Hannibal Season 2, Episode 2
"Hassun"
Original airdate: March 14, 2014
Writers: Jason Grote, Steve Lightfoot
Director: Peter Medak
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Cynthia Nixon
We've spent a lot of time in these recaps so far talking about the romantic layers of Hannibal, the sense of seduction and repression hanging in the air over Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter's often fraught relationship. Theirs is not a simple love story, nor is it always an obvious one, but Season 2 has certainly brought much of it into sharper focus.
For two episodes now, we've watched Will through prison bars as he bides his time, works to recover his memories, and plots his own gambits to save himself even as his murder trial looms. It's a vital piece of the story for many reasons, not least of which is its utility as a focusing tool for the rest of the story. Even when Will's not in the room, he looms over the story, and now, with his trial finally here, we get to learn how everyone close to him really feels, and the love story hits another gear.
One of the first things "Hassun" shows us is a montage of Will and Hannibal getting dressed, each putting on their courtroom suits under very different circumstances. Will's having visions of himself flipping the switch on an electric chair, carrying out his own execution, while Hannibal's got…other plans.
In the courtroom, prosecutor Marian Vega (Maria del Mar) lays out her case against Will in an opening argument, and it's the same story we heard at the end of Season 1. Will's empathy allowed him to get into the heads of killers, but once he entered the mind of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, he couldn't find his way out. So he murdered four people, using his FBI ties as cover for his crimes. Will is, according to Vega, "the smartest person in this room," which draws a wonderful smirk from Hannibal, but she believes he's finally going down, not just because she has physical evidence, but because she has expert witnesses.
The first witness? Jack Crawford, who's been privately wrestling with his own doubts about Will's culpability, particularly now that Will's helping him with cases from his jail cell. Before his testimony, talking with Inspector General investigator Kade Prurnell (Cynthia Nixon) outside the courtroom, Jack tries to work through his internal conflicts. Prurnell's advice is simple: "If you can't represent your own beliefs, represent the bureau's."
When Jack takes the stand, Vega presses him with her own version of Will's story, claiming he loved the power of his position as an FBI profiler, and his vulnerability was merely a smokescreen to hide that pleasure. Jack, already roiling with doubt, pounces.
"Will hated every second of the work," he says. "He hated it and I kept making him do it."
While Jack doesn't exactly say Will is innocent, he does fall on the grenade that is the whole case and its impact on the bureau as a whole. If Will did murder four people, it's because Jack pushed an already unstable man into increasingly dangerous positions, not because Will is an intelligent psychopath who outsmarted everyone. Prurnell, infuriated, storms off. Vega's caught flat-footed. Meanwhile, Will's lawyer, Leonard Brauer (Shawn Doyle), knows a gift when he sees one, and prepares to press his advantage. As the courtroom clears, Brauer revels in this new opening for his case. Then he gets another gift, courtesy of a courier envelope: Another severed human ear, and this one looks fresh. His response to Will — "I think I opened your mail" — is the perfect piece of macabre humor to set up the rest of the episode.
But before we can dig deeply into what this new severed human body part means, we return to Jack, having a brandy with Hannibal after the first day of the trial. Both men are well aware that Jack may have just committed professional suicide, falling on his sword in very public fashion. Though he's not using this moment to leave the bureau entirely, he's "content to let the chips fall," even if that means he's fired.
"I've given my life to death," Jack says, clearly not relishing a return to the office. His absent wife, Bella (Gina Torres), is home in bed, dying of cancer, and Jack wonders if he should take her back to Italy, where they met years earlier, and where she could die in peace.
Hannibal, sensing a world where his chief FBI ally flies the coop, pushes back on this, encouraging Jack to consider the bureau a place of refuge after his wife is gone. Instead of retreating into grief, he can throw himself into work, something Hannibal badly needs if he's going to keep up appearances in an increasingly precarious situation. Later, in a meeting with Will, Hannibal continues to press the new narrative upon which he's apparently settled, telling Will that a tribute killer has emerged with this severed ear because "he cares what happens to you."
Which brings us back to the matter of the ear. It's relatively fresh, which means that Will couldn't have cut it off in one of his previous alleged murders. It was, however, done with Will's own knife, which was supposed to be in evidence at the courthouse ... until a bailiff checked it out of the locker and, apparently, took it home. At the home of the bailiff, Jack and his team are greeted by an incendiary device that crisps the whole place, and when the smoke clears they find a body. It's impaled on antlers, burned, mutilated at the jaw and missing an ear, an amalgam of all of Will's previous suspect crimes.
After a brief trip back to the courtroom in which Dr. Frederick Chilton glories in his time on the witness stand spotlight, Hannibal stops by to see Will again, armed with crime scene photos and reports from the bailiff's home. Will takes the bait, goes deep into his mind, and comes back with a concerning conclusion. The bailiff died from a single gunshot wound to the chest, which means all of the mutilation happened postmortem, something that wasn't true of the previous crimes. It's not an exact copy of the methodology, which means there's a chance it's not the same killer. Will instantly realizes this, then realizes that Hannibal already knew it too, and was hoping that somehow Will's mind wouldn't pick up on the discrepancy.
Though Will calls the murder a "poem" and a "tribute" to the previous murders, he believes it's not the same person. Hannibal was hoping he wouldn't draw that conclusion, because his narrative is already set: Will can use this murder as a new defense, landing either a mistrial or a not guilty verdict and, potentially, pave the way for his own freedom. Will knows it would be a lie, but Hannibal offers a striking question: "This killer wrote you a poem. Are you really going to let his love go to waste?" Like I said, this is a very romantic episode.
Brauer is, of course, ecstatic about this new defense, while Alana is convinced it's a gambit that won't work. Will's previous defense, that he was unconscious of all of his actions and therefore not guilty by reason of insanity, will go up in smoke, leaving him with nothing if the judge and the jury don't buy it. Will forges ahead anyway, perhaps because he thinks it'll help him catch Hannibal, perhaps because it'll simply give him a chance at freedom. And now, in place of Alana, Hannibal will take the stand to testify on Will's behalf.
In the episode's climactic moment, Hannibal takes the stand as Will sees him in stag form, darkness hovering over an act of supposed love. It's one of the show's most striking images, not least because, even now, even as Will tries every last gambit to get the upper hand, he can't help but be in a certain kind of awe over Hannibal, just like everyone else. Hannibal's seduction continues even as his brutality looms in Will's mind. In his testimony, Hannibal follows the defense strategy he himself offered to Will, claiming that another killer is responsible and shrugging off Will's accusations with a very Star Trek sentiment: "Will Graham is, and will always be, my friend."
But despite Hannibal's earnestness and silky smooth demeanor, Vega sees right through it, pointing out the discrepancies in the bailiff's murder until the judge rules the defense inadmissible, tanking Will's chances of using another killer to free himself. The next morning, a janitor finds the judge's corpse, strung up over his bench in the courtroom, suspended by chains to look like blind justice, his brain scooped out of his head. A mistrial is now automatic, and while that doesn't mean Will's going to walk free, it does mean his fate is at the very least postponed by this escalation from a killer who, quite clearly, loves him. Back in his cell, Will is once again stalked by the Stag.
The new development is bad news for everyone else, of course, particularly Jack, who now has to hunt another killer even as Will's case is tied up in more legal red tape. It's also quite rough on Alana, who visits Will as the episode winds down to try and offer some comfort. Will predicts that the new killer, whoever he is, "wants to know me," then asks Alana – who was prepared to deny any romantic feelings for Will on the stand – what she wants.
"I want to save you," she says, and the two clasp hands as the credits roll.
Love, of all kinds, is in the air throughout "Hassun," whether it's Jack lovingly planning out his wife's final weeks on Earth, Alana fighting to save Will, or Hannibal ripping the brain out of a judge for the sake of Will's freedom. The stakes of the season have revealed themselves. Everyone is engaged in a battle for Will's soul, while Will himself is in a fight for agency, for truth, for some semblance of justice. Each of these people have given their lives to death in one way or another, and now they're all trying to keep death from swallowing them whole.
Next Time: "Takiawase"
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