By: Brandon Wolfe
The degree to which the Vergers have taken over ‘Hannibal’ so quickly is a bit strange. The characters, who have a rightful place in the Hannibal Lecter mythos, are interesting ones to add into the mix, especially since they were late additions to Thomas Harris’ written universe and we are still at a point before even the events of ‘Red Dragon’ have occurred. Katharine Isabelle and Michael Pitt are doing fine work as the twisted siblings, and Pitt in particular adds a manic, animated note to the show that definitely stands out among the solemnity of the rest of the cast.
But it feels like too much, too fast. Maybe if the characters had lingered in the background longer this season, their sudden ascension wouldn’t have felt so jarring. But we only officially met Mason last week and he’s already in therapy sessions with Hannibal (as all psychos on this show inevitably are). What’s more, Margot is already pregnant with Will’s love child, a real “say what now?” development if there ever was one. However, lest we think the show will add a precocious baby to the cast next season, Margot’s impending child is forcibly taken from her, as well as the ability to have future children, by Mason, who aims to prevent any male heir from inheriting his fortune, while continuing the sick dominance he’s exerted over his sister for her entire life. We only met Mason essentially five minutes ago, but he has quickly emerged as the show’s latest non-Hannibal Big Bad. His penchant for making children cry so he can steal and drink their tears helps to get him there even faster.
But there is still Hannibal himself to deal with, and it seems the tide is turning for him this week. Alana Bloom, for one, is starting to come around to the idea that Will + Hannibal = trouble, no longer turning a blind eye to the idea that her refined lover is mixed up in all this death somehow. Getting no assurances from Will, who seems to go out of his way to come off deliberately creepy and suspicious in his interactions with others these days, Alana goes to Jack Crawford to tell him that she simply does not buy that a trained FBI man like him could keep his head in the sand on the fact that something dark is at play in this mentor-protégé relationship.
And that’s when “Ko No Mono” pulls out the requisite ‘Hannibal’ mindbender of the week, as Jack takes Alana to a back room in his office where he presents her with a very alive Freddie Lounds. Lounds’ death was confirmed by the forensics team at the start of the episode, and we were made to believe that all sorts of terrible things had been done to her remains, including being eaten (by Will and Hannibal), set ablaze in a careening wheelchair in a parking garage (the character’s fate in ‘Red Dragon’), then buried and later dug up and desecrated as a multi-armed shrine. But it seems none of that happened at all, leaving us with many questions, such as whose remains those were, but also, much more pressing, just what sort of game is Jack Crawford playing?
The notion that Jack is running an elaborate, insane sting is fascinating. It means he’s onto Hannibal after all, that he’s not above using Will in a very dangerous way, that he’s willing to falsify dental records to incorrectly identify corpses, and that he isn’t the straight-arrow that he’s always largely seemed to be. ‘Hannibal’ has seemed to leave Laurence Fishburne in the lurch lately, content to have him make appearances at crime scenes and seem almost frustratingly obtuse about things that should be pinging his radar. While this development rewrites Jack Crawford as a very different character than we’ve known to this point, it puts him back in the game in a major way, and seems fitting, since ‘Hannibal’ has established itself as a show where characters need to transform themselves into darker incarnations to affect anything in this world.
This is certainly the case with Will, whom we now know (and, honestly, have always suspected) isn’t in the thrall of Hannibal Lecter as much as it seemed, but is still putting a lot of his already fragile mental health on the line to bring his enemy down. The therapy sessions between he and Hannibal are growing a bit draggy, always leaning heavily on loaded discussions of death and its transformative nature in a way that’s starting to feel repetitive, but the question remains of how much Hannibal’s influence is genuinely corrupting Will. Is he merely playing a role or is he allowing Hannibal to shape him into a monster after all? In Will’s climactic confrontation with Mason this week, he puts a gun to the man’s head, yet instead of pulling the trigger, he decides to use Mason as a weapon himself, pointing him toward Hannibal Lecter much the same way he directed the psychotic sanitarium attendant toward Hannibal earlier in the season. It’s clear in this instance that Will has his own agenda, independent of those that Hannibal and Jack are forcing upon him. Watching these competing agendas vie for dominance should prove fascinating in the season’s final two episodes.
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