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.
Which isn't to say it misses the mark, there's just a lot happening here. Francis Dolarhyde, with Hannibal's helpful commentary, is now completely invested in his "great becoming," determined to overcome his failure to annihilate the Graham family in the previous episode and complete his transformation into the Great Red Dragon. His emotions, his fury and sadness over having to leave the human world behind just as he was falling in love with Reba, make him vulnerable, so of course Jack, Alana, and Will are talking about setting another trap for him.
And who's going to spring that trap? Well, it's time to call in the big guns: Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) will write an inflammatory profile of the "Tooth Fairy" in TattleCrime, which they know he'll read, with our old pal Dr. Frederick Chilton (Raul Esparza, who still rules) as the quoted expert. To really make it inflammatory, Will is in the room for the interview, taking Chilton's words and editing them to make sure the Dragon reads that he's an impotent, animalistic, monstrous oaf. Then, to really get the Dragon's hackles up, Freddie takes a photo of Will and Frederick standing together, with key Washington D.C. landmarks in the background so the Dragon knows exactly where they are. The idea is to lay out the trap, then spring it as Will walks across the courtyard below the window. The Dragon is known to triangulate people's whereabouts based on photos, so hopefully he'll walk right into the firing line of the FBI snipers lying in wait.
But the Dragon is smarter than that, and before you know it, he's posed as Chilton's driver and whisked him away to his lair/house. After gluing his bare skin to a wheelchair (a dazzlingly stomach-churning visual effect in any piece of horror for me), Dolarhyde sets out to prove to Chilton that he's far from the simpleton he was made out to be in the pages of TattleCrime. He is something far greater, beyond human, and to prove it, he makes Chilton watch a slideshow presentation of each of his murders, because the Kodak Carousel is for more than just vacation pictures!
Chilton is, of course, absolutely terrified. He's managed to dodge extremely gruesome death twice so far this series, but now he's literally stuck. He tries to reason with the Dragon, tries to emphasize how eager he is to understand, to learn. He also emphasized his fear. As he sheds his kimono and bares his tattoo, the Dragon's response is simple:
"Fear is not what you owe me, Dr. Chilton. You owe me awe."
Even a brief interruption from Reba, who believes Dolardhyde is absent from work just because he has the flu (she brings him some soup) is not enough to save Dr. Chilton this time. With his false Dragon teeth, Dolarhyde bites off Chilton's lips, then lights him on fire and, in an echo of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, sends him rolling down into the fountain beneath the window where Chilton and Will took their photo. This is what the Dragon thinks of your petty trap.
But the Dragon is not the only one in the midst of a "becoming." Will is once again unmoored from the wider world, not by some neurological condition or light-hypnosis-induced fugue states, but by the loss of his anchor, his family. Molly and Walter are absent in this episode, in some undisclosed location, not just because the Dragon knows where the Graham family lives, but because every time Will sees his wife now, he sees what would have happened if she hadn't been strong enough to save herself and her child. He sees her dead, mirror shards in her eyes, a sacrifice to the Dragon's becoming. That means that, no matter how much he might like it another way, in Will's eyes she is already gone, and he's alone. Speaking privately with Jack, Hannibal compares Will to the Lamb of God, and quotes Revelation, warning of the "wrath of the Lamb." Will has sacrificed, and been sacrificed, and now it just might be his turn.
How do we know? Well, Will admits as much in a session with Bedelia, because his life wasn't fucked up enough already. In the photo he took with Chilton, Will made the crucial decision to put a hand on Frederick's shoulder, essentially signalling to the Dragon that he sees Chilton as inferior, as someone to be coddled. It may as well have been a neon sign highlighting Chilton as the Dragon's next victim, and while Will doesn't admit that he planned it, he does admit to Bedelia that he wasn't surprised by the outcome. In an echo of her earlier conversations with Hannibal, Bedelia dubs it "participation." Will is back on the path of the Stag, stalking in the dark.
He's also, perhaps for the first time, contemplating the biggest question of all, the question that hangs over the whole series: "Is Hannibal in love with me?"
Bedelia, who in her own way is still beguiled by Hannibal (she believes that she will stay alive until he's able to eat her, which since he's in prison isn't likely to be soon), stops short of saying a simple "Yes," but she does offer that Hannibal hungers for Will, that the sight of him is "nourishment." It's something Will has felt for a long time, but it's harder and harder to push away now, particularly when he realizes the feeling might be mutual. The Murder Husbands grow closer to a reconciliation.
Somehow, despite all of this, Chilton is still alive, a charred husk of a man sitting in a pool of antibacterial fluid in a hospital, lipless and close to death, but still not gone. Dolarhyde forced him to make a camcorder video before he was set ablaze, blaming Will Graham for what's about to happen, and in the hospital, with a mouth that barely works anymore, he declares that Will set him up. As for the lips, he mailed those to Hannibal, who slid one down his throat before handing the other one over to Alana and Jack for analysis. Hannibal is, of course, having a dandy time. He got some human flesh for the first time in years and Frederick Chilton is suffering? Even without a toilet in his cell, it's a great day to be Hannibal Lecter. There are so many recurring motifs in the show that come across as darkly comic, but the delight Hannibal – and by extension, the viewer – takes in watching the forever disingenuous, opportunistic Chilton suffer is arguably the best.
With Chilton out of the way, and Will Graham effectively on notice as the Dragon's next target, Dolarhyde makes plans for his final transformation. He takes Reba from her home, binds her, and brings her back to his lair. She is, in her way, quite intoxicated by his passion, but then she realizes that passion is misplaced. He's brought her back to show her, with words rather than images, what he's becoming. He confesses his crimes (though he stops short of calling the murders because, of course, he "changed" these people rather than killed them) and reveals himself to the only person he truly loves as The Great Red Dragon.
There is no going back from here. The Dragon is out for the world to see, even if Will and Hannibal don't yet know his name. Will's security blanket is gone, his flirtation with Hannibal's darkness resumed. And in the center of it all, Hannibal Lecter waits in a glass box, longing for the moment when he will be free again. And he will be free again.
Next Time: "The Wrath of the Lamb"
