Hannibal Things: Season 2 Wrap-Up & Season 3 Speculations
So. I posted my "OMG WTF did I just see?" thoughts in Cleo's discussion post here. Actually, I'm all over her discussion post that I feel like I've already covered a lot of things and I'm all talked out. I'm trying not to repeat myself too much in this wrap-up post; so if I don't touch on anything specific about the finale here, bring it up in the comments and I'll be happy to talk about it there (because there's a lot of stuff to cover).
ETA: Although this post by itself is pretty long, so I hope you all packed a snack.
First: I take back everything I said regarding the finale being over-hyped. I don't think it was as great as the first season's finale; but with the storyline of this season, it served its part. This was the messy break-up Bryan Fuller promised us. This was Hannibal--in the throes of realizing his BFF had betrayed him--laying waste to everything Will held dear (minus the dogs). This was Hannibal fulfilling Will's prophetic summation that Hannibal took everything away from him. We finally saw Hannibal out of his "people suit". And it was TERRIFYING.
On the finale itself: I'm in shock about how accurate I was a month ago when I wrote down my finale prediction that everyone's fates--save for Hannibal--would be left undecided. For the record, I think everyone but Abigail (more on her below) will make it through, with various degrees of lasting damage (Alana may be paralyzed, Jack's going to be bedridden for a while, and Will will have his colostomy bag).
They used that ticking clock sound effect to the best of its ability to build up to The Fight. I can't begin to think what Bedelia's game is, other than survival. . .and I don't really care, to be honest. I understood where Kade Purnell was coming from and why she did what she did. I hope the fandom doesn't blame her, because as much as she did pull the plug on Will and Jack's secret mission, leading to the ensuing bloodbath, she was still going to follow up on the covert investigation. She obviously couldn't predict that Jack would attack Hannibal, too. So I hope we get more of her in Season 3. If Jack is bedridden, I can see Kade stepping in as acting head of the BAU. . .maybe.
AND THE PARALLELS! I'm a sucker for parallels and callbacks--just like I am for foreshadowing. Freddie being painted in red in Hannibal's mind palace because she was wearing red when they first officially met. Will's phone call to Hannibal mirrored Hannibal calling Hobbs. (For what it's worth, I think Will's call was in service to BOTH Jack and Hannibal. He wanted to protect Jack in the hope Hannibal would flee, while also maintaining his all-or-nothing relationship with Hannibal.) Abigail's hallucination that Hannibal was her father and Alana was her mother in 1x04; and then Alana is left on Hannibal's doorstep like Abigail's mother and Hannibal--the surrogate father--finishes the job Abigail's real father started.
Which brings me to Abigail. Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. I'd already prepped myself that she was still alive and still I had to take a walk during the commercial break following her arrival and mutter, "GOD DAMN IT, SHOW!" to myself. However--and this going to sound horrible--by the end I was okay with her return because they finally finished her off for good (I hope). Yes, I completely understand that it sucks she was brought back just to kill her 10 minutes later. But that image of Will trying to save her again, under nearly the same circumstances as the first time, and not being able to was beautifully done and haunting and I got what Fuller was doing. (Not that it erases that another female death is being used to further man pain.)
So, yeah, as far as finales go, it was pretty satisfying. And, if you care for any of the characters that Hannibal left dying at his house, then you want him to PAIN and SUFFER. And if you care more about Hannibal, then you also get the heartbreak that he just broke-up with all his "friends" and must walk alone for all of eternity.
Overall, the season started out strong and I infinitely enjoyed 2x01 - 2x07 much more than the arc of 2x08 - 2x11. In looking at the season as a whole entity, I can see that there was a strong connective thread in all the episodes: Will regaining his mental state; but also the effect Hannibal had on Will through their Season 1 relationship how that changed Will (and Hannibal, too). The quality of the story dipped and I feel like the writers lost themselves in the planning of this season. Part of this comes from daring to break the "normal" storyboard mold; but a lot of it is my own personal dissatisfaction at how much time was spent on the Will luring Hannibal plot.
Generally speaking, we like our stories to have a steady build-up, where the climax happens near the end and we get a few loose ends tied up in a nice pretty bow. Season 1 followed this path. Cleo, in her Season 1 finale post, calls it the final chapter of Book One, where everything comes full circle and we see the building blocks and how we got there. Season 2, eh, not so much. In a "normal" series, we would've built up to Will proving his innocence and his vindication would've been the season finale. Here, it happened in 2x07, and following all the craziness of 2x07, the action slowed down considerably until 2x12.
I'm going to go slightly off-track for a sec: Homeland in its second season had a similar plotting, where something that--in a "normal" series--would've happened as a season finale happened in the fourth episode. Like in Hannibal, the action slowed down following this revelation as pieces were being moved in the second act that lead us to the third act. By the last two episodes, things sped up again. (Here's a tie-in to Hannibal: The star of Homeland is Claire Danes, who is married to Hugh Dancy.)
Both shows, because they "broke" the typical stream of things building on each other up to a single climax, suffered a bit from an uneven plot. And while both had explosive finales, it doesn't make up for the middle, sluggish parts that came because the seasons were rebooted part way through. Contrast them to a show like Orphan Black which lives on reveal after reveal and twist after twist, and still manages to keep the tension building because there seems to be a farther reaching goal at the end of the winding tunnel. Hannibal this year felt like two seasons smashed together. While I can see a connective thread, there remains a giant fissure between the story being told in Episodes 1 to 7 and Episodes 8 to 13 that I cannot reconcile.
On a personal level, I disliked the slow con game Will was running because, in order for it work to its full effect, I had to believe up until 2x11 that Will was turning into a cold-blooded killer. However, I knew (thanks to Bryan Fuller's big mouth) that Hannibal was going on the run at the end of the season. Therefore, I knew Will was running a con on Hannibal. And because I sniffed out the con game ahead of schedule, Will luring Hannibal became tedious. Especially since it felt like Will and Hannibal were having the same conversation over and over and over again. No doubt there will be a payoff because through this con game Will understands Hannibal better and will use that knowledge to nab him once and for all. So the con game was necessary; I only wish they hadn't focused so much energy on it. Again: probably because the writers broke a story mold we're used to, where the hero through his efforts catches the villain in the end.
Throw in the mistreatment of all the female characters, the revolving door of deaths and not!deaths, and inconsistencies of plot threads and characters disappearing or not being mentioned again (seriously, where the hell did Miriam go?) (and why the hell did Will never bring up Beverly when he listed all the people Hannibal took away from him?), this season was riddled with problematic choices that didn't seem to plague the show a season ago. Fuller has admitted that they didn't have as much time to plot out Season 2 and worked on a more flexible storyline, which may explain the dropped characters and inconsistent plot threads. My one hope, though, is that they continue to flesh out their side characters--particularly the women--and give them stuff to do. (I'm all for Alana taking over the role her male counterpart has in the books and become the main psychological consultant for the BAU.)
I remain optimistic about the show in general, because in the end, I didn't really hate a single episode. But the show has room for improvements, and I hope Season 3, with a seemingly new structure taking place, delivers.
Finally: Apart from the actual GIF sets and posts from the finale itself, I have enjoyed the reaction posts all over Tumblr. My favorites are this one and this one. We're all coping in our own ways.
Onto some Season 3 speculation:
Note: Because of Bryan "Blabber-Mouth" Fuller's tendency to give too much away (see "Hannibal on the Run" for Season 3), some of my independent speculations have already been confirmed. I'll be marking those as such. Whether they actually come to fruition, remains to be seen. (Like how we were promised Hannibal's uncle this season; and that never came to pass.)
--The season will pick up a couple months after the events of the finale. That gives whoever survived the bloodbath a little time to heal and Hannibal and Bedelia to settle wherever they decide to settle. Paris, I think, is where they end up.
--In order to sustain a 13-episode arc of "Hannibal on the run", the season will contain some Hannibal-heavy episodes and some Will/FBI-heavy episodes. I've expressed before my trepidation about having 13 episodes of Hannibal evading Will, considering we just got done with a storyline about Will attempting to catch Hannibal. I think having Will and Hannibal separated could really revitalize the show and add a new dynamic. It would also give the side characters (Jack, Alana, Freddie--who's going to have a field day whipping up the media frenzy on Hannibal the Cannibal--Jimmy and Zeller, Molly, and anyone else they introduce) more screen time and the opportunity to develop outside the Will/Hannibal dynamic and actually do stuff.
(Note: Fuller pretty much already confirmed this in his IGN interview.)
Another Homeland connection: Homeland did the same thing last season. One of the two leads all but disappeared during the first and second parts of the season, and only showed up at the end. I doubt Hannibal will go to this extreme; but with Homeland, it worked extremely well, because it was pretty obvious that one of the leads had less of a story to tell over the other lead.
Also: this preps us for Season 4 (!) because, in order to develop Dolarhyde properly, they're hopefully going to devote some episodes to him and his backstory. I just want justice done for the Red Dragon storyline, because the previous two adaptations have mucked it up considerably*.
*Although Fuller said something in an interview regarding Dolarhyde that raised my heckles and have made me a touch wary for Season 4.
--It's extremely possible that Will and Hannibal will "see" each other in their respective mind palaces. (I can't wait to see Hannibal wearing wading boots with his plaid suits.) I KNOW a lot of people tune into the show for the Will and Hannibal relationship; so the writers are going to have to somehow make them be on-screen together when they're a country apart. Hannibal brought up "mind palaces" in the finale, which I think was foreshadowing how important the mind palaces are going to be next year. As much as Will hates Hannibal, I think he'll use his knowledge of Hannibal to imagine what Hannibal would say/do in order to catch the Killer of the Week and track Hannibal down.
--In terms of the pacing, I think the first 10 episodes will have Hannibal and Will pretty much separated, with Hannibal living it up in Europe, and Will hunting Hannibal and learning Hannibal's backstory. In reality, I can only see Hannibal's trial lasting one episode--two, at most; so that would either be Episode 12 and/or Episode 13. I can't see Season 3's finale being as explosive as this year's finale. In fact, I see it as a mirror to Season 1's finale (more on that below).
--Fuller's mentioned bringing back the Vergers for Season 3, so I imagine they'll be using the Verger storyline from Hannibal, the novel, to flesh out the season. Without giving too many spoilers, I suspect that the climax of that storyline will be Episode 11. . .or, for the shock value, I could see it ending the season. Possibly we may also get the Inspector Pazzi storyline, too, or something similar to give Hannibal someone to mess with while he's abroad.
--Since Molly is being introduced next season, I think she's going to play a factor in Hannibal coming back to the states. We just witnessed Hannibal try to punish Will by killing everyone he cares about. If he hears that Will's moving on with someone new, it may be temptation enough for Hannibal to come back and screw with Will.
My crack!theory is that at Will and Molly's wedding just as the priest says "if there's anyone who has reason as to wed, let them speak now. . .blah, blah, blah," and Hannibal shows up all "Will is MY Murder Husband" and then the FBI tackles him and arrests him. (It's not going to happen, but let me have my daydream.)
--We'll get a Dolarhyde sighting probably during Hannibal's trial. It's probably not going to be a *thunderclap* close-up (god I hope not). Rather a subtle nod to the book fans. Fuller has incorporated Dolarhyde/Red Dragon nods throughout the two seasons: The Marlowes were Dolarhyde's first murder, the Avid Fan, the idea of "Becoming" something other than a lowly human--to be fair, "transformation" is current that runs through all of Thomas Harris's books. So I feel strongly that we may be meeting Dolarhyde sooner than we expect.
(Note: I swear I came to this conclusion a couple weeks ago, before Fuller dropped the Dolarhyde bomb in his TV Guide interview.)
(Also: I'm getting more and more nervous of Season 3 in general because they are mixing and matching so much of the books together. It's like Fuller realized that 13 episodes of Hannibal in Europe wouldn't be sustainable. Which is why--though I can't feasibly see how--they could've mashed Season 2 and 3 into one season and make Red Dragon Season 3.)
--I'm praying that the final scene of Season 3 is Will visiting Hannibal, after his incarceration in Chilton's ward, one last time to bookend the ending scene of Season 1. I hope Will's final lines are "Goodbye, Dr. Lecter" and then he walks away from Hannibal, who will probably be smug in his tiny cell and like, "Oh, you'll be back. We have too much fun together." and then Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane explodes into a million pieces. (Let me have this daydream, too, damn it!)
*whew* We have a long 9 months ahead of us. Welcome to the He-Ate-Us, Rhoda!
ETA: Although this post by itself is pretty long, so I hope you all packed a snack.
First: I take back everything I said regarding the finale being over-hyped. I don't think it was as great as the first season's finale; but with the storyline of this season, it served its part. This was the messy break-up Bryan Fuller promised us. This was Hannibal--in the throes of realizing his BFF had betrayed him--laying waste to everything Will held dear (minus the dogs). This was Hannibal fulfilling Will's prophetic summation that Hannibal took everything away from him. We finally saw Hannibal out of his "people suit". And it was TERRIFYING.
On the finale itself: I'm in shock about how accurate I was a month ago when I wrote down my finale prediction that everyone's fates--save for Hannibal--would be left undecided. For the record, I think everyone but Abigail (more on her below) will make it through, with various degrees of lasting damage (Alana may be paralyzed, Jack's going to be bedridden for a while, and Will will have his colostomy bag).
They used that ticking clock sound effect to the best of its ability to build up to The Fight. I can't begin to think what Bedelia's game is, other than survival. . .and I don't really care, to be honest. I understood where Kade Purnell was coming from and why she did what she did. I hope the fandom doesn't blame her, because as much as she did pull the plug on Will and Jack's secret mission, leading to the ensuing bloodbath, she was still going to follow up on the covert investigation. She obviously couldn't predict that Jack would attack Hannibal, too. So I hope we get more of her in Season 3. If Jack is bedridden, I can see Kade stepping in as acting head of the BAU. . .maybe.
AND THE PARALLELS! I'm a sucker for parallels and callbacks--just like I am for foreshadowing. Freddie being painted in red in Hannibal's mind palace because she was wearing red when they first officially met. Will's phone call to Hannibal mirrored Hannibal calling Hobbs. (For what it's worth, I think Will's call was in service to BOTH Jack and Hannibal. He wanted to protect Jack in the hope Hannibal would flee, while also maintaining his all-or-nothing relationship with Hannibal.) Abigail's hallucination that Hannibal was her father and Alana was her mother in 1x04; and then Alana is left on Hannibal's doorstep like Abigail's mother and Hannibal--the surrogate father--finishes the job Abigail's real father started.
Which brings me to Abigail. Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. I'd already prepped myself that she was still alive and still I had to take a walk during the commercial break following her arrival and mutter, "GOD DAMN IT, SHOW!" to myself. However--and this going to sound horrible--by the end I was okay with her return because they finally finished her off for good (I hope). Yes, I completely understand that it sucks she was brought back just to kill her 10 minutes later. But that image of Will trying to save her again, under nearly the same circumstances as the first time, and not being able to was beautifully done and haunting and I got what Fuller was doing. (Not that it erases that another female death is being used to further man pain.)
So, yeah, as far as finales go, it was pretty satisfying. And, if you care for any of the characters that Hannibal left dying at his house, then you want him to PAIN and SUFFER. And if you care more about Hannibal, then you also get the heartbreak that he just broke-up with all his "friends" and must walk alone for all of eternity.
Overall, the season started out strong and I infinitely enjoyed 2x01 - 2x07 much more than the arc of 2x08 - 2x11. In looking at the season as a whole entity, I can see that there was a strong connective thread in all the episodes: Will regaining his mental state; but also the effect Hannibal had on Will through their Season 1 relationship how that changed Will (and Hannibal, too). The quality of the story dipped and I feel like the writers lost themselves in the planning of this season. Part of this comes from daring to break the "normal" storyboard mold; but a lot of it is my own personal dissatisfaction at how much time was spent on the Will luring Hannibal plot.
Generally speaking, we like our stories to have a steady build-up, where the climax happens near the end and we get a few loose ends tied up in a nice pretty bow. Season 1 followed this path. Cleo, in her Season 1 finale post, calls it the final chapter of Book One, where everything comes full circle and we see the building blocks and how we got there. Season 2, eh, not so much. In a "normal" series, we would've built up to Will proving his innocence and his vindication would've been the season finale. Here, it happened in 2x07, and following all the craziness of 2x07, the action slowed down considerably until 2x12.
I'm going to go slightly off-track for a sec: Homeland in its second season had a similar plotting, where something that--in a "normal" series--would've happened as a season finale happened in the fourth episode. Like in Hannibal, the action slowed down following this revelation as pieces were being moved in the second act that lead us to the third act. By the last two episodes, things sped up again. (Here's a tie-in to Hannibal: The star of Homeland is Claire Danes, who is married to Hugh Dancy.)
Both shows, because they "broke" the typical stream of things building on each other up to a single climax, suffered a bit from an uneven plot. And while both had explosive finales, it doesn't make up for the middle, sluggish parts that came because the seasons were rebooted part way through. Contrast them to a show like Orphan Black which lives on reveal after reveal and twist after twist, and still manages to keep the tension building because there seems to be a farther reaching goal at the end of the winding tunnel. Hannibal this year felt like two seasons smashed together. While I can see a connective thread, there remains a giant fissure between the story being told in Episodes 1 to 7 and Episodes 8 to 13 that I cannot reconcile.
On a personal level, I disliked the slow con game Will was running because, in order for it work to its full effect, I had to believe up until 2x11 that Will was turning into a cold-blooded killer. However, I knew (thanks to Bryan Fuller's big mouth) that Hannibal was going on the run at the end of the season. Therefore, I knew Will was running a con on Hannibal. And because I sniffed out the con game ahead of schedule, Will luring Hannibal became tedious. Especially since it felt like Will and Hannibal were having the same conversation over and over and over again. No doubt there will be a payoff because through this con game Will understands Hannibal better and will use that knowledge to nab him once and for all. So the con game was necessary; I only wish they hadn't focused so much energy on it. Again: probably because the writers broke a story mold we're used to, where the hero through his efforts catches the villain in the end.
Throw in the mistreatment of all the female characters, the revolving door of deaths and not!deaths, and inconsistencies of plot threads and characters disappearing or not being mentioned again (seriously, where the hell did Miriam go?) (and why the hell did Will never bring up Beverly when he listed all the people Hannibal took away from him?), this season was riddled with problematic choices that didn't seem to plague the show a season ago. Fuller has admitted that they didn't have as much time to plot out Season 2 and worked on a more flexible storyline, which may explain the dropped characters and inconsistent plot threads. My one hope, though, is that they continue to flesh out their side characters--particularly the women--and give them stuff to do. (I'm all for Alana taking over the role her male counterpart has in the books and become the main psychological consultant for the BAU.)
I remain optimistic about the show in general, because in the end, I didn't really hate a single episode. But the show has room for improvements, and I hope Season 3, with a seemingly new structure taking place, delivers.
Finally: Apart from the actual GIF sets and posts from the finale itself, I have enjoyed the reaction posts all over Tumblr. My favorites are this one and this one. We're all coping in our own ways.
Onto some Season 3 speculation:
Note: Because of Bryan "Blabber-Mouth" Fuller's tendency to give too much away (see "Hannibal on the Run" for Season 3), some of my independent speculations have already been confirmed. I'll be marking those as such. Whether they actually come to fruition, remains to be seen. (Like how we were promised Hannibal's uncle this season; and that never came to pass.)
--The season will pick up a couple months after the events of the finale. That gives whoever survived the bloodbath a little time to heal and Hannibal and Bedelia to settle wherever they decide to settle. Paris, I think, is where they end up.
--In order to sustain a 13-episode arc of "Hannibal on the run", the season will contain some Hannibal-heavy episodes and some Will/FBI-heavy episodes. I've expressed before my trepidation about having 13 episodes of Hannibal evading Will, considering we just got done with a storyline about Will attempting to catch Hannibal. I think having Will and Hannibal separated could really revitalize the show and add a new dynamic. It would also give the side characters (Jack, Alana, Freddie--who's going to have a field day whipping up the media frenzy on Hannibal the Cannibal--Jimmy and Zeller, Molly, and anyone else they introduce) more screen time and the opportunity to develop outside the Will/Hannibal dynamic and actually do stuff.
(Note: Fuller pretty much already confirmed this in his IGN interview.)
Another Homeland connection: Homeland did the same thing last season. One of the two leads all but disappeared during the first and second parts of the season, and only showed up at the end. I doubt Hannibal will go to this extreme; but with Homeland, it worked extremely well, because it was pretty obvious that one of the leads had less of a story to tell over the other lead.
Also: this preps us for Season 4 (!) because, in order to develop Dolarhyde properly, they're hopefully going to devote some episodes to him and his backstory. I just want justice done for the Red Dragon storyline, because the previous two adaptations have mucked it up considerably*.
*Although Fuller said something in an interview regarding Dolarhyde that raised my heckles and have made me a touch wary for Season 4.
--It's extremely possible that Will and Hannibal will "see" each other in their respective mind palaces. (I can't wait to see Hannibal wearing wading boots with his plaid suits.) I KNOW a lot of people tune into the show for the Will and Hannibal relationship; so the writers are going to have to somehow make them be on-screen together when they're a country apart. Hannibal brought up "mind palaces" in the finale, which I think was foreshadowing how important the mind palaces are going to be next year. As much as Will hates Hannibal, I think he'll use his knowledge of Hannibal to imagine what Hannibal would say/do in order to catch the Killer of the Week and track Hannibal down.
--In terms of the pacing, I think the first 10 episodes will have Hannibal and Will pretty much separated, with Hannibal living it up in Europe, and Will hunting Hannibal and learning Hannibal's backstory. In reality, I can only see Hannibal's trial lasting one episode--two, at most; so that would either be Episode 12 and/or Episode 13. I can't see Season 3's finale being as explosive as this year's finale. In fact, I see it as a mirror to Season 1's finale (more on that below).
--Fuller's mentioned bringing back the Vergers for Season 3, so I imagine they'll be using the Verger storyline from Hannibal, the novel, to flesh out the season. Without giving too many spoilers, I suspect that the climax of that storyline will be Episode 11. . .or, for the shock value, I could see it ending the season. Possibly we may also get the Inspector Pazzi storyline, too, or something similar to give Hannibal someone to mess with while he's abroad.
--Since Molly is being introduced next season, I think she's going to play a factor in Hannibal coming back to the states. We just witnessed Hannibal try to punish Will by killing everyone he cares about. If he hears that Will's moving on with someone new, it may be temptation enough for Hannibal to come back and screw with Will.
My crack!theory is that at Will and Molly's wedding just as the priest says "if there's anyone who has reason as to wed, let them speak now. . .blah, blah, blah," and Hannibal shows up all "Will is MY Murder Husband" and then the FBI tackles him and arrests him. (It's not going to happen, but let me have my daydream.)
--We'll get a Dolarhyde sighting probably during Hannibal's trial. It's probably not going to be a *thunderclap* close-up (god I hope not). Rather a subtle nod to the book fans. Fuller has incorporated Dolarhyde/Red Dragon nods throughout the two seasons: The Marlowes were Dolarhyde's first murder, the Avid Fan, the idea of "Becoming" something other than a lowly human--to be fair, "transformation" is current that runs through all of Thomas Harris's books. So I feel strongly that we may be meeting Dolarhyde sooner than we expect.
(Note: I swear I came to this conclusion a couple weeks ago, before Fuller dropped the Dolarhyde bomb in his TV Guide interview.)
(Also: I'm getting more and more nervous of Season 3 in general because they are mixing and matching so much of the books together. It's like Fuller realized that 13 episodes of Hannibal in Europe wouldn't be sustainable. Which is why--though I can't feasibly see how--they could've mashed Season 2 and 3 into one season and make Red Dragon Season 3.)
--I'm praying that the final scene of Season 3 is Will visiting Hannibal, after his incarceration in Chilton's ward, one last time to bookend the ending scene of Season 1. I hope Will's final lines are "Goodbye, Dr. Lecter" and then he walks away from Hannibal, who will probably be smug in his tiny cell and like, "Oh, you'll be back. We have too much fun together." and then Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane explodes into a million pieces. (Let me have this daydream, too, damn it!)
*whew* We have a long 9 months ahead of us. Welcome to the He-Ate-Us, Rhoda!