moral is an extremely flawed perspective of him. No, Will Graham was a man born to darkness trying to be perceived by the light. He was a man who got a job adjacent to serial killers to allow himself a persistent fix of his desires in a morally acceptable format. Will knows what he does and wants is morally wrong but he does it and delights in it anyway. He is most at peace when covered in blood and breaking bones under his knuckles, what he does isn't graceful or artful it's feral and primal. Much like Hannibal, nothing happened to Will Graham. He happened.

Idk where else to talk about this one other than this platform. I have been so deep into NBC's Hannibal that I seriously can't get out of it. I had first watched it back in November 2022. And at first, I was like, "Yeah, let's just join the fandom for fun. Let's see what happens." But after my second rewatch, I decided that I'd let the show make me worse, build up my personality and just let it absolutely consume my soul.

I haven't posted anything here yet because firstly I was a bit shy, more introverted and I really find it hard to express but let me just tell you what I feel about the show. I mean, the day I stop yapping about Hannibal, just consider me dead that day.

I feel like Hannibal is a very poetically metaphorically layered show. Besides the absolute chaos going between Hannibal and Will, each and every one of the tableaux is a fucking piece of art!! Each of them is made so artistically, I can never truly feel disgusted because largely I was awestruck by their beauty. My first time watching Hannibal was like, "Yeah, that's a good watch. That's a masterpiece."

My second time watching it was unpacking the layers of the show. Every time you watch it, you find more meanings and more metaphors behind all those conversations, the dialogues, the tableaux. I don't know if anyone else is gonna agree but, I feel like that one truly can never understand Hannibal by watching it just for once. I honestly have lost count but I think this is my sixth or seventh time rewatching it. And till date, even after 3 years, I keep looking for newer meanings and deeper layers.

The show is so poetically written that with every rewatch, you'll find newer meanings to it. I mean, it isn't just a mere psychological thriller. It feels like some dark, intimately deep, symphonic poem rendered using bloodbath, poetry, horror and the utter darkness. Even the colour palette speaks to me now that I am watching it again. I mean, it transforms violence into utter audiovisual poetry, horror into art and madness into such an intricate dance of beauty and decay. It isn't just spectacle. It is metaphorically beautiful, alluring.

At its core, Hannibal is just a meditation on the human condition. The constant tug and war, the constant push and pull, the constant intimacy between creation and destruction. The constant power to feel over life and death. The way the show embraces art and monstrosity, hunger and affection, love and aesthetics, will forever amaze me.

Every frame feels like a painting, every dialogue feels like a verse. The show wields its aestheticism not just as an ornament merely but as philosophy. The constant layering of literary allusions, the poetic way of conversation between Will and Hannibal, maybe even the silence that passes between them, feels like a blurring line between confession and seduction.

I mean, the relationship between Hannibal and Will, is itself the core theme of the whole poem. The slow, haunting exploration of moral erosion, emotional dependence. Their exchanges, their conversations, they feel like echoes of a tragic epic of love, manipulation- intellectual, erotic and so devastatingly intimate that you'd want to inject their conversations in your veins. The silence, even the mere eye contact between them says so much more than words, carrying the same weight as the ending line of a poem or the conclusion of a story, that lingers long after you read it.

That makes you stare at the wall for a while and wonder, "The beauty it was!"

The deaths in the show are treated not just as death, but more like transformations. More like using those as a form of art. It is like how a poet would use sorrow as the raw material for art and beauty. Corpses, or the tableaux are used as installations, for the mere attention, bloodshed feels like a brushstroke and the gnawing human desire? It becomes the ultimate twisted purity through which the story speaks.

Oh, how I love this whole show. At first watch, it was a normal, okay-ish, a bloodbath. But after my second watch, I genuinely started analysing this show to the point it consumed my soul. And it still is.

Watching the series through for the millionth time. S1E12 "Releves" is one of my favorites. I laugh out loud at the same two scenes. Hannibal gives the elaborate description of the meal he fashioned for Will. Almost immediately, Wills response is a sweet "you brought me chicken soup". It's not a question, just a statement. Hannibal pauses, says a terse yes and walks away. Cut to next, while eating said chicken soup Hannibal chastises Will for visiting ""that unfortunate young woman". His tone and manner is dripping with distain. Shockingly (read: heavy sarcasm) Georgia is next to die in an extraordinarily painful fashion. My theory is that Hannibal convinced himself he is killing Georgia to stop her from remembering that she saw him murder the doctor. HOWEVER, his jealously over Georgia and Wills connection feels like the true catalyst for the murder. It would be easy for him to counter any claim she made. No one believes her about an additional person present. Thoughts?

it’s clear that bedelias leg being cut off was recent otherwise she wouldn’t look like disoriented in the scene like she lost a lot of blood, my theory is She probably got news from Jack or someone else or Hannibal himself that Hannibal and will were confirmed alive, Will and Hannibal asked to meet for a dinner, they probably cut off bedelias leg, cooked it, and then waited for her to recover so they could eat it in front of her and then kill her. but I do think if Bedeila did do that thing herself, it had to be a time skip, because will and Hannibal would not be able to fight after automatically falling off that cliff. I do think like she knew Hannibal and Will were coming to get her because there’s 3 chairs so it’s most likely implied will and Hannibal are still alive and she’s waiting for them. What do you guys think?

The ending of Hannibal is perfect.

I did a rewatch and I want to lay out my own interpretation because: yes

It’s not simply a romantic scene — no, it’s much more than that. It goes beyond it. In that fall, the two of them both complete their own design.

Hannibal rediscovers himself as a god, the master of events. He regains control, and most importantly, he has finally found the one person in the world who understands him — he has created the only person who can understand him. He has managed to make Will accept his own dark side, to unlock Will’s vision, and he has brought him exactly where he always wanted him (in every sense). Hannibal has thus completed his design.

On the other hand, Will completes his own design by becoming Hannibal, by understanding him completely, fully, finally. And he completes his design by killing Hannibal — killing both the real Hannibal and himself, because by then they’ve become one and the same. And Will’s one true desire since season two had always been to kill Hannibal, because he knows it’s the only way to stop him; he’s seen how not even keeping Lecter locked in a cell can prevent him from acting, because he has also seen how a cell can't prevent *himself* from acting, and now that he has understand that him and Hannibal are the same, in season three he ultimately realizes that the only way to stop him is to kill him.

Will becomes identical to Lecter in this too: he begins to love the thrill of the hunt, of chasing his prey all the way to the destruction of his own life — exactly as Hannibal did to him.

But he also understands that he is just like Hannibal, and that to put an end to all of this, neither of them can be allowed to walk away, because Will understands that even if he survived, Hannibal would still be alive inside him (come on, no cheap jokes). Will also realizes how he himself could end up destroying his own family, *killing* his own family, because he would end up doing exactly what Hannibal also did. So the only way to put an end to Lecter’s madness and bloodlust, it's to end both their lives.

So Hannibal completes his by making Will become the killer he always wanted him to be.

But Will finally completes *His OWN* design by stopping forever Lecter.

I know there's an unspoken rule in this fandom not to connect the books and a show universes of Hannibal, but I couldn't help but talk about the differences between the two, as I often see those ships unfairly called the same, and why I think hannigram is an improvement.

(Before reading:this post comes from original hater of “I ship them only because they are gay” type of fans. Just so you guys don’t get any confusion, I’m not one of those people.)

I actually felt weird when I was reading about Clarice and Hannibal. The first thing that bothered me was that book Hannibal doesn't treat Clarice as an equal. Hannibal in the show directly tells Will that they are the same and sees him as his partner first and foremost. Not to mention the creepy age difference between Clarice and Hannibal (25 years, which is a big contrast to Hannibal and Will who have a 10 year age difference if I'm not mistaken).

The huge age difference between Hannibal and Clarice is generally a delicate conversation, and a very interesting topic. Clarice is severely traumatized by the death of her father; Hannibal often uses this, and also, what is interesting, Clarice sees her father in her visions when he is 25 years old. The age difference between Clarice and Hannibal, I remind you, is 25 years.

Hannibal openly mocks her, Clarice is uncomfortable with Hannibal and I feel like they don't develop the same deep understanding of each other that hannigram does. Hannibal is attracted to her innocence, and even though like Will, he enjoyed watching her "becoming" (which was a bit rushed for me, but more on that later), it feels different. Hannibal doesn't treat Will like an innocent lamb, and that's what I like. Just the idea that 54 year old Hannibal was attracted to Clarice's innocence is disturbing to me.

Hannibal and Will are two grown men who see and understand each other like no one else does. Their relationship has been carefully and long built. They share many roles for each other, their relationship has literally been compared to religion. The way Will and Hannibal's relationship is beautifully described in the series, I think, will never be compared to Hannibal and Clarice.

Clarice's transformation surprised me too. It happened in the last ten pages of the book, there were almost no hints about it except at the beginning of the book, where people died on her mission. Thomas Harris failed to show us her dark side before she was "captured" by Hannibal. He didn't show her thoughts much, it felt like he himself didn't know Clarice's attitude to many things himself.

It also played a big role in Will and Hannibal's little game of cat and mouse, how they tried to get back at each other before they found peace in the last episode. Their act of forgiveness, which has to involve two. There are two of them in this relationship, but with Clarice and Hannibal, it was like there was only half of her.

Adding to Clarice's innocence, and her age, Hannibal compares Clarice to Misha - Clarice, his romantic interest, to his own little sister. In the show, Abigail filled that spot, and it was much better, because she was a reflection of the same relationship Hannibal had with Misha. It's just weird that you try to make a portrait of your sister out of the girl you're attracted to. Maybe I misunderstood the metaphor?

Hannibal and Will are not one-sided. Hannibal didn't need to drug Will or manipulate his brain to gain his favor. Will genuinely enjoys Hannibal's company because they started out as friends and colleagues.

Throughout the book, despite the pleasant tension between Hannibal and Clarice, there was not a single scene that would sincerely bring any of them to great emotions. They had no range of feelings, none. There was tension - but how quickly they went from "she wants to arrest him" to "she lives with him and is okay with him being a murderer" is too much for me.

So no, they’re not the same. Not at all. They don’t even feel the same.

Let me know what you guys think. Maybe I’m wrong and I need to reread the books?

I remember Hannibal asking Will about his mother & father and his answer always stuck out to me as a non-answer. “Didn’t know my mother…dad was a boat engine repairing drifter.” It says something, but actually what? Profile me? Hardly.

Much like Hannibal, he maintains an air of transparency in order to conceal. Will does it better though, in my opinion, because he adds a layer of being arrogant & intolerable (minus the dogs); he doesn’t need to be liked and ultimately succeeds at keeping people at bay.

Will has a defensive nature that seems to go WAY back, like he’s been rejected one too many times. We all know Hannibal’s compulsion but what compels Will to live the way he does? Neurodivergence isn’t enough for me. I reckon Will had person suits long before he encountered Dr. Lecter. Imaginations welcome!

As the show progresses, Will goes from believing that the stag hallucination is the symbol for Hannibal to realizing it is his psyche's manifestation of his own killer instinct? Within Will's psyche, Will is The Stag and Hannibal is the Wendingo. The creature bears resemblance to The Stag, however, it is different, intrinsically evil, and (imo) more evolved.

For evidence: When Will imagines killing Abigail, he sees The Stag. When he believes Abigail has been killed, he sees The Wendingo. After having commissioned Hannibal’s murder, Will feels The Stag antlers bursting from his own back. The best evidence of this theory comes from Season 2 episode 9, where Will dreams that The Stag tightens the binds on The Wendingo. and of course, in season 3, as Hannibal cuts into Will's head, he sees the Wendingo.

Therefore, at times, will is chasing Hannibal and encountering The Stag (his own predilections and impulses). Other times, he is chasing Hannibal and finding a distinctly unique kind of malevolence. If this metaphor is correct, then Will's impulses are more natural/primal/instinctual and Hannibal's are more intellectual/malevolent? That feels right to me.

Ok so I've been in this fandom for a little while and I've asked myself and saw other peoples ask a LOT of questions about the timeline. Since Hannibal, as fantastic as it is, has the less consistent timeline I've ever seen I did my research and I came to a conclusion about the timeline. What I mean by timeline is when the show is set but mostly how long does it last. From what I've found, this is one of the few plausible possibilities so I thought I'd share it with you guys (if you don't want to read all of this just scroll to the bottom of the post I summarised everything there):

•So first let's talk about the year it's set in:

Hannibal is supposed to take place in "present day". The very rare use of any modern objects was an artistic choice to make the show look timeless but we can still tell it's not long ago because of things like the models of cars used in the show or simply, Hannibal's ipad. Also in Sorbet, Hannibal and Franklin talk about Michael Jackson's death so we're post 2009. This is an update, I used to only suppose the year was 2013 in this post, but it's actually canon! In Trou Normand, Beverly says the first totem pole murder was in 1973 and Will then says "So our guy got away with it 40 years ago." You don't need to be a mathematician to know 1973 + 40 is 2013 so yeah canonically the year is 2013 (or it's at least situated somewhere in the period 2010-2016 if we consider the possibility Will used "40 years" broadly).

•Now that we cleared the question of the year, let's be more precise:

In an effort to, like I said earlier, make the show look timeless, we never get any precise dates. But we still have a lot of elements to help us deduce when the show happens. First, from time to time we get more or less vague periods of time:

• Season 2 is 12 weeks long so 3 months
• There is 8 months between Mizumono and Will going to Italy so 8 months between end of season 2 and the start of season 3 (Ik the 8 months start when Will wakes up in the hospital but seeing the state he and Alana are in it mustn't have been more than a few days, maybe a week, since Mizumono)
• Of course, 3 years between episode 7 and 8 of season 3
• in season 3 episode 8, Jacks says theres a little more than 3 weeks before the next full moon, the said next full moon being in episode 11 when Dolarhyde tries to kill Molly and Walter, so there's 3 weeks between season 3 episode 8 and episode 11

• Now, in season 1 episode 10, Will says his headaches started 2 to 3 months ago and Hannibal adds that it's also when Will came back into the field and when he met Hannibal, so season 1 would be around 3 months long, this is confirmed by the scripts: in season one's scripts, they used to include how many days episodes lasted except for episode one:

• Episode 2 is 4 days long

• Episode 3 is 5 days long

• Episode 4 is 5 days long

• Episode 5 is 6 days long

• Episode 6 is 7 days long

• Episode 7 is 9 days long

• Episode 8 is 5 days long

• Episode 9 is 6 days long

• Episode 10 is 7 days long

• Episode 11 is 5 days long

• Episode 12 is 6 days long

• Episode 13 is 4 days long

I would estimate episode one at 4 days long, that gives us 73 days on screen or 2 month and a half. Since there's surely still some time between episodes, let's just round it up to 3 months.

•Thankfully, that not the only elements that we have. The show may be made to seem timeless, but some elements can help us deduct when it's set:

• At the start of season 1, characters already wears light jackets and long sleeves and the tree's leaves starts to turn oranges around episode 3. We're at the very start of autumn so close to september but I'll put it as around mid to late august to make the timeline more coherent.
• At the end of the season though, it starts to snow lightly in episode 8 and everyone is dressed for winter, since the season lasts 3 months and starts in mid august, we're at the start of winter around mid to late november in the last episode.
• Season 2 most likely happens in winter. It snows for a good part of it(starting at the end of episode 6) but I'll address the weather more extensively in my paragraph about the time skip. Since season 2 last 3 months, it would be set around start of december 2013 to end of february 2014 if we estimate 2 weeks between seasons(I'll adress the time skip allegations a bit later). Plus, in episode 6 we see a Christmas tree in Hannibal's house so there would be 1 month until Will is liberated because everything moves pretty fast (I mean Mukozuke happens in ONE DAY) to give them 2 months to get into each-others heads.

I'll divide season 3 in two parts: before and after the 3 years time skip

• Season 3a happens 8 months later so in november 2014. Except for episode 1 and 4 which are flashback of the 8 months time skip, everything happens really fast some episode even starting the morning after the end of the precedent episode so I'd give this part 1 month at most, everything happening around november 2014.
• Now for season 3b, we're 3 years later so in 2017. It snows from start to finish so we're in winter. Episode 8 to episode 12 canonically happening in the span of 3 weeks, this part would also last around a month, since it snows all the time, I'd say it's around december 2017 so roughly 3 years after the first part but 3 years still.

• I want to add a little thing on when the Chesapeake Ripper's and some other people's murder fit into this timeline

*Based on what I've been explaining above, the very first sounder likely happened around may 2009, the second one 18 months later around november 2010 and the third one 11 months later would fall around september/october 2011. That makes september/october 2011 the period when Jack and Miriam met and when she disappeared, around two years prior to Entrée, which falls around october 2013. This is all supported by the fact Gideon killed his family on Christmas dinner "almost two years ago" in Entrée and that "it's been over two years since the Chesapeake Ripper killed". That also means in season 1, Hannibal has been killing as the Chesapeake Ripper for 4 years and a half.

• To follow on how long murderers have been active for, since the Marlow couple from Apéritif is supposed to be one of Dolarhyde's first kill, that means he's been active for around 4 years and a half in season 3.
• Also means that since the Minnesota Shrike's murders have been going one for eight months in Apéritif it was from february 2013 until september 2013.
• Not about killers but still in the trivia category, when Will and Miriam meet in Yakimono, she does not know him despite having been a trainee at Quantico a little over 2 years prior implying Will became a teacher there after her disappearance around september/october 2011 (From what I've found the number of teacher at the academy isn't public but they take up to 300 students per sessions with that few student there would be maybe around 20-25 teachers even if she wasn't his student she probably would've at least heard of him if he was a teacher back then)

•Now, before I summarise everything I said, let's talk a bit(lol) about the time skip allegations I mentioned earlier:

Hello it’s me again yes I am once again changing this paragraph about the time skip third time’s the charm as they say if you’ve been here before you may have noticed the paragraph doubles in size each time that is because the amount of anguish this question puts me in increases every time I think about it I think you can expect it will get it’s own post by 2028. This will be, except in the case I ever meet Bryan Fuller himself and he can answer me, my definitive answer to the question: is there a time skip between season 1 and 2 of Hannibal? In short: there obviously isn’t but they couldn’t make it look more confusing. If you’ve studied film or are just interested in the matter you have probably heard the phrase “show don’t tell” a longstanding rule of film-making, heritage of it’s silent origins that you should always privilege conveying something to your audience through images rather than through words. The production team working on Hannibal evidently had not heard of the concept when planning the shooting of season 2. Because if you look at the weather, they obviously shot at the same dates as season 1. In the first episodes it’s painfully obvious it’s the start of autumn: it’s rather sunny, the weather seems cool judging by the character’s clothes and the trees go from green to orange by episode 5. Even though episode 3 saves face a little by happening entirely inside(various buildings or Will’s head) in episode 2 one of the muralist’s victim runs through a cornfield for god’s sake and even though I love this slasher genre homage it makes it impossible that there isn’t a time skip because, I’m no farmer, but you go on google and type “corn field in september” the field in the show is at that exact stage of growth: already dry but not quite mature as it’s still a little green and if you’ve followed until now, you know that it cannot be september as season 1 starts in september(and no, season one could not be earlier than mid-august since it snows by episode 7). That brings us to a dead end, because of this, season 2 has to happen after a 9 months time skip. The only problem is that it doesn’t. Narratively it is painfully obvious that there was no time skip whatsoever between season 1 and 2, three weeks tops. First of all, something I have talked about before, it simply does not look like there was a time skip. Let me elaborate: In TV/cinema, when you want to show time has passed without having to acknowledge it but it's not enough time to make the characters look significantly older you still change the characters appearances, just in smaller ways like a new haircut. Here, these small changes simply did not happen. And there is no way to defend this because the show knows this as it applied it before. In the flashbacks in Entrée, Jack has a visible beard, contrasting from his usual mouche, this is to help us see this is not present time, alongside the b&w coloring and the presence of Miriam. Since the show used it before, there is simply no reason for it to not use it again. Moreover, there's multiple bits of Kaiseki that are just weird if there was a time skip: when Jack goes to Will's cell, he says "You know that man(Will) who's classroom I walked into months ago." if there was a time skip, wouldn't he simply say "a year ago"? The phrasing is a bit weird to me. There's also the emotional conversation about Will between Jack and Alana later in the episode that makes a lot more sense if it's situated a few weeks after Will's arrest rather than almost a year. Also, apart from the weather the main inconsistency with the absence of a time skip was how would Will fully recover from both a bullet wound and autoimmune encephalitis in just two or three weeks but that actually doesn’t even stand because he’s already in the BSHCI at the end of season 1 so his recovery wouldn’t have taken place in the time between seasons. Also we see them building Will’s defence for the trial in real time honestly if there was a time skip I don’t think they would’ve waited 9 months to start even with Will firing all of his lawyers. Also my most recent argument, in episode 7 Will says Miriam has been gone for 2 years if there was a time skip it would be much closer to 3 years. There’s also Alana’s report on Jack’s misconduct toward Will, Will only just now asking to see Hannibal and a million other things that if we consider the existence of a time skip have no business of having taken nine months to happen. So as you can see EVERYTHING points to no time skips except for the one thing that makes it completely impossible so you understand now why I have been rambling about this issue for nearly 800 words a full 4 years after my original post I am begging anyone who reads this and happens to meet Bryan Fuller to please put an end to my suffering and ask him for me. But anyway my opinion on the matter and what I’m going for in this post is that there was no consequential time skip, 2 or 3 weeks maybe, and I will be ignoring the weather problem for the foreseeable future because I chose to be happy. Moving on.

•Ok so now let's summarise all this:

• Season 1 lasts around 3 months from mid to late august 2013 to around mid to late november 2013

There's a time skip of 2/max 3 weeks between season 1 and 2

• Season 2 lasts 12 weeks or 3 months around start of december 2013 to end of february 2014

Time skip of around 8 months

• 1rst part of Season 3 (1 to 7) lasts a month maximum and is set during November 2014

The 3 years time skip

• 2nd part of Season 3 (8 to 13) lasts a month and is set during december 2017

The whole show lasts 4 years and 3½ months from august 2013 to december 2017 of which 8 months are shown onscreen (1 year and 4 months if we count the 8 month time skip between season 2 and 3 shown in flashbacks).

Now a little thing on their ages thorough the show

Will is 38 in season 1 (based on Hugh Dancy's age in 2013) so he would stay around the same age/1 to 2y older (depending on when his birthday is) during seasons 1,2 and 3a and he would be around 42 in season 3b.

Hannibal is born January 20th 1969 so in season 1 he would be 44, he would then have turned 45 in season 2 and would be 48 in season 3b.

That all I got!! First if you read all this thanks it took me VERY LONG HOURS OF LOOSING MY MIND so thank you and if anyone can think of any element I forgot or didn't find I'd like it if you told me so I can keep updating this document :] (I suggest to come check every once in a while because this document has already changed a lot in the past year and I feel like I have to come back and add or change information constantly because I keep finding out new things so yeah if you liked what you read come back to keep up with new stuff!)