Hannibal: The 5 Things We Wish We’d Gotten to See
It’s been nearly eight years since Hannibal went off the air — but somehow, the taste of it still lingers in our mouths.
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Since Bryan Fuller’s gloriously gruesome crime drama ended its three-season run on NBC back in 2015, nothing has really filled the void it left in our hearts. And that void is considerable: Mads Mikkelsen crafted a seductive yet sinister version of iconic killer Hannibal Lecter that even rivaled Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning turn, and Hugh Dancy matched him step for step as haunted FBI profiler Will Graham. We still can’t believe that Fuller’s blood-soaked psychological drama, with its artfully arranged corpses and deliciously carnivorous feasts, actually aired on a broadcast network… and we still can’t believe that it only earned a total of one measly Emmy nomination.
Still, Hannibal amassed a formidable cult following with an army of devoted fans known as Fannibals, and we join them in keeping our hopes alive for a fourth season someday. (Mikkelsen himself said recently “there’s always a chance” for a revival.) But until that happens, we’re left wondering what might have been. So read on to see the five things we wish we were able to see in a fourth season of Hannibal — and then hit the comments section below, Fannibals, and tell us what tasty treats you’d like to see in a potential Season 4.
1. Wait… Will and Hannibal aren’t dead, right?
As you might remember, Hannibal ended with the ultimate cliffhanger, as Will and Hannibal literally tumbled off a cliff together in the final moments of the Season 3 finale, seemingly to their certain deaths. It was a perfectly macabre note to end the series on… but not one that left much hope for another season. So first and foremost, since there’s no show without them, we’re hoping Fuller can come up with a way for Will and Hannibal to survive that fall. (They’ve both survived a lot of blood loss in the past, so we’re not too worried.)
2. Will and Hannibal need to address the elephant in the room
Fans have been dying to see it, and Will and Hannibal have playfully danced around it themselves: Is their mutual obsession actually a romantic one? The two came the closest to acknowledging their affection in the waning moments of the Season 3 finale, bloodied and exhausted after their battle with demented killer Francis Dolarhyde, embracing each other as Hannibal told Will, “This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us.” But enough subtext: Let’s see that become actual text and have Will and Hannibal directly discuss what’s going on between them, even if it’s just to dismiss it once and for all. Give us this, Bryan Fuller!
3. An update on Alana and Margot in exile
Hannibal wasn’t all about Will and Hannibal: Caroline Dhavernas was captivating as psychiatrist Alana Bloom, who became romantically entangled with both men at different points in the series. She later fell in love with Margot, the sister of creepy sadist Mason Verger, and the two fled for their lives in Season 3 after Hannibal escaped from captivity. We’d love to know what these two and their young son are up to these days, and if Alana can ever help Will get his head on straight.
4. More of Gillian Anderson, please
We could spend all day listing the many great roles this TV veteran has played, and she added another one to that list as Hannibal’s therapist Bedelia Du Maurier, adding a brainy sophistication to the gory proceedings. (She also seemed to connect better with Hannibal than almost anyone outside of Will.) The finale’s post-credits scene showed Bedelia sitting down to eat her own freshly severed and cooked leg… at a table set for three diners. Was she expecting Hannibal and Will to turn up? Oh, what we’d give to be a fly on the wall at that dinner party.
5. Bryan Fuller’s take on Silence of the Lambs
It’s Hannibal Lecter’s most famous storyline, immortalized in the 1991 film starring Hopkins and Jodie Foster, and yet we never saw it on Hannibal because Fuller didn’t have the rights to those characters. (And no, that middling CBS series Clarice doesn’t count.) So if our prayers are answered and Hannibal does return for another season, we absolutely insist that we get the grand retelling of The Silence of the Lambs that we deserve. Fuller himself has said he wants to give Lambs the limited series treatment: “There are a lot of interesting nooks and crannies in that book to explore in a television series.” Consider our appetites whetted.
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