This week, the actors seemed, in general, more settled into their roles. We learn that Freddie Lounds is now with an ie and is a female. We also learn that the FBI scenes are not nearly as impregnable as previously presumed, which lends some credence to my husband’s theory that perhaps the Shrike copycat killer was not, in fact, Hannibal as the editing would certainly imply but may be a true copycat.
Though, even if it wasn’t Hannibal himself, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a patient. And, I do wonder what happened to Hannibal’s administrative assistant. Who told Freddie Lounds about when Will’s appointment was, indeed?
Because I was pointed at Reddit earlier in the week, I’d had seen the fungus bodies, though a flash of the bodies was already part of the preview, this just gave me a better look. My favorite serial killer stories are those where if you tilt your head, you can see how they got there. This murderer wanted the spores, the threads of the mind, to be able connect and communicate, perhaps even beyond death. It wasn’t stated, but I had a moment of drifting off thinking of fungus as transmitter of thought and experience, spores that spread. In that respect, it was quite beautiful and even poetic.
In another respect, I remembered confirming my address for my pharmacist this morning and tried to remember if she had dirt under her nails.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Hannibal without food porn. After Freddie Lounds is exposed by Hannibal, he tells her that she has been very rude, which in movies, seems to be the only provocation Hannibal needs for murder. But this is again where I think of Hopkins v Mikkelson. Hopkins Hannibal is already exposed. There is less need for subtlety unless he’s in hiding.
Mikkelson’s Hannibal has everything to lose, so perhaps killing the reporter isn’t the priority. And, perhaps, her article about Will is something he can use for his seductive dance with Will.
Because there is a seductive dance. Hannibal is clearly interested in Will, though whether he intends to eat him or try and draw him close for another purpose, we do not know. As of this episode, that dance seems to be going as planned. In episode 1, Will winds up at the exact right construction site where he could find Hobbs. Hannibal smiles.
Hannibal knows exactly what to do to set the man off, though why he does this, we do not know yet. It seems to be part of this dance. And in the end, with Will struggling with his humanity, grieving that he felt good about killing Hobbs, like he’d settled the issue with finality in spite of the orphan in the aftermath, Hannibal presses on. Because God kills. Must enjoy killing as he does it so much. And if we are in His image, then perhaps this is how we are meant to be.
But are we better than that? Should we be?
Those are the bigger questions, not resolved this week. Next week promises the return of Hobbs’s daughter, which should throw an interesting quandary in the mix: was she complicit in her father’s cannibalism? What does this mean for her?
You know my feelings on the episode, and you’ve recounted a good many of them here. The scene toward the end where the killer is bleeding and telling Will “but you understand me”… He does speak of the beauty of the garden and it reinforces what the show gave us to work with visually. I like that the show doesn’t shy away from taking things to their natural conclusion and pushing the viewer to make context and sense for their own data… And also doesn’t shy from giving us the killer’s perspective at the end. There’s a lot of subtlety and liberty in the way the show presents its scenes. Much is left to interpretation, and the resolutions seem to spark more questions, which is just the way I like it.
Yeah, that point where the killer said that about the spores is what started me pondering the visuals of it, the immortality implied as they all connect. It’s the sort of concept I usually see in religion, where you die and go back to the big consciousness, this is more of a… tangible expression.