Hannibal Season 3, Episode 13, “The Wrath of the Lamb”

I’d grown fairly disillusioned and even impatient with Hannibal over the course this past season. The show seemed to lose its way somewhat in the first half: Hannibal playing house with Bedelia; Will on his seemingly endless plod through the greatest hits of Hannibal’s developing years; Hannibal going through the motions of killing and eating thinly drawn European academics with barely a shrug, and worst of all, far too much indulgence in Bryan Fuller’s partially straight-faced dictum that his directors make an arty, “pretentious” show. Even the introduction of Francis Dolarhyde and the plot of Red Dragon in the season’s second half seemed to drag, although at least it allowed Will to become a more active character by again applying his heightened empathy to understand the mind of yet another monstrous lunatic.

But I'll be damned if the series finale wasn’t marvelous to behold, and well worth the slow build up of the latter half of this season, particularly the climactic fight to the death between Will, Francis, and Hannibal. Everything about this confrontation was perfectly executed: lighting made up to look like harsh, directional moonlight; the slow motion close-ups of the brutal wounds the trio inflict on one another; the menacing physicality of Francis’s unfurled dragon wings (both those of his imagination, and the blood that leaks out from underneath him in death); choreography so savage that it had me actively calculating how Francis leaving a knife embedded in Will’s face was a mistake (because it would allow Will to use it himself after pulling it free, of course); the knowing glance Will and Hannibal give one another as they go in for the kill,* and how the simultaneous killing blows Will and Hannibal deliver to Francis each reference previous wounds the two have inflicted or suffered (Will disemboweling Francis recalls Hannibal slicing open Will’s belly at the end of season two, while Hannibal biting off Francis’s throat recalls Hannibal also slitting Abigail’s throat in that same scene from season two). Even the somber musical accompaniment that picks up just as Will and Hannibal make their move was pitch perfect (a new song, “Love Crime,” by Siouxsie Sue).

* This exchange of glances reminded me of a moment earlier in season three, when Will imagines what would have happened if he had given in to his desire to become Hannibal’s accomplice and ambush Jack at the dinner table at the end of season two.

The aftermath of the battle was also incredibly satisfying, as it pays off the tug of war that Hannibal and Will have played over Will’s soul since the start of the series. At Hannibal’s prodding, Will has finally embraced the killer inside him, and admits to Hannibal how much he enjoys it, which is the very thing Hannibal has always wanted to hear from him, both for Will’s sake, and for Hannibal’s. Hannibal tells Will as much, and just when Will seems to figuratively embrace both this dark side of himself and literally embrace Hannibal, Will’s compassion for the rest of humanity surfaces once again, and he leaps off the edge of a cliff, Hannibal firmly wrapped in his arms.

There are probably a couple of different ways to interpret this act. The one I just described is the one I like best: Will gives in to his desires to become a ruthless killer molded after Hannibal, enjoys it just as much as he always knew he would, and gives Hannibal the satisfaction of knowing Hannibal was right about him, but only for a moment, before killing both himself and Hannibal in order to spare the rest of the world the monster he’s just unleashed inside himself, as well as the monster Hannibal has been all along. There’s some nice poetic symmetry here: we get to have it both ways in watching Will give in to his temptations and then deny himself and Hannibal from following up on them ever again.

On the other hand, the staging is somewhat ambiguous. An alternative, equally plausible interpretation is that Hannibal is the one who decides to leap off the cliff, with Will wrapped in his arms. In this interpretation, Hannibal is content to die after finally achieving the breakthrough with Will that he’s spent all this time working toward. I like this interpretation less, however, not only because it deprives Will of any agency, but also because Hannibal never struck me as a suicidal character. Now that Hannibal has finally guided Will to Hannibal’s deranged version of enlightenment, I can very easily envision Hannibal happily killing and eating his way through the world with his soulmate by his side, for that is who Hannibal has been fashioning Will into.

And finally, it could simply have been that both of them decided to take the plunge together (an apt turn of phrase, considering that their embrace strongly resembles that of lovers). However, like the previous interpretation, this seems to betray what we’ve learned about the characters over the life of the series; it does not seem like a thing the two would agree to do together.

Overall, I’m happy I stuck around for such a great ending to a sometimes trying series.

Brief last thoughts:

- I guess Hannibal really did drive Bedelia nuts. His reach extends even beyond the grave, as Bedelia closes out the series dining on her own roasted leg, sumptuously prepared in a very Hannibal-like style.

- Kind of a strange ending for Ilana and Jack; the former is last seen fleeing the Verger mansion with her wife and child in tow, while the latter is last seen knowingly observing the wreckage of Hannibal’s escape.

- That final fight is so gory. Extreme close-ups of disembowelments, leg gashing, throat tearing, rivers of blood… I found myself wondering how the hell this was airing on network television, where censors still eliminate curse words. Really, it's an apt question for the entire series, which has actually shown worse.

UPDATE: Looks like Bryan Fuller's intentions were with my first interpretation. Good! Also, he has a very different interpretation of what's going on in that finale scene with Bedelia, one that makes more sense (or at least just as much sense) as what I thought was happening.