Today I’m starting out on something I’ve been planning to do a while, a stem-to-stern rewatch of Bryan Fuller’s masterpiece Hannibal. April 2023 marked the 10th anniversary of this beautiful and shocking work. We haven’t seen anything like it on network TV before or since, and I doubt we ever will. It’s the finest horror TV show of all time, and once it gets past the studio demand of a serial killer of the week format, it rivals the finest TV shows of all time, genre aside. So here goes!

Writer: Bryan Fuller
Director: David Slade
“What would David Lynch do with a Hannibal Lecter character?” That’s how creator Bryan Fuller described how he approached the material, and I don’t think he quite nailed that. The director that comes more clearly to mind for me is David Fincher, and David Slade, who established the look of the show and helmed many of its most important episodes, references the deep cinematic darkness of Se7en (look at the photo above and tell me that wouldn’t fit in that movie) while doing far more than just imitation. The beauty in extreme violence is evident at the very beginning.

It’s a shame I can’t go into this show with fresh eyes. I grew up with Silence of the Lambs, read all of Thomas Harris’ work, and I realized I didn’t want to work on a film set for a career while interning in the Locations Department of the movie Hannibal (nothing against the crew, set work just ain’t for me). So I was skeptical when I heard this show was coming. I recorded the pilot, watched it at my leisure, and was pleasantly surprised. Then over the next few weeks, it became an obsession. Looking back it’s one of the best TV pilots of all time. It arrived fully formed since unlike most TV, it was not shot as a one-off episode. The show was ordered directly to series, based on the strength of Fuller’s script which honored the source material while adding it to it and fleshing out the minutiae in brilliant ways. It would go on to expand its cinematic tone, veering off into surrealism and avant garde romance, but right out of the gates the show was obviously something special.

But on to the actual pilot episode. We kick off similar to Manhunter/Red Dragon, which Will analyzing a crime scene. The neat trick Hannibal brings to the table is pulled from a short bit in the novel Red Dragon of a pendulum swinging as Will centers himself and enters the mind of the killer. We’re then snapped into Will’s life now, different than the book, as he lectures a class at the FBI about those same murders. (This crime is the first of Francis Dolarhyde aka The Tooth Fairy, whom we’ll see much, much later in the show.)

Very quickly, Will Graham is brought back into the fold as Special Agent Jack Crawford essentially damns his soul in the show’s inciting incident. The reason they need him is why he’s damned: he can’t help but get too close to these murders. Throughout the episode Will is diagnosed with several traits. First off, obviously, is his place on the spectrum of neurodivergence, but that’s less important than his excess of imagination (an important factor thematically in the show, see also the incredible “Pure Imagination” ad for season 3). Later, Lecter himself will elaborate on this, that “he has pure empathy.” So not only can he imagine in full detail, but he lives inside the emotions of the killer and the killed.

Will and Crawford go to speak to the family of a missing girl, Elise Nichols, which immediately becomes a crime scene as her corpse has been placed back in her bed. Will investigates the scene, and we finally get a whiff of levity, incredibly important for such a bleak show. The three crime scene investigators interrupt him, but a bond is quickly formed, as they realize the “apology” nature of the murder. The killer feels bad and seeks to undo what he’s done, though far too late of course.

As Will heads back to his home in northern Virginia, he takes in a stray dog, something he’s clearly done a lot and helps define his character a bit. The literal and obvious “taking in strays” but also how much more comfortable he is with animals. As he goes to bed, he dreams of the murdered Elise and wakes up shivering. A reference to Manhunter but also perhaps the first sign of a sickness we’ll see much more about later.

Crawford confronts Will in what is essentially the bathroom from The Shining, demanding to know what exactly it is they’re hunting, but Will is at a loss, “confused which direction I’m pointing.” The “sensitive psychopath” has to kill again, setting up a ticking clock for the episode, similar to how Red Dragon timed the killings with the full moon. And to set up what we all know is coming, we get a brief glimpse at a man at a construction site, waving to his daughter. The Minnesota Shrike himself.

A colleague and friend of Will’s Alanna Bloom (Alan in the books, the first of several gender swap roles in the show) shows up in a scene lifted almost exactly from Red Dragon. She diagnoses Will, again hammering on the theme of imagination, and she warns Crawford not to let Will get too close. Meanwhile at the autopsy of Elise Nichols, the CSI Stooges discover a few key pieces of evidence: some flakes of metal and evidence that her liver had been removed before being put back. Apparently “there was something wrong with the meat”. Cut to Hannibal Lecter himself, for the first time, enjoying his dinner while music ripped straight from Silence of the Lambs plays over. IYKYK.

We next see Hannibal at work in his incredible office while a patient, the gauche Franklin Froideveaux (what a name), laments his love life. Crawford shows up at the office but before Hannibal can neutralize the apparent threat, Crawford reveals why he’s there. He wants profiling help. Hannibal and Will meet less than cute; Will is first dismissive of Hannibal then threatened at the idea Crawford would be profiling him. But Hannibal is intrigued. He diagnoses Will; “he has pure empathy.”

Back in Minnesota, they’ve found another body from the supposed “Minnesota Shrike.” This is actually the work of Hannibal (how he got to Minnesota and back so quickly? who knows! we’ll see he may be something more than human) to presumably help Will develop the correct profile. Will senses what is off about this crime scene, and it does help him clarify his profile. This killer is a sadist. He doesn’t love the victim; in fact he detests her. He’ll be impossible to catch since he won’t do anything like this again. But Will also now sees the Shrike clearly. And as a bonus, Hannibal gets a tasty meal from the lungs of the murdered girl, who in a deleted scene had been rude to Hannibal, blowing smoke at him. How fitting.

Stag alert! While showering Will sees a vision that will permeate the rest of the show: a black stag with massive antlers glaring at him. This one has feathers, just like the crows swarming the latest victim of the faux Shrike. The stag is how Will’s mind processes the evil he’s coming into contact with. Hannibal’s evil, but we of course don’t know that yet.

And just like that, Will is an inadvertent cannibal. Hannibal visits Will before they head off investigating and brings him breakfast (gulp!). The protein scramble has eggs, peppers, and people sausage, as confirmed by Fuller and the director. Will is still dismissive of Lecter, and in an exchange seemingly designed for a commercial says, “I don’t find you that interesting.” Hannibal’s response: “You will.” And for the first time, Hannibal compares Will to a tea cup.

The reason Hannibal popped over is to help follow up on a clue to a construction site based the metal found on Elise’s body. They ransack the office, settling on one Garrett Jacob Hobbs. (Side note: it’s weird he already has 3 names, which is standard protocol for naming serial killers in the media to avoid blowback to people with the same traditional two-part name). Hannibal, since he’s the devil, can’t resist causing a little disruption which gives him time to tip off Hobbs that “they know.”

As with the previous investigations, we start at the end with a blood-spattered Will Graham until the pendulum snaps us back to the beginning of the scene. Will pops a pill (he does this a lot, something may be wrong with his head winkwink), he takes off for the house where Hobbs has just slashed his wife’s throat.. She’s far too gone to save. Will heads in where Hobbs holds his daughter Abigail, knife at throat. He slashes as Will shoots him. Abigail falls with her serious but non-lethal wound as Will unloads on Hobbs. His final haunting words, “See? See?” evoke Manhunter and will be a recurring theme in the show.

Bloom tells Crawford basically “I told you so. You let Will get too close.” Will visits Abigail in the hospital, and Hannibal is already there in hospital holding her hand while they both asleep. Will settles in at the other side of the bed, and a new, twisted family is born.

There’s a lot jammed into this episode. Most of the main cast is introduced and well established; a few other notables like Freddie Lounds are referenced but not shown. The director David Slade would go on to direct four more episodes, including the finales of the first and second seasons. He’s a very successful horror director who has also worked successfully on TV on shows from Breaking Bad to Black Mirror. His work with show creator Bryan Fuller set the template for where the show would go from here. But Fuller’s love of the material and boundless creativity make it sing. He slices apart Harris’ novels to find stray sentences, easily overlooked on a quick read, but are used by Fuller to expand the world, adding to it while drawing inspiration from every word of the source material. That kind of respect is part of why the Clarice show didn’t work; sure, it was a Thomas Harris character, but it barely had anything to do with the world Harris created. It might as well have been any fly-by-night police procedural.

In parts of season 1, Hannibal was also in danger of following that path. The focus on numerous serial killers strained the show’s credibility, and it started to lose its footing late in season 1. This pilot sets up the seeds for that rather dull procedural version, with a serial killer for Will and Hannibal to investigate while Lecter lurks, dramatic tension already built in. But the most fascinating parts, the meet-cute in Crawford’s office, the Soylent Green breakfast, and the haunting closing shot of the found family, are what the best of the show would focus on. It’s just gonna take a bit, and a lot of beautiful violence, to get back there. Stay tuned.