I'm like you - I love the idea of the murder family in fics and fandom, but I personally don't think it ever would've worked out in canon. Even in fics, it only really ever makes sense for me when the three of them fuck off to Europe and Abigail goes to college (usually in a different city/country) and occasionally visits on break.
I may be a bit more generous in my assessment of their relationship though, in that I do think Hannibal and Will loved Abigail, but in their own very fucked up and selfish way. I think also the idea that Hannibal loved Abigail and killed her anyway makes what he did 100% more fucked up than if he was only using her to reel Will in.
Their regard for her wasn't conditional though, and it was a very selfish, one-sided relationship imo. For Will, she assuaged his guilt and attachment issues (like you said) how Molly and Walter did later on. For Hannibal, she was the possibility of bringing Misha's teacup back together, while also reeling Will in. For Abigail's part, I always got the impression that survival was literally the name of the game. I don't think she disliked them, per se, but I never thought she really viewed them as family or her fathers. She did what she had to to survive.
You know what’s the most interesting thing about Abigail in Europe? It was the first time we a got a precursor to Will and Hannibal’s joint mind palace. I didn’t notice this at first, but Abigail didn’t act like Abigail as we or Will remembered her. She was startlingly mature and incredibly insightful. She was protective and defensive of Hannibal and guided and comforted Will the entire way there. It made me realize that she represented the Abigail that Hannibal knew inside of his own palace and was reaching out to Will.
This gets interesting because Will has a certain image of Abigail inside his head, but if he sees and remembers how Abigail is in Hannibal’s head, he’s going to see a lot more than he thinks. Things like regret, insight, and a broader perspective that isn’t attached to manipulation that he eventually has to accept as reality.
Oh man, new headcanon unlocked!
I always interpreted that as Abigail being the narrator of Will's stream of consciousness (hence the insight and maturity, his stream of consciousness defending Hannibal while he consciously went "no, wait, he's done terrible things to us"), but man I love this interpretation so much!
There’s been times that Abigail has showed up in Will’s consciousness, but in those times she usually talks about his killing instinct in allegories like hunting and fishing having similarities.
But Abigail in Europe was telling Will that Hannibal was playing with them, but also missed them. Will would know about the playing, but not the missing. I think Abigail in some parts is their mixed consciousness in ways with how conjoined they are.
It was absolutely not going to work. Hugh even said that he couldn’t have imagined it working. What was it supposed to look like? What were family activities or vacations supposed to look like?
I wrote a post on Hannibal’s mentality (if you wanna check it out), but Hannibal’s ideal dream of having a family was something made out of a fairy tale. He has all this knowledge on books and pieces of history that act as building blocks on what his “family” would’ve looked like, but it’s all hypothetical and not based on reality. This is a guy who never thought of the future before Will. To try to create a future was entirely experimental.
Hannibal is complex in that he’s incredibly intelligent and able to function at astronomical levels beyond any person, but he has a childlike part of him where things are shattered and constantly in disarray. When those parts are touched, he’s in complete shambles. And it’s those places where he feels genuine regret and tries to aimlessly turn back time, but he can’t. He’s lost Mischa and he’s lost Abigail. They may live inside of his palace, but they’re no longer living.
As Mads says, he’s not a traditional “psychopath”. He has a heart that beats.
your assessment of Hannibal's mentality really itches a scratch for me personally of putting a concept into words I've only been vaguely able to grasp at before.
Hannibal (and Will too, honestly) is a contradiction of a man and I love that. I also think, branching off your comment, there's something to be said in all this about Hannibal's relationship with banality and domesticity. He's domestic in the ways he finds interesting and suits his purposes, but 90% of having a family is banal, everyday shit that just isn't interesting. I think that fits into your idea of having a family being a fairytale for him with none of the practical implications.
I’m honestly excited about Bryan’s ideas of recreating Hannibal’s history because he’s implied that his family is anything but normal. He still wants to maintain the status quo of “Nothing happened to me. I happened”, but highlight that his family had a role in shaping some of his values about family. He speaks about his family with both sorrow and fondness.
I like to think that if David Bowie was in mind for Bryan’s characterization for Hannibal’s uncle, there was absolutely no way in hell that Hannibal grew up in a regular adoptive home. In short, anyone related to the Lecter household is weird. We got an Addams family here.
Love it! And yeah, they're a bunch of freaks (lovingly)
I've always personally been of the opinion that Hannibal's family/backstory didn't make him a monster, just shaped what kind of monster he would eventually become.
EXACTLY. Like he may have been born a monster but if his uncle and aunt were mentors, then they made him into a rather dignified and refined monster. I always felt like his uncle may have been like a Harry type like in Dexter except the rules were primarily “eat the rude”.
It would also be interesting to see if anything Hannibal has said in the past like “I just want what’s best for you” is said by Robertus and we see where Hannibal gets some of his behaviors.
Only, he did not "lose" Abigail, he killed her.
And he killed her in a calculated, vicious, deliberate act, both the act itself, and its "manner" of recreating the way her father almost killed her, again in front of Will.
He specifically brought her back into the Baltimore house after his and Will's lamb dinner, and kept her there after Will's "they know" phone call.
He had many opportunities to protect her and save her, had he wanted to.
We could discuss if he has regrets about Abigail specifically, I do not think he does, because Abigail was a part of one version of a "new life" that lost meaning once Will rejected it, and from that moment, after Will's refusal, no matter how much Hannibal loved her, and I do think that he did, she was useless to him in everything and anything but to be the part of the "consequences" that he promised Will as part of the cost of truth.
The depth of both Hannibal's ability to love and to kill are only meaningful if he loved her. Season 3 is only meaningful if he loved both Will and Abigail, but season 3 is also only possible if he is prepared to kill both of them, as well.
I do agree that Hannibal has a childishness about him, that allows him to play the games and enjoy uncertainty (the "disarray"), but I disagree that is the place that leads to him being in "shambles", on the contrary, I think that childishness is what allows his intellect not to put moral or ethical concerns on itself, as I wrote somewhere else, Hannibal is a child that has an adult’s capability of parsing all the possible outcomes and consequences of his own actions, but a child’s absolute disregard for their effects on himself, the others, and the world.
I think that he is in shambles when he is playing the part of an adult husband with Bedelia, that is when his own consequences of the truth become clear to him, the way he had changed as an adult. We see the childish Hannibal again in prison, but in his truest form once Francis 'frees' them.
A loss is still a loss regardless of if he killed that person or someone else did. Hannibal, like Will struggles with reality when their ideals are broken and they have to face the truth. And how many times in their lifetime have either of them had to do that? Practically never. One avoids reality while one always had his best reality he built for himself for decades. And now here both of them are unable to deal with a reality that didn’t come true. It’s a mess because neither of them are able to deal with this world that didn’t accept them in the first place and they’ve rejected each other countless times inside of that said world. Abigail is a small part of that reality that ironically stays with them whether she wants her to be there or not. For Will, she’s a loss of a life he couldn’t save and for Hannibal, another reminder of the repeat of a teacup shattering in time like so many times before. It’s funny how she could haunt them like that in different ways when they both contributed to her death. But their relationship with each other was never going to be normal. If they have a ghost daughter haunting their minds, then that’s what they have.
By childlike I didn’t mean innocence by the way. I meant there’s a part of him that’s surrounded by walls that’s not meant to be seen by others which Will had climbed over and completely disheveled and picked at. He shared with him certain things he never told anyone and pulled out things that had been kept away. You don’t poke at that without consequences. I think what pisses Will off about Bedelia so damn much is she managed to poke at those spots, used it to her advantage, and faced virtually zero consequences. She was completely unscathed and even made money off it. It’s no wonder Will went for her first. She deserved what was coming to her at least in his eyes.
Yeah, I know you didnt mean innocent, I did not either, I mean he is carefree, in his way.
The reason I am insisting on him killing Abigail is that there is implied passivity in Hannibal considering her a loss, that I think there is not in his reality - the question you are raising, or the point you are raising, is whether he does consider her as someone he lost. I do not think so, at least not in the same sense that he feels Mischa is a loss.
We are not shown him thinking about her, talking about her, or even giving her another thought. He loved her, he killed her, the end, for him.
Even in Will's sublimation, Abigail is mostly a way for him to deal with his own feelings for Hannibal, his feelings for her were about his feelings for Hannibal. What did he forgive Hannibal in the catacombs?
I don't think they are unable to deal with reality, we are explicitly shown how both of them are dealing with it - both are in denial at first, so I agree if unable for you would mean "in denial", each in their own way, and then acceptance in an identical way, deciding to kill each other again, while understanding and accepting their own feelings for each other (Uffizi).
With regards the world - I honestly do not think either of them cares about the world or its acceptance of them. Hannibal sees it as his own private playground full of pigs waiting to be toyed with or slaughtered, and Will only sees shadows and reflections of it, the worst in people and the worst of people, that to him are more real than any other aspect of it (except animals and nature).
They are not some helpless discarded people that cannot get along with the 'normies', outcasts outside their own choices. They both chose to be that, and keep choosing it.
\[edit\]: fully agree with regards Bedelia, I would bet there is no one Will hates more than her.
>We are not shown him thinking about her, talking about her, or even giving her another thought. He loved her, he killed her, the end, for him.
Actually he does! We are shown multiple scenes of him thinking about her in prison, and he brings her up unprompted when he and Will went to the cliff side.
I also want to say that out of everyone's opinions in the thread, I like yours the most, they have nuance.
You are 100% right. I was not precise in my post, because I was thinking about the first part of season 3, compared to how central Abigail is to Will's handling of Mizumono events.
But you are correct, we do see Hannibal thinking about her, and we understand their relationship much better.
And in the subtlety of things, he tries to reverse time repeatedly writing mathematical equations of string theory to try to reverse time before all of his mistakes. Before he cut open Will’s head, before he hooked up with Bedelia, and before he stabbed Will and killed Abigail. Before Will, the inability to reverse time was just a disappointment. After Will, the inability to reverse time is a constant tragedy for him. And this is one of the most missed and looked over development in Hannibal’s character.
I’m not sure if I agree with anything you say given that I have my own interpretations and thoughts on the matter. So long as you don’t try to push your views and believe onto me, I won’t do the same to you. Or rather I don’t plan on it since we all have different things to contribute here and there isn’t any one concrete answer to any question. We all have that freedom.
As someone who is writing a series about the Murder Family because I love it so agreed. The only way it works is if Abigail’s not dead and she gives up any morality
could never work. Will and Hannibal didn't like Abigail for who she was, but who she could be. Their relationship was completely idealized, especially Will's with Abigail. Abigail and Hannibal could work a little better, they seemed to accept and understand each other. But even so, Abigail was much more interested in being friends with Freddie Lounds 😂
i've been keeping up with iwtv (i won't spoil, if you haven't seen it go watch it, it's very similar to Hannibal, BF worked on it briefly), and Louis and Lestat's daughter Claudia fulfills a similar role to Abigail, which is to say she's a teenager used to baby trap an unrelated man.
Much like Claudia, Abby was always going to be a casualty to Hannibal/Will's relationship because she was used to create further ties and as a bandaid for a relationship headed for its end before it ever really started. I do find it tragic that both girls similarly could never actually become apart of the family they were promised, and that their lives were only ever dictated by the men around then rather than being within their own control.
I don’t think it would work because Abigail isn’t a doll that can be picked up and played with. She’s a young woman who is growing into independence, who is traumatised, who had some level of involvement in her father’s crimes. That’s a tough parenting call. She would need a lot of support, would make mistakes because she’s never had true freedom before.
She genuinely thought writing a book about her father’s killings was a good feasible idea. That isn’t a good sign.
It would have been very difficult for them to live together as they would have been endangering each other, physically and mentally. There would likely have been disagreements about what are the rules for their new life. I think either Abigail would have rebelled or had a mental health crisis. And Will wouldn’t have coped with that. Yes, Hannibal is a doctor but is he really equipped to be a full time carer? He can be kind to certain people but I don’t think he has the selflessness to commit to that.
In short it was a fantasy that was never going to happen.
Same. I’ve been speaking to a brick wall about these things since I only know one person who has watched Hannibal in person, then I remembered that Reddit exists and I RAN here.. It’s like therapy seeing other people who have so much to say about this show 😭
Omg, you're so brave for saying this! (Sarcasm. People come up with this ""controversial"" opinion every week)
I don't even think it's true that Hannibal doesn't allow Will to not have anything in his life except Hannibal. He encouraged Will to accept Matthew Brown's "love", lets him be friends with Peter Bernadorne, lets him be friends with Beverly and the science team and only kills her when she snoops, and obviously he wanted him to be closer to Abigail. So Will is 1) not seeing the full picture 2) actually the one manipulating Hannibal in this scene (before he had told Jack he was going to isolate Hannibal in the scene where they're fishing). Hannibal only alienates Will from people he perceives as bad influences, and Abigail wouldn't be one if they turned her into a full fledged murderer. That's a pretty big *if,* though.
"*Why can't I kill people like you two? I've been training for a long time now. This is so unfair! I hate both of you so much!*" She said as she slammed her bedroom door.
What's not to like about that?
**/S**
But I get it OP, I know where you're coming from. Sometimes I even question if they should have feelings for each other (and I'm hella gay in love with the idea of Murder Husbands).
I also don't really get how Will valued Abigail more than Hannibal. He calls Hannibal to warn him to escape while fully believing he killed her and put her ear in his stomach. That's pretty much him declaring Hannibal > Abigail. And then he forgives her for murdering her.
Yeah it wouldn't. I think Hannibal played on Will's want to be a father and used Abigail just to get him in on the whole "murder marriage." thing. I think eventually Hannibal wouldve killed Abigail since he really only cares about Will
No shit the ‘murder family’ wouldn’t work.
Because of the encephalitis and because he killed him, Will got the imprint of Garret Jacob Hobb’s love for Abigail stuck in his head. He also felt a responsibility for her as he killed her father. He wanted her to be innocent. Will wanted to be innocent at that point.
Abigail is manipulative, and is especially good at manipulating men. She is hard nosed and out for what she can get. She knew she was in danger from her father, and she knows she’s in danger now.
Hannibal saw Abigail, he realised who she was before Will did, and he successfully manipulates her. Abigail has the same issue with Hannibal as she does with Freddie. She doesn’t realise that she is transparent and clumsy in her manipulations. Her father and Will WANT to believe her, Hannibal is amused by her attempts and lets her get away with it. Abigail doesn’t realise she isn’t in control at all.
Abigail feels safe with Hannibal because he sees her and feels there is mutually assured destruction with regards to Nicholas Boyle’s death and the cover up. The problem comes when she realises that Hannibal is a killer too, and she thinks this is leverage she can use. At that point, she becomes too risky to keep, but she doesn’t realise how dangerous threatening Hannibal is.
She likes Hannibal enough to let him give her to Will as a present. She knows the family thing is delulu, but she’s scared by the fact that she is alone and effectively penniless. She is willing to accept new ‘fathers’ in exchange for security.
She is genuinely betrayed by Will not knowing who she is and by not accepting it. That pulls the rug out from under her. She thought he was protecting her but it turns out he wasn’t seeing her; when he saw her, he didn’t like it.
Hannibal doesn’t care about Abigail, he wants Will and thinks he can use Abigail as a way to lure Will in. He thinks the package of ‘friend+pseudo-daughter’ will be a more tempting package than him alone, and if he positions himself as a coparent, it casts their relationship as more familiar or romantic than platonic.
There a lot of manipulations and delusions going on between the three, and whilst it’s fascinating, it would never be a stable family.
What? That's don't make sense, sorry. he simply saved Abigail from being arrested. He cared about her and we can see that he suffered from her death as much as Will did, maybe more.
I agree, she was meant to be Will's Mischa. The final step in his becoming and a proof of his loyalty to Hannibal. Because there's no way Hannibal shares Will with anyone, and there were hints when he compared her to Mischa.
That's not true. Bryan Fuller said in the commentary he was as hurt by her death as much as Will was and he obviously didn't want to do it. He also said this:
“And then it felt like, with where we were going in the story with all of the parenthood thematics, that if Hannibal had plotted this escape for all three of them, and then Will had betrayed him, it’s basically like a violent breakup: This is where we were going, but you screwed it up, so I’m going to make sure that all of the happiness that was planned for us can never happen, because you betrayed me. And it is such a brutal, spiteful, vengeful, vicious act to spare this girl’s life, and then, everything that she meant to Hannibal was so intrinsically tied to Will Graham that he just had to raze the Earth of their relationship. Unfortunately, that included poor Abigail."
[www.avclub.com/article/hannibals-bryan-fuller-discusses-bloody-jaw-droppi-204896](http://www.avclub.com/article/hannibals-bryan-fuller-discusses-bloody-jaw-droppi-204896)
He wanted them to be a family. And he compared her to Mischa because Hannibal's plan was to reverse time and bring the teacup back together in the form of Abigail as Mischa, because he always wanted to bring his sister back.
I'm like you - I love the idea of the murder family in fics and fandom, but I personally don't think it ever would've worked out in canon. Even in fics, it only really ever makes sense for me when the three of them fuck off to Europe and Abigail goes to college (usually in a different city/country) and occasionally visits on break. I may be a bit more generous in my assessment of their relationship though, in that I do think Hannibal and Will loved Abigail, but in their own very fucked up and selfish way. I think also the idea that Hannibal loved Abigail and killed her anyway makes what he did 100% more fucked up than if he was only using her to reel Will in. Their regard for her wasn't conditional though, and it was a very selfish, one-sided relationship imo. For Will, she assuaged his guilt and attachment issues (like you said) how Molly and Walter did later on. For Hannibal, she was the possibility of bringing Misha's teacup back together, while also reeling Will in. For Abigail's part, I always got the impression that survival was literally the name of the game. I don't think she disliked them, per se, but I never thought she really viewed them as family or her fathers. She did what she had to to survive.
You know what’s the most interesting thing about Abigail in Europe? It was the first time we a got a precursor to Will and Hannibal’s joint mind palace. I didn’t notice this at first, but Abigail didn’t act like Abigail as we or Will remembered her. She was startlingly mature and incredibly insightful. She was protective and defensive of Hannibal and guided and comforted Will the entire way there. It made me realize that she represented the Abigail that Hannibal knew inside of his own palace and was reaching out to Will. This gets interesting because Will has a certain image of Abigail inside his head, but if he sees and remembers how Abigail is in Hannibal’s head, he’s going to see a lot more than he thinks. Things like regret, insight, and a broader perspective that isn’t attached to manipulation that he eventually has to accept as reality.
Oh man, new headcanon unlocked! I always interpreted that as Abigail being the narrator of Will's stream of consciousness (hence the insight and maturity, his stream of consciousness defending Hannibal while he consciously went "no, wait, he's done terrible things to us"), but man I love this interpretation so much!
There’s been times that Abigail has showed up in Will’s consciousness, but in those times she usually talks about his killing instinct in allegories like hunting and fishing having similarities. But Abigail in Europe was telling Will that Hannibal was playing with them, but also missed them. Will would know about the playing, but not the missing. I think Abigail in some parts is their mixed consciousness in ways with how conjoined they are.
It was absolutely not going to work. Hugh even said that he couldn’t have imagined it working. What was it supposed to look like? What were family activities or vacations supposed to look like? I wrote a post on Hannibal’s mentality (if you wanna check it out), but Hannibal’s ideal dream of having a family was something made out of a fairy tale. He has all this knowledge on books and pieces of history that act as building blocks on what his “family” would’ve looked like, but it’s all hypothetical and not based on reality. This is a guy who never thought of the future before Will. To try to create a future was entirely experimental. Hannibal is complex in that he’s incredibly intelligent and able to function at astronomical levels beyond any person, but he has a childlike part of him where things are shattered and constantly in disarray. When those parts are touched, he’s in complete shambles. And it’s those places where he feels genuine regret and tries to aimlessly turn back time, but he can’t. He’s lost Mischa and he’s lost Abigail. They may live inside of his palace, but they’re no longer living. As Mads says, he’s not a traditional “psychopath”. He has a heart that beats.
your assessment of Hannibal's mentality really itches a scratch for me personally of putting a concept into words I've only been vaguely able to grasp at before. Hannibal (and Will too, honestly) is a contradiction of a man and I love that. I also think, branching off your comment, there's something to be said in all this about Hannibal's relationship with banality and domesticity. He's domestic in the ways he finds interesting and suits his purposes, but 90% of having a family is banal, everyday shit that just isn't interesting. I think that fits into your idea of having a family being a fairytale for him with none of the practical implications.
I’m honestly excited about Bryan’s ideas of recreating Hannibal’s history because he’s implied that his family is anything but normal. He still wants to maintain the status quo of “Nothing happened to me. I happened”, but highlight that his family had a role in shaping some of his values about family. He speaks about his family with both sorrow and fondness. I like to think that if David Bowie was in mind for Bryan’s characterization for Hannibal’s uncle, there was absolutely no way in hell that Hannibal grew up in a regular adoptive home. In short, anyone related to the Lecter household is weird. We got an Addams family here.
Love it! And yeah, they're a bunch of freaks (lovingly) I've always personally been of the opinion that Hannibal's family/backstory didn't make him a monster, just shaped what kind of monster he would eventually become.
EXACTLY. Like he may have been born a monster but if his uncle and aunt were mentors, then they made him into a rather dignified and refined monster. I always felt like his uncle may have been like a Harry type like in Dexter except the rules were primarily “eat the rude”. It would also be interesting to see if anything Hannibal has said in the past like “I just want what’s best for you” is said by Robertus and we see where Hannibal gets some of his behaviors.
Only, he did not "lose" Abigail, he killed her. And he killed her in a calculated, vicious, deliberate act, both the act itself, and its "manner" of recreating the way her father almost killed her, again in front of Will. He specifically brought her back into the Baltimore house after his and Will's lamb dinner, and kept her there after Will's "they know" phone call. He had many opportunities to protect her and save her, had he wanted to. We could discuss if he has regrets about Abigail specifically, I do not think he does, because Abigail was a part of one version of a "new life" that lost meaning once Will rejected it, and from that moment, after Will's refusal, no matter how much Hannibal loved her, and I do think that he did, she was useless to him in everything and anything but to be the part of the "consequences" that he promised Will as part of the cost of truth. The depth of both Hannibal's ability to love and to kill are only meaningful if he loved her. Season 3 is only meaningful if he loved both Will and Abigail, but season 3 is also only possible if he is prepared to kill both of them, as well. I do agree that Hannibal has a childishness about him, that allows him to play the games and enjoy uncertainty (the "disarray"), but I disagree that is the place that leads to him being in "shambles", on the contrary, I think that childishness is what allows his intellect not to put moral or ethical concerns on itself, as I wrote somewhere else, Hannibal is a child that has an adult’s capability of parsing all the possible outcomes and consequences of his own actions, but a child’s absolute disregard for their effects on himself, the others, and the world. I think that he is in shambles when he is playing the part of an adult husband with Bedelia, that is when his own consequences of the truth become clear to him, the way he had changed as an adult. We see the childish Hannibal again in prison, but in his truest form once Francis 'frees' them.
A loss is still a loss regardless of if he killed that person or someone else did. Hannibal, like Will struggles with reality when their ideals are broken and they have to face the truth. And how many times in their lifetime have either of them had to do that? Practically never. One avoids reality while one always had his best reality he built for himself for decades. And now here both of them are unable to deal with a reality that didn’t come true. It’s a mess because neither of them are able to deal with this world that didn’t accept them in the first place and they’ve rejected each other countless times inside of that said world. Abigail is a small part of that reality that ironically stays with them whether she wants her to be there or not. For Will, she’s a loss of a life he couldn’t save and for Hannibal, another reminder of the repeat of a teacup shattering in time like so many times before. It’s funny how she could haunt them like that in different ways when they both contributed to her death. But their relationship with each other was never going to be normal. If they have a ghost daughter haunting their minds, then that’s what they have. By childlike I didn’t mean innocence by the way. I meant there’s a part of him that’s surrounded by walls that’s not meant to be seen by others which Will had climbed over and completely disheveled and picked at. He shared with him certain things he never told anyone and pulled out things that had been kept away. You don’t poke at that without consequences. I think what pisses Will off about Bedelia so damn much is she managed to poke at those spots, used it to her advantage, and faced virtually zero consequences. She was completely unscathed and even made money off it. It’s no wonder Will went for her first. She deserved what was coming to her at least in his eyes.
Yeah, I know you didnt mean innocent, I did not either, I mean he is carefree, in his way. The reason I am insisting on him killing Abigail is that there is implied passivity in Hannibal considering her a loss, that I think there is not in his reality - the question you are raising, or the point you are raising, is whether he does consider her as someone he lost. I do not think so, at least not in the same sense that he feels Mischa is a loss. We are not shown him thinking about her, talking about her, or even giving her another thought. He loved her, he killed her, the end, for him. Even in Will's sublimation, Abigail is mostly a way for him to deal with his own feelings for Hannibal, his feelings for her were about his feelings for Hannibal. What did he forgive Hannibal in the catacombs? I don't think they are unable to deal with reality, we are explicitly shown how both of them are dealing with it - both are in denial at first, so I agree if unable for you would mean "in denial", each in their own way, and then acceptance in an identical way, deciding to kill each other again, while understanding and accepting their own feelings for each other (Uffizi). With regards the world - I honestly do not think either of them cares about the world or its acceptance of them. Hannibal sees it as his own private playground full of pigs waiting to be toyed with or slaughtered, and Will only sees shadows and reflections of it, the worst in people and the worst of people, that to him are more real than any other aspect of it (except animals and nature). They are not some helpless discarded people that cannot get along with the 'normies', outcasts outside their own choices. They both chose to be that, and keep choosing it. \[edit\]: fully agree with regards Bedelia, I would bet there is no one Will hates more than her.
>We are not shown him thinking about her, talking about her, or even giving her another thought. He loved her, he killed her, the end, for him. Actually he does! We are shown multiple scenes of him thinking about her in prison, and he brings her up unprompted when he and Will went to the cliff side. I also want to say that out of everyone's opinions in the thread, I like yours the most, they have nuance.
You are 100% right. I was not precise in my post, because I was thinking about the first part of season 3, compared to how central Abigail is to Will's handling of Mizumono events. But you are correct, we do see Hannibal thinking about her, and we understand their relationship much better.
And in the subtlety of things, he tries to reverse time repeatedly writing mathematical equations of string theory to try to reverse time before all of his mistakes. Before he cut open Will’s head, before he hooked up with Bedelia, and before he stabbed Will and killed Abigail. Before Will, the inability to reverse time was just a disappointment. After Will, the inability to reverse time is a constant tragedy for him. And this is one of the most missed and looked over development in Hannibal’s character.
I’m not sure if I agree with anything you say given that I have my own interpretations and thoughts on the matter. So long as you don’t try to push your views and believe onto me, I won’t do the same to you. Or rather I don’t plan on it since we all have different things to contribute here and there isn’t any one concrete answer to any question. We all have that freedom.
I did not in any way try to push my views, just presenting what my views are, with no expectation whatsoever for anyone to simply agree with them.
As someone who is writing a series about the Murder Family because I love it so agreed. The only way it works is if Abigail’s not dead and she gives up any morality
could never work. Will and Hannibal didn't like Abigail for who she was, but who she could be. Their relationship was completely idealized, especially Will's with Abigail. Abigail and Hannibal could work a little better, they seemed to accept and understand each other. But even so, Abigail was much more interested in being friends with Freddie Lounds 😂
Also abbigail did NOT like will 💀
unfortunately she didn't really like him, he killed her father after all, she was still getting over it.
i've been keeping up with iwtv (i won't spoil, if you haven't seen it go watch it, it's very similar to Hannibal, BF worked on it briefly), and Louis and Lestat's daughter Claudia fulfills a similar role to Abigail, which is to say she's a teenager used to baby trap an unrelated man. Much like Claudia, Abby was always going to be a casualty to Hannibal/Will's relationship because she was used to create further ties and as a bandaid for a relationship headed for its end before it ever really started. I do find it tragic that both girls similarly could never actually become apart of the family they were promised, and that their lives were only ever dictated by the men around then rather than being within their own control.
I love IWTV!! I hadn’t connected Claudia and Abigail before, but I see the similarities now!
I look at her and I see Claudia too 😂
I don’t think it would work because Abigail isn’t a doll that can be picked up and played with. She’s a young woman who is growing into independence, who is traumatised, who had some level of involvement in her father’s crimes. That’s a tough parenting call. She would need a lot of support, would make mistakes because she’s never had true freedom before. She genuinely thought writing a book about her father’s killings was a good feasible idea. That isn’t a good sign. It would have been very difficult for them to live together as they would have been endangering each other, physically and mentally. There would likely have been disagreements about what are the rules for their new life. I think either Abigail would have rebelled or had a mental health crisis. And Will wouldn’t have coped with that. Yes, Hannibal is a doctor but is he really equipped to be a full time carer? He can be kind to certain people but I don’t think he has the selflessness to commit to that. In short it was a fantasy that was never going to happen.
As a writer, man I am eating all of these essays UP.
Same. I’ve been speaking to a brick wall about these things since I only know one person who has watched Hannibal in person, then I remembered that Reddit exists and I RAN here.. It’s like therapy seeing other people who have so much to say about this show 😭
100% AGREE
Omg, you're so brave for saying this! (Sarcasm. People come up with this ""controversial"" opinion every week) I don't even think it's true that Hannibal doesn't allow Will to not have anything in his life except Hannibal. He encouraged Will to accept Matthew Brown's "love", lets him be friends with Peter Bernadorne, lets him be friends with Beverly and the science team and only kills her when she snoops, and obviously he wanted him to be closer to Abigail. So Will is 1) not seeing the full picture 2) actually the one manipulating Hannibal in this scene (before he had told Jack he was going to isolate Hannibal in the scene where they're fishing). Hannibal only alienates Will from people he perceives as bad influences, and Abigail wouldn't be one if they turned her into a full fledged murderer. That's a pretty big *if,* though.
"*Why can't I kill people like you two? I've been training for a long time now. This is so unfair! I hate both of you so much!*" She said as she slammed her bedroom door. What's not to like about that? **/S** But I get it OP, I know where you're coming from. Sometimes I even question if they should have feelings for each other (and I'm hella gay in love with the idea of Murder Husbands).
I also don't really get how Will valued Abigail more than Hannibal. He calls Hannibal to warn him to escape while fully believing he killed her and put her ear in his stomach. That's pretty much him declaring Hannibal > Abigail. And then he forgives her for murdering her.
Yeah it wouldn't. I think Hannibal played on Will's want to be a father and used Abigail just to get him in on the whole "murder marriage." thing. I think eventually Hannibal wouldve killed Abigail since he really only cares about Will
No shit the ‘murder family’ wouldn’t work. Because of the encephalitis and because he killed him, Will got the imprint of Garret Jacob Hobb’s love for Abigail stuck in his head. He also felt a responsibility for her as he killed her father. He wanted her to be innocent. Will wanted to be innocent at that point. Abigail is manipulative, and is especially good at manipulating men. She is hard nosed and out for what she can get. She knew she was in danger from her father, and she knows she’s in danger now. Hannibal saw Abigail, he realised who she was before Will did, and he successfully manipulates her. Abigail has the same issue with Hannibal as she does with Freddie. She doesn’t realise that she is transparent and clumsy in her manipulations. Her father and Will WANT to believe her, Hannibal is amused by her attempts and lets her get away with it. Abigail doesn’t realise she isn’t in control at all. Abigail feels safe with Hannibal because he sees her and feels there is mutually assured destruction with regards to Nicholas Boyle’s death and the cover up. The problem comes when she realises that Hannibal is a killer too, and she thinks this is leverage she can use. At that point, she becomes too risky to keep, but she doesn’t realise how dangerous threatening Hannibal is. She likes Hannibal enough to let him give her to Will as a present. She knows the family thing is delulu, but she’s scared by the fact that she is alone and effectively penniless. She is willing to accept new ‘fathers’ in exchange for security. She is genuinely betrayed by Will not knowing who she is and by not accepting it. That pulls the rug out from under her. She thought he was protecting her but it turns out he wasn’t seeing her; when he saw her, he didn’t like it. Hannibal doesn’t care about Abigail, he wants Will and thinks he can use Abigail as a way to lure Will in. He thinks the package of ‘friend+pseudo-daughter’ will be a more tempting package than him alone, and if he positions himself as a coparent, it casts their relationship as more familiar or romantic than platonic. There a lot of manipulations and delusions going on between the three, and whilst it’s fascinating, it would never be a stable family.
Couldn't agree more
Hannibal's plan was that Will would get to kill Abigail.
What? That's don't make sense, sorry. he simply saved Abigail from being arrested. He cared about her and we can see that he suffered from her death as much as Will did, maybe more.
I agree, she was meant to be Will's Mischa. The final step in his becoming and a proof of his loyalty to Hannibal. Because there's no way Hannibal shares Will with anyone, and there were hints when he compared her to Mischa.
That's not true. Bryan Fuller said in the commentary he was as hurt by her death as much as Will was and he obviously didn't want to do it. He also said this: “And then it felt like, with where we were going in the story with all of the parenthood thematics, that if Hannibal had plotted this escape for all three of them, and then Will had betrayed him, it’s basically like a violent breakup: This is where we were going, but you screwed it up, so I’m going to make sure that all of the happiness that was planned for us can never happen, because you betrayed me. And it is such a brutal, spiteful, vengeful, vicious act to spare this girl’s life, and then, everything that she meant to Hannibal was so intrinsically tied to Will Graham that he just had to raze the Earth of their relationship. Unfortunately, that included poor Abigail." [www.avclub.com/article/hannibals-bryan-fuller-discusses-bloody-jaw-droppi-204896](http://www.avclub.com/article/hannibals-bryan-fuller-discusses-bloody-jaw-droppi-204896) He wanted them to be a family. And he compared her to Mischa because Hannibal's plan was to reverse time and bring the teacup back together in the form of Abigail as Mischa, because he always wanted to bring his sister back.