Note: Full spoilers for the Hannibal: Season 1 finale follow!
If you’ve seen the Hannibal season finale (and if you haven’t, go watch it and then come back here!), you know things have changed in a huge way for Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter.
Hannibal: Season Finale Review
I spoke to the show’s executive producer and showrunner, Bryan Fuller, about all that occurred in the finale and throughout the season and got several hints about what to expect next year, when Hannibal returns for Season 2.
IGN: Did you know from the get-go how you wanted the first season to end?
Fuller: Yes, yes. That was actually something that I pitched when I pitched the show. Where we end up at the very last shot of the season is the iconic shot from Silence of the Lambs of heading down the corridor to the last cell on the left and finding not Hannibal Lecter, but Will Graham. So it was a destination that I knew we were driving toward, and I was very excited about getting there because it’s something that occurred to me very early on in the process -- probably when reading Red Dragon and those few pages of backstory. All we knew, essentially, was that Will Graham was so psychologically compromised after investigating the Minnesota Shrike that he had to be institutionalized. So, for me, I felt like we were staying true to that story but just telling it in a way that the few pages of backstory couldn’t possibly portray in their simplicity. But you could argue that everything that’s happening could well be squeezed within those lines.
IGN: And as you mentioned, it hits this sort of wonderful subversion of what we know of as the classic Hannibal dynamic from Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon as well. When this series began a lot of people were wondering how you make this last as a series. So was it fun for you to know that you had this in your pocket?
Fuller: It was sort of giggle-inducing, because I had read different theories about “Oh, they won’t catch Hannibal until Season 4, and this will go on for a long time, these therapy sessions and the metaphors of the murderers to Will Graham’s state of mind.” I took immense pleasure in “Oh, they have no idea!” [Laughs] That was a lot of fun for us as storytellers in the writer’s room just to ourselves; that the audience won’t see this coming because of the anticipation of what Hannibal means to most people as a television series. And it was very exciting to subvert that.
IGN: We definitely get a lot of layers to Hannibal. We see different facets of him, and he does have different relationships on the show. How much should we think that he really wanted Will as a friend or not? It seems like with Bedelia he’s probably being more honest than he isn’t a lot of times, and he seemed pretty sincere when he talked with her about Will, yet he did some reprehensible things to him.
Fuller: His feeling toward Will Graham are absolutely sincere and genuine. In Hannibal’s mind, everything he has done to thwart Will’s psyche has been a radical, unorthodox form of therapy. So it’s almost bad parenting, in a way, where I want what’s good for my child or the person of my affections, but my point of view on the world is going to greatly determine whether that is actually good for them or if it is actually quite damaging. In Hannibal’s mind, everything that he has done to Will Graham and for Will Graham has been to get Will to a place where he can more truthfully see himself and accept what it is he is as an empath, as a human being, as sort of a pure thing in Hannibal’s mind. It’s part of the attraction. For Hannibal, he wants an equal of sorts, and Will Graham is in some ways, on the other side of the mirror, a purer soul than Hannibal is, but they have a similar intelligence and they have a similar understanding of the darkness that lies in a man’s soul. Hannibal’s just trying to convince Will that it’s okay to be the way you are. It’s okay to think about killing people. It’s okay to kill people. Those are all the things that Hannibal is just trying to help Will accept about himself, and I think now that we’ve crossed this benchmark in their relationship, that’s not going to stop Hannibal from trying to convince Will that he did do these things and he should just accept it.
IGN: Will could potentially be locked up for life with what’s happened. So for Hannibal was that just, basically, a necessary byproduct? Because at the same time, this does help Hannibal, because it cleans up loose ends for him if someone else takes this fall. In his ideal world would he have helped Will get away while also convincing him “You should be a killer like me”?
Fuller: Well, I think the better job at convincing Will that he’s a killer is for Will to stand trial, in a way, for those things and be forced by all those around Will who are believing that he is capable of these things to confront them head on. If it were in secret -- if Hannibal had said, “I’m going to help you run away” -- then he may not have been as successful convincing Will. I think the relationship has just turned a corner in an interesting way, but that doesn’t change Hannibal’s goals for Will Graham. He just has an interesting obstacle to get around.
One of my favorite scenes from the series is in the second episode when Hannibal is trying to coax Will into therapy, and we see Will Graham up in the balcony. He’s almost like a squirrel in a tree that Hannibal’s trying to coax onto his therapist couch with a delicious nut. [Laughs] So I like that he now has that squirrel in a cage, and we will be continuing those therapy sessions, but the game is now afoot, and Will Graham is going to be a much more active player than he was in that game in the first season.
IGN: Like you said, Hannibal could still try to convince Will he committed those crimes, because, unlike with Abigail, he didn’t own up to anything.
Fuller: No, no, and nor will he. Also, the great thing is Will does have huge blank spots in his memory where, even though in his heart he believes that he did not do these things, in his mind he understands intellectually he has no idea, because he was not conscious. So he cannot say for certain that he didn’t, which is a great grey area for Hannibal to dance around.
Continue to Page 2 as Fuller discusses the fate of Abigail, Jack Crawford's next move and the onscreen depiction of Hannibal Lecter's violence.
Source : ign[dot]com
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