Hannibal Season 3, Episode 13
"The Wrath of the Lamb"
Original airdate: August 29, 2015
Writers: Bryan Fuller, Steve Lightfoot, Nick Antosca
Director: Michael Rymer
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Richard Armitage, Laurence Fishburne, Gillian Anderson, Caroline Dhavernas
Hannibal does not end.
It stops, that's true. In the summer of 2015, despite glowing reviews and a loyal fan following, the series' third season simply did not drum up enough ratings to allow it to continue, which meant that "The Wrath of the Lamb" would serve as a series finale even if there was more story to tell. But it doesn't end, not really, and I don't just mean in terms of narrative resolution. Throughout 39 episodes across three seasons, this show grew from an artful procedural to a Gothic soap opera to a slowly unfurling tragedy, until these final hours transformed it yet again into a metaphysical battle for the souls of its characters. Through that entire evolution, the show made it very clear that its version of Hannibal Lecter is not just an infamous cannibal killer, but an intellectual and physical force unequaled in its dark world. Hannibal just might be The Devil himself.
And The Devil, since the beginning of time, has endured.
So, what do we take from this non-ending, this attempt at resolving one story while leaving others open to the possibility that The Devil has yet more errands in this mortal realm? What does "The Wrath of the Lamb" give us by way of, if not an ending, then at least a final glimpse at a world that's about to drift away from our grasp?
The story is, for such a narratively dense series, surprisingly straightforward. It opens where the last episode ended, with Francis Dolarhyde finally revealing himself as The Dragon to a confused and terrified Reba. Through an elaborate ritual in which he tests how much he can "trust" her, using his house key around his neck as a tactile signifier that he's nearby, he sets fire to the house and then, as far as Reba knows, blows his head off with a shotgun because he can't bear to watch her burn. Reba, resourceful woman that she is, finds the house key around the neck of a now-headless body, gets to safety, and eventually lands in a hospital bed, face-to-face with Will Graham.
"I drew a freak," she tells him.
"You didn't draw a freak," Will replies. "You drew a man with a freak on his back."
Will is not in any fit state to offer comfort to anyone, but he at least tries to reassure Reba that there's nothing wrong with her, even as he contemplates his own next move. Like Reba, he has loved a monster, and like Reba, he has escaped that monster. But the key to understanding Will Graham has always been that he's never entirely sure if he's simply drawing the freaks or if he is one, if there's a freak on his back waiting to creep forward. Soon, he gets his chance to find out for good and all.
The charred corpse from Dolarhyde's house turns out, surprise, to be a random guy Dolarhyde abducted, killed, and then mutilated with a shotgun simply so he could throw Reba and everyone else off his scent, if only for a little while. The real Dolarhyde is still out there, and he's even taken time to catch and release Will with the promise that Will will help him to complete his Becoming by "changing" Hannibal. So, Will approaches a desperate Jack with a simple proposition: They use Hannibal, Dolarhyde's hero and ultimate prey, as bait to capture or kill the Great Red Dragon.
It's a ludicrous idea, but it serves as a reminder that for all of Hannibal's devilish tendencies, Jack Crawford's also got a little bit of the Prince of Hell in him. The old puppet master, the Fisher of Men, sees an opportunity to wipe the board clean, and as he shares a drink with Alana and Will, he makes his own goals clear. They'll fake Hannibal's escape, put him in a spot where FBI sharpshooters can watch from all sides, and kill two monsters for the price of one.
The trouble with this plan, of course, is twofold. One issue is that we've seen each of these killers escape similarly planned snares before, including the bloodbath at the end of Season 2 which almost killed Alana, Jack, and Will. The other is that Hannibal has to agree to it, and he wants Will to ask him in person.
This is a problem because, for all his internal struggles over what Hannibal truly means to him, Will has already said yet another abrupt goodbye to Dr. Lecter. Now he has to re-emerge hat in hand, even flirtatious, and quite literally say "please" to get Hannibal to agree to the plan. Hannibal does, and because he's Hannibal, he then immediately turns around and warns Alana that all the time she's had since the end of Season 2 is "borrowed." He meant to kill her before, and he will finish the job if things go sideways and he gets the chance. At the same time, Will goes and extends the same warning to Bedelia, intimating that it's not his plan to lock Hannibal up again, and taunting her with the idea that "meat's back on the menu." As Will points out earlier in their conversation, "extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy." He knows exactly what he's doing. The only question is how far he actually thinks this will go.
The faked escape gets underway, but they've barely left Baltimore before Dolarhyde comes racing up in a stolen police car, killing every cop and fed in the motorcade and leaving Will and Hannibal to crawl out of a wrecked prisoner transport van and find him. For a brief, wonderful moment, Hannibal and Will are free together again, and they even have someplace to go, someplace where they can escape from it all.
Hannibal, of course, has a secluded home by the ocean, looking out over cliffs which looming over the waves of the Atlantic. While Jack picks up the pieces from the botched operation and Alana takes her wife and child and absconds via helicopter, Will and Hannibal get comfortable, sharing a bottle of wine and waiting for the Dragon to pick his moment. It does not take long, and soon Hannibal is bleeding from a gut shot, facing the Dragon while Will looks on. This remarkable moment, as Dolarhyde sets up his camera to film Hannibal's final breaths, is the high-water mark of the Great Red Dragon. Before Will can make a move, Dolarhyde slips a knife into his torso, and Hannibal springs into action.
The fight spills out of the house and onto the stone patio outside, and as it does it's clear there is no more Francis Dolarhyde. The Great Red Dragon has achieved his final form, a behemoth so frenzied and relentless that even together Will and Hannibal have a hard time taking him down. It is an ecstatic clash of titans, the Red Dragon, the Devil, and Will, the Lamb, once a sacrifice now undergoing a glorious change, a resurrection that begins the moment he slips a knife into Dolarhyde's belly and guts him, ending the fight.
And so it ends, with the Dragon's blood spilling out beneath his body like wings. Will Graham has finally killed someone in the way Hannibal wanted him to kill someone, without mercy or conscience, intimately, viciously. For years these two have danced around each other, and the great tension of the show has always been just how close that dance might get. Here, the Lamb has become a Lion, Will Graham will never be the same, and the curtain of ambiguity has fallen.
"This is all I ever wanted for you, Will," Hannibal says. "For both of us."
Here, on the precipice, as Siouxsie Sioux sings her song "Love Crime," crafted especially for the show, this pair embraces over the roiling Atlantic. They have at last consummated their love, whatever that means for the two of them, and it's such a potent moment that when Will takes Hannibal in his arms and leans out toward the edge of the cliff, Hannibal does not fight him. They tumble down, lost in the waves, an almost literal cliffhanger.
Or is it? Hannibal does not end. There was and is room for more stories, more cases, more Murder Husbands. We do not see the corpses of these two men, finally in each others' arms. We do not witness anything final. What we do witness, as one last farewell from the series, is Bedelia, at her dining room table, her own leg roasted and splendidly presented, ready to make herself an inevitable meal. Even if Hannibal is dead, and Will dead with him, it is not so easy to kill The Devil. He will haunt, he will stalk, a dark Stag in the forest, perhaps quiet but never entirely gone.
But wherever he is, for the first time in a very long time, Hannibal Lecter is, at long last, not alone.
Thank you to everyone who came on this journey with me. Hannibal has been an obsession of mine for more than a decade, and in writing all 39 of these recaps I gained not just a deeper appreciation for its gifts, but a new grasp of why I love it so much. I hope you had fun. I know I did. Cheers.
