Strangely enough, Hannibal is all about family, even when that family isn’t Will and Hannibal’s sexless same-sex marriage or someone going around gurgling about a “Verger baby”. This episode especially was about everyone imagining their own special version of what a family should be, and that always leads to complications in their own lives.
Speaking of asexual gay couples, Will went to visit Hannibal to get some insight about the Tooth Fairy and how he selects his victims. Hannibal can’t figure that out, but correctly assumes that the man is extremely shy, disfigured and likes to look at the moon while covered in the blood of his victims, hence the need for a backyard with a fence. However finding all those houses – and the ones with recently killed pets, another part of his ritual – would be absolutely exhausting.
So is Will’s visit to Hannibal, who likens Will’s choosing a family to the Tooth Fairy choosing his victims. To Hannibal the two of them are the only family that matters and the solace that Will finds in Molly, her son, and all those damn stray dogs they are taking in, is harshing on Hannibal’s mellow. He sees it as somehow beneath them, just like the gross aftershave that Will is wearing. Does anyone still wear aftershave?
Hannibal is so upset by Will’s visit that he starts remembering his life with Abigail Hobbs, who died in the last season finale. We finally see how Hannibal faked her death and it also shows that she was a willing participant in pushing Alana out of the window. She wasn’t a captive or brainwashed (well, maybe a little) – she was along for the ride because Hannibal replaced her father in her mind. She confesses that the most fun she had was hunting with her father and Hannibal gave her the chance to hunt with him, to reconnect with a father figure. He goes so far as to let her show her “love” for her father by slitting his throat, even though he was already dead.
This was the family that Hannibal chose, one where Will and Abigail could be together and he could be the father of both of them, raising him in his likeness. But it was a family that Will rejected when he chose the law and the FBI over Hannibal. Everything since then has been, what exactly? Revenge? Something like that.
Will is working on creating a family with Molly and when things get darkest for him while investigating the Tooth Fairy, he calls her and imagines she’s by his side, fighting off the darkness. However when he goes to sleep, he dreams that he killed her and laid her body out like the Tooth Fairy would. When he goes to the mirror, his face has broken like Hannibal’s teacup and we assume, just like that cup, he won’t be able to put it back together again. Just what Will worried about is happening. As he’s getting back into a killer’s mind he is slowly falling apart.
Is the love of a good woman enough to save him? Possibly. It seems like it might be enough to save Francis Dolarhyde, the real name of the Tooth Fairy. We see him remembering his stern adoptive mother in a flashback and wishing that he was in the perfect families that he ends up killing. But he can’t find peace in those families, instead watching their old movies turns him into the Red Dragon, even if it is only in his mind (we do get to see his scary tail). This is what drives him to kill, annihilating the perfection that he can never attain.
However he meets a nice blind woman at work (played by True Blood’s Rutina Wesley). She can’t see his harelip and understands the way he speaks because she listens intently, so he lets her in, overcoming his shyness. He takes her home and she invites him in, serving him the most awkward piece of pie that has ever been served in all of eternity. First he gobbles it down and then he grunts at her and grabs her hand when she tries to touch his face and says, in the most menacing voice I have ever heard: “Trust me. I’m smiling.”
If I was this lady I would never talk to him ever again and eat the rest of that pie all for myself because it looked really good.
But the real relationship that was cemented this episode was the one between Hannibal and Francis, when the later calls the serial killer. Tabloid reporter Freddie was following Will around looking to get the scoop and printed an article about how he consulted Hannibal about his new case. Francis calls Hannibal to let him know he appreciates the attention.
It seems like every serial killer is the intellectual offspring of Hannibal, the granddaddy of them all. Does Francis know that when Hannibal tries to get you to be part of his family it is almost always a trap? Looks like he’s about to find out.
