Hannibal Season 3, Episode 12
"The Number of the Beast is 666"
Original airdate: August 22, 2015
Writers: Jeff Vlaming, Angela Lamanna, Steve Lightfoot, Bryan Fuller
Director: Guillermo Navarro
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Richard Armitage, Laurence Fishburne, Raul Esparza
We've reached the penultimate episode, and watching "The Number of the Beast is 666," I was struck by a sense of something missing. Not incompleteness, exactly, because the show is hitting all the right notes, but a feeling that something is picking up speed, perhaps too much speed. Season 3 set itself with more tasks than any other season, sacrificing a single seasonlong arc in favor of several smaller ones, complete with time jumps. Now, the story of the Dragon is rushing toward its end, and whether I'm just feeling melancholic about the ending or we're just witnessing storytellers trying to pack as much story in as possible, "rushed" is the word that most comes to mind when I think about this episode.