In episode three of the third season of Hannibal, Will goes looking for insight about Hannibal Lecter by visiting his childhood home, and while the cannibalistic doctor might not be there, the place isn’t totally abandoned. Meanwhile, Hannibal murders another dinner guest!
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Hannibal and Bedelia are featured first this episode, with Bedelia asking Hannibal how it was seeing Will Graham. Hannibal notes that Will knew where to look for him, but Bedelia counters with the fact that Hannibal knew where Will WOULD look for him. That’s an important distinction.
They wax poetic a little bit about betrayal and love, with Bedelia comparing the whole ordeal to falling in love. She then asks where Will will look for Hannibal next? He says it’ll be the one place he can never go — home.
The Lecter Estate
Then we get to watch Will wander around the Lecter lands for awhile, recalling a conversation with Hannibal describing his “mind palace.” As he’s exploring, we get a first glimpse at a woman on the grounds who is out hunting pheasants and quite dolled up for doing so. Good for you, girl.
Later that night, Will is still randomly wandering the grounds and apparently decides to start a little bonfire. Notably, there are fireflies drifting about, setting a prettier scene, as Hannibal does. As he explores some more, he eventually comes upon a creepy cage that is holding a man who has clearly seen better days. The woman comes up behind him with a gun, telling Will he is “upsetting” the other man.
The woman notes that WIll is trespassing, but Will is understandably more concerned about the emaciated prisoner trapped behind him. When he notes that she is keeping the man like an animal, she says she wouldn’t do the same thing to an animal. Creepy.
Meet Chiyo
The woman says they’ve been each other’s prisoners for a long time, and as they continue to talk, she asks Will how he knows Hannibal. He replies “intimately,” and she turns that into a conversation about close friendships, but I’m pretty sure the shippers are going to have a field day anyway.
Will shows the woman his scar, and asks her name — it is Chiyo, and as they continue to talk, she explains that Hannibal does his cannibal thing because it was what was once done to his sister, Mischa. Hannibal seemed to think the culprit was the prisoner Will found, and when Chiyo wouldn’t let Hannibal kill the guy, he left the stranger’s life in Chiyo’s hands. Hence, why she’s still hanging around the creepy estate after all these years.
Will asks if Chiyo knows where Hannibal is, and she’s curious as to why he wants to find the doctor. Will replies that he’s never known himself as well as he does when he’s with Hannibal. Which is just so, so sad for Will Graham. He notes that Hannibal was probably curious whether Chiyo would eventually kill the imprisoned man, which all sounds like a Hannibal mind game to me.
More Dinner Parties
Meanwhile, we get some scenes that show Hannibal preparing one of his “special” meals, and the professor from a previous episode is the guest this time around. Before long, he’s dead too, the victim of an ice pick to the brain. Bedelia is the one to put him out of his misery by pulling it out, so Hannibal makes sure she knows she was the one to technically killed him. So screwed up.
Bedelia points out that Hannibal clearly is no longer content with keeping the peace and lying low, and she’s proven correct when Hannibal has yet another one of his parties with new guests. This time, he notes that the meal he’s prepared was first made by him in honor of his sister, which clearly catches Bedelia’s interest.
Later, while Hannibal is washing Bedelia’s hair, she tries to ask him about the meal and his sister. She questions why he can’t go home, which he doesn’t really answer. In a clear power move, Bedelia asks Hannibal how his sister tasted before sinking beneath the bath water. That was a bold, cold move on Dr. du Maurier’s part.
Freedom?
Will goes back to the cage and lets the prisoner free outside, but the man doesn’t seem to know where to go or what to do with himself. (Can you blame him?). Will shoos him away, but it’s not the last we see of him.
Chiyo goes down to the man’s cage to bring him food, and we see that he has made his way back there, ready to attack her as soon as her guard is down. She manages to stab the guy in the neck during their ensuing struggle, and he dies. Elsewhere, Will hears the woman’s screams after she, too, has become a murderer.
When she finds Will, she accuses him, saying “You did this. You set him free,” but he replies that it was actually Chiyo he wanted to set free. Chiyo then agrees to help Will find Hannibal, since she no longer has a reason to stay on the grounds.
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The Search for Will
I should also note that while Will is off in Lithuania, Jack and Rinaldo are back at Hannibal’s latest crime scene in the chapel. They commiserate, and Rinaldo asks Jack to help him find Hannibal — but Jack claims he’s there for Will, not the murderous doctor.
Jack goes onto explain that he “borrowed” Will’s imagination and broke it, so he clearly feels guilty for everything that went down. They chat a little bit about understanding and acceptance, but not much else happens with these characters on this episode of Hannibal. But at least we know Jack survived!
Fireflies and Forgiveness
Will’s final scene in this episode features him making the body of the prisoner into some grotesque model of a firefly. It’s very creepy and I don’t totally understand why he did it. For Hannibal to see? Because Will is pretty screwed up now himself? Who knows.
Hannibal and Bedelia have a final conversation about forgiveness and betrayal, with Bedelia noting that the emotion he felt towards his sister seems similar to the one he does for Will – a strange form of love. She brings up betrayal, stating that everyone can betray, but Hannibal says Mischa never did. His sister is clearly a soft spot for the doctor.
Finally, Hannibal says there’s only one way to forgive Will Graham, and that’s by eating him. I mean, most people just take some time, reflect, and just quietly get to that point eventually, I feel like cannibalism isn’t usually involved. But of course, Hannibal isn’t most people. So Will had better watch out.
Hannibal airs Thursday nights at 10pm on NBC.
(Image courtesy of NBC)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
