By: Brandon Wolfe
The one inevitability of Hannibal Lecter’s mythology is that he winds up incarcerated. It is how the character is thought of in popular culture, taunting and assessing from behind a barrier. In the season premiere, when we are shown that future tease of Jack Crawford engaging Hannibal in that brutal fight, we concluded that the jig was up. When we would finally arrive at that moment, the genie would be out of the bottle. There could be no going back to Hannibal the friend, Hannibal the consultant, Hannibal the psychiatrist. Regardless of how grim Jack’s situation seemed to look, this would be the moment where Hannibal Lecter ceased to be a free man.
And now, having seen the season finale, the show has made fools of us yet again. Hannibal Lecter will find his way into that jail cell one day, but that day is still ahead of him. And what he leaves in his wake is a bloodbath so grand and unimaginable that had the show not been renewed, it would have stood as one of the most ruthless final episodes ever filmed.
A tone of finality hangs over all of “Mizumono”. The episode begins with both Hannibal and Jack prepping Will for his role in their predestined encounter, both under the impression that he is on their side and him assuring both that he does. That leads to a series of portentous conversations between Will and Hannibal, as well as several scenes of all three men putting their affairs in order, very aware that what is coming might be the end for each of them. Jack quietly says goodbye to his ailing wife, Hannibal burns all of his patient records and Will simply asks Freddie Lounds to leave Abigail Hobbs’ name out of whatever she ends up writing about this barnburner of a story.
That encounter with Lounds, her lingering scent attaching itself to Will as he walks in front of Hannibal’s impeccable nose, is where Will inadvertently tips his hand to where his allegiances lie. But while Hannibal figures out the true nature of the game, so does hard-nosed investigator Kade Prurnell (Cynthia Nixon), who decides that what Jack and Will are up to is entrapment, and that Will’s mutilation of Randal Tier’s body was a legal bridge too far. She orders Jack to hand over his badge and gun, as is customary with all maverick law enforcers. She also orders both men remanded into custody, but Will gets a heads up from Alana, and Jack isn’t about to miss his dinner date for anything.
The final act of “Mizumono” is a jaw-dropper that sees bloody question marks hanging over the fates of essentially all of our heroes. Jack, Alana and Will each make their ways over to Hannibal’s home and each wind up barely clinging to life. Jack receives a nasty stab to the neck. Alana is pushed out a window by Abigail Hobbs, the young girl whose fate was the engine that drove the first season and a portion of this one, whom we learn in a shocking reveal is still alive and under Hannibal’s wing, though with seeming reluctance. Then when Will shows up, Hannibal buries a knife deep into his stomach, says a few seemingly heartfelt words, then slashes Abigail’s throat on his way out the door. From there, he hops a plane to parts unknown, a smiling Bedelia du Maurier in the seat beside him, one last stunner to toss on the pile.
Thus begins a cruelly long wait for the next season, and with it, many questions of what that season will entail. It is a certainty that not all of the characters will succumb to their wounds, Will chief among them. But with Hannibal Lecter going abroad, what shape could the narrative take? This current season borrowed so much from ‘Hannibal’ the novel and film, which depicted Lecter living in Italy until he is discovered by ransom hunters, so perhaps the borrowing will continue. But honestly, this show defies armchair prediction. It makes a game out of zagging when you’re certain there’s going to be a zig. Best to just sit back and let it wash over you like one of the many pools of blood flowing across Hannibal’s floors.
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