“By some miracle, Hannibal has survived for at least season three, and let’s be so grateful that it has. Otherwise, this would make for the most depressing series finale of all time.” – Jonathan Raeder
“You don’t really know if you’re going to survive him, do you?”
Before we dive into this heartbreaking, terrifying, beautiful, amazing episode, let’s just take a moment to remember that this show is network television. This is not the work of a cable or premium cable network — not AMC, not Showtime, not HBO. This is the type of channel that airs police procedurals and the like. By some miracle, Hannibal has survived for at least season three, and let’s be so grateful that it has. Otherwise, this would make for the most depressing series finale of all time.
We’ve known from the start of this season that Hannibal and Jack would end up fighting in Hannibal’s kitchen, Jack bleeding from a vicious and probably deadly wound to the neck. Yet how it would happen was a mystery. Most shows would have the characters finding evidence and building a case against Hannibal. This isn’t most shows. Hannibal will never leave any evidence, never make that one mistake that heroic police officers always expect of villains. The only way Hannibal will be revealed is if he’s somehow persuaded to do so.
Will and Hannibal’s relationship — not sexual or romantic in the obvious sense, but definitely incredibly intimate — has always been the focus of this show, but never more so than the second half of this season. Will has turned the tables on Hannibal, seduced him in his own way and became the partner, protégé and ally that Hannibal has always wanted. He’s killed a man and strung up his body in an ironic way, eaten human flesh, and proved his value as an interesting person willing to learn from Hannibal. Hannibal believes that Will is on his side, just as Jack believes Will’s on Jack’s side. Evil and good and chaos and order are both on Will’s shoulder and hoping he’ll side with them. For a while it seemed as though Will’s ultimate allegiance was still shrouded in mystery — would he pick Jack or Hannibal? Yet once Hannibal smells Freddie Lounds on Will, he knows Will is setting him up. It’s a betrayal — the collapse of something that Hannibal held very dear.
It’s a divorce.
Yet there’s still some build-up to get through before the bloody finale. As this season has progressed, Hannibal’s eased into its dreamlike style more and more as it’s learned to drift away from the police procedural format it pays lip service to. Haunting close-ups of faces with eyes shining in the darkness and the ticking of a clock pervading every scene reminds us of both the urgency of this situation and the incriminating picture of Will’s former insanity. An unsettlingly beautiful dream sequence of Will’s house among a forest of antlers and Will taking aim at the stag underneath while being goaded by Garrett-Jacob Hobbs’ whispered “See?” are all amazing examples of this show’s distinctive visual and auditory style.
Hannibal offers Will escape from his vengeance, essentially telling him at their last supper if that he’ll come clean right now, Hannibal will forgive him for his machinations of betrayal and the two will vanish into the night to be murder husbands for the foreseeable future. Will doesn’t take it, though, and Hannibal knows he’ll have to end this before it results in his own loss of freedom.
Jack plans on going through with his plan even if the FBI wants to arrest Hannibal and Will. As Alana warns Will of his fate and Will escapes, he calls Hannibal and says, “They know” – mirroring the pilot episode when Hannibal warns GJH of the FBI’s approach. It’s telling that this show continues to circle back around to GJH and Abigail, the case that started it all, the case whose profound impact still haunts all those involved.
Finally, the first episode’s promised fight happens just as it was teased, and Jack is trapped inside the pantry, bleeding profusely from his neck while Hannibal slams into the door repeatedly, his white shirt stained with blood. However, Alana walks in and finally sees the monster she’s been sleeping with, the corrupting darkness that’s invaded her dreams. “You can still be blind,” Hannibal says, offering her the chance to walk away and forget what she’s seen, but Alana can’t do that, of course. She tries to shoot him and is out of bullets. The lurching monster Hannibal chases her up the stairs in a tense moment of true fear. The show’s veered off canon already and it probably won’t hesitate to kill more characters. Alana finds brief refuge in a room, shooting at the door with newfound bullets, only to discover that Abigail Hobbs is alive. Then, suddenly, she’s out the window, glass blending with the raindrops in a beautiful, terribly sad scene.
It’s brilliantly paced, brilliantly shot — yet another example of Hannibal living up to its horror roots. Will’s confrontation with Hannibal is horrifying, but for a different reason. This is finally the divorce, the painful breakup when Hannibal discovers that Will’s been lying to him, that the one person he didn’t have to disguise himself for rejects him. “Now that you know me, see me. I gave you a rare gift, but you didn’t want it,” Hannibal says. Yet Hannibal forgives Will and asks that in turn Will repay the forgiveness. But forgiveness isn’t an active choice, as Bella informs us; it just happens. Will can’t forgive Hannibal — not after all he’s done. Will, for all his social faults, is a moral man through and through and can’t allow Hannibal to get away. As vindictive as anyone in a rapidly collapsing relationship, Hannibal lashes out and destroys Will’s newfound hope by slitting Abigail’s throat after a year of manipulation.
Then he walks out into the rain — Jack, Alana, Abigail, and Will bleeding out and close to death — and washes himself of the whole situation. He’s escaped again, and he’s put this part of his life behind him. Being a psychiatrist, a wealthy socialite, an FBI agent and Will Graham’s friend — all of this is past him now. A new chapter begins. Hannibal may be able to walk away from this people, but we can’t.
Who’s alive, who’s dead? It’s impossible to know anything other than the fact that Hannibal’s gotten away again — with Bedelia? How long has Bedelia been in on Hannibal’s evil, how long has she been willing to accompany him to his life in Europe? The beginning of the season shows that she did fear for her life, so whatever change of heart she’s had must have been recent. Hopefully season three — which will no doubt feature the vengeful pursuit of Hannibal by a wounded Will Graham — will answer these questions and more.
“Mizumono” stands as one of the best episodes of Hannibal, and maybe of television in its entirety. Few shows and few stories have the tenacity to slide into the vortex of such evil, to subject us to this nightmarish, slow descent into tragedy. The villain gets away. All of the heroes could be dead. Hannibal is something beyond human. He’s the devil. You can fight the devil, you can hate the devil, and you can maybe even avoid him completely. But you can’t catch him. You can’t kill him. He’s something beyond humanity: a force of self-interested evil that will continue to kill and corrupt as long as humanity itself has evil in its blood.
Tidbits:
– Prediction Corner: In an interview with The AV Club, Bryan Fuller says that “not everybody dies, but not everybody lives.” I think it’s safe to say that Will survives, and then I’d put my money on Alana too. Jack and Abigail though…I think they’re dead. We’ll see come next year.
– Let me stress this again: an hour of television has rarely impacted me as this one did. Not everyone is dead, but this was so beautiful and gut-wrenching that I had to put down my notebook and just stare in horror. Such an amazing show.
– Hannibal may have been renewed for a third season, but the show is always going to have a rocky relationship with ratings. A fourth season is far from certain. Should Fuller continue with his seven-season plan or structure each upcoming season finale as if it could be a season finale? According to his announced plans, seasons three and four would theoretically continue his constructed pre-Red Dragon material, while season five would be Red Dragon, six would be Silence of the Lambs, and seven some vague version of Hannibal (the book).
– SPOILERS FOR HANNIBAL BOOKS:
In the books, Hannibal gets away. He corrupts Clarice Starling and is never caught. Yet the show has already revealed that the canon is more of a suggestion, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Hannibal is finally caught or killed if the show gets its imagined seven seasons. What do you think?
– Hopefully, I’ll be back writing these reviews next year; thanks for reading them, it’s been a lot of fun.
