Hannibal: Season 3, Episode 9 Recap

Antipasto at the start of season 3 gave us an indepth, grim insight into the demise of Dr. Gideon. And The Woman Clothed With The Sun seeked to do the same with another important character from the series’ past!

After three long years, Will Graham finally visited Hannibal Lecter once again, this time in his cell at the ‘Baltimore State Hospital’ for the criminally insane. A cell whose condition and environment is not that much different to any working office. Taking lines from both the novel and the previous movie incarnations, Will asked Lecter for his assistance in capturing the unnameable killer, ‘The Toothfairy’. But Hannibal attempted to start playing his mind games early, telling him that there are physical indications that he has now settled down with a family and that a stepson is possibly in the picture! Perhaps sensing danger, Will went to leave. But Hannibal rapidly asked for the crime file on Dolarhyde, a request that Graham was all too happy to grant.

The episode travelled back in time to the first season at this point, chronicling events that occurred after episode 12 in season 1. We all knew that Abigail was still alive after Hannibal gave no direct answer to her question when asked if he was going to kill her. We got to know what the two had been doing between then and up to the finale of season two. As it turned out, Hannibal brainwashed her into helping him fake her death, even going as far as letting him take blood from her, using it as an ingredient to form a crime scene, specifically her “death”. Abigail asking if she could “press the button” on the device that was going to be used to spurt the blood to simulate her throat being slashed was particularly unsettling.

Alana, meanwhile, seems to be enjoying her time thinking that she has control of Lecter. Knowing that he cannot resist playing with Will’s mind, she threatened to take away his dignity, even removing his toilet if need be! You could just sense in his expression that she is an itch that he cannot wait to scratch!

Revealing a little more about Franchis Dolarhyde’s past, his mother appears to have a lot to do with his current motivations. The camera slowly panned down to his back side, and in surreal fashion, symbolically revealed a dragon’s tail hanging down while watching film clips on his projector of his murderous crime.  Shifting to a film processing laboratory, its revealed that Dolarhyde works there. He met Reba, a black blind lady, but one who is extremely independent and optimistic about life. However, we get the feeling that she is yearning for a Mr. Right. Later on after work, Dolarhyde offered her a lift in his van. After hesitating slightly, she accepted and the two headed to her place. Making up most of the conversation, Reba liked the fact that he does not show sympathy toward her disability and asked him if she could touch his face to see if he was smiling after indicating that she quite liked the guy sitting in front of her, gobbling up a piece of cake she cut for him He stopped her advancing hand, stating that she can be assured that he was.

Lara Jean Chorostecki as Freddy Lounds made her first appearance in this episode since we last saw her in the season two finale. Will told her that he knew that she snapped a picture of him all laid up in the hospital bed recovering from the slicing he got from Hannibal. But she had some news, herself. Her work is now in paper form after ditching her method to distribute news online.  Will is non too happy to learn that she is using him once again for a cover story!

Back at the mental hospital, Hannibal is passed a phone from a warden, being told that its a call from his lawyer. But if Hannibal was shocked at who the voice was on the other end of the line then he did not show it. On the contrary, he seemed to get a lot of pleasure out of the fact that the one and only Francis Dolarhyde fancied giving him a call! Asking him what he thinks he is becoming, Richard Amitage’s Dolarhyde fired, “The Great Red Dragon!”

Season 3 may have had a long, slow start but its fair to say that its now peaking! As well as the season’s main thread, it will be interesting to see what will unfold between Alana and Hannibal. Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia Du Maurier returns shortly and how she will fit into all this is intriguing. But there is the hunch that her part will be linked more to Hannibal than Dolarhyde. Will’s nightmares are returning again after three years of peace and the odds are strong that he will find himself back in that same dark place he was all them years ago! The fact that he is already treading carefully is only delaying the inevitable. And the inevitable always takes place in the world of fiction!

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