#but im obsessed with the idea that Abigail changed Hannibal too

[thebugcollector024]

In season 2 episode 4, Takiawase, Will says “Your father taught you how to hunt. I’m going to teach you how to fish.” To which Abigail responds “One you stalk and the other you lure?” In this imagined memory, we can see Will reckoning with his dreamworld fantasy of a father-daughter relationship with Abigail. Will can’t teach her how to fish because she already knows. She has lived her life as a lure. She is far from his ideal of a pure and innocent daughter. Instead, Abigail’s complicity lends her not to bond with Will but with Hannibal. If you compare his styles of killing in the first season to the third, you can see how their relationship has inverted. Abigail has taught Hannibal how to fish.

Abigail is known for luring her victims and gutting them. In various flashbacks throughout the show, we see her father using her as bait for their victims and then teaching her how to gut them. This special treatment of the bodies, the meat, is what elevates the act from murder to “hunting” in Garret Jacob Hobbs’s mind. But Abigail is not the hunter. She is the bait, therefore the fisherman. Even when she guts Nicholas Boyle alive and without her fathers help, it happens in her own home. He followed her. All her victims follow her back to her home eventually. She lures them there.

Hannibal, on the other hand, is a hunter. He’s represented by the stag, and animal that chases its victim and gores it. He picks someone out of his Rolodex, follows them, and puts them down. Hannibal’s method of killing isn’t what elevates it from common murder. It’s the artistry of it. The tableaus and their symbolism, their references to other artists, their poetry. In season one, Hannibal is not seen killing anyone in his home. When he does so in season two, it is only when his hand is forced. He didn’t invite Beverly into his home, she just entered. He is not a fisherman like Will (in a literal sense) or Abigail (in a symbolic one.)

This changes in season three. Abigail is dead. Hannibal is mourning her. He is in Florence and he is spiraling and his normal methods of making art are not enough for him anymore. He lures Anthony into his home with the promise of dinner, like Abigail luring girls who look like her with the promise of friendship. Anthony doesn’t look like Hannibal, (we all know who he looks like) but he has a similar outward charm. A similar mischief about him. This is their common ground. Hannibal uses himself like bait and lures Anthony into his home, kills him in his foyer, turns him into art. The second Florence murder lacks the same intimacy, but again, he lures a man into his home with promises of dinner and conversation, kills him where he eats, despite the incredible risk it brings. It’s messy and dangerous and he is never quite satisfied with it. This is Hannibal experimenting with his medium. He is trying something new and not quite hitting the same effortless artful mark that he used to.

By now, Hannibal’s more modern pieces are lacking the art-world references they used to have. His tableaus are surely symbolic, but he has no Botticelli to inspire him. All he has right now is his recklessness and his penchant for luring, so when Pazzi shows up of his own accord, Hannibal needs some extra spice to elevate this third Florence murder. His choice of gutting and hanging Pazzi is clearly inspired by the man’s predecessor. Though I think it’s important to note that Hannibal makes more pomp and circumstance of gutting the man than hanging him. “Bowels in, or bowels out?” He asks. And I like to think he chooses “out” in reference to Abigail. I like to think he sees her as another artist. Someone to reference, someone to learn from.

#hannibal spoilers #Hannibal #hannibal meta #Abigail ‘bring the violence home’ Hobbs #it amazes me over and over again how a character we knew so little about is so deeply impactful to the story and the people in it #I think it’s so important that Will changed Hannibal #and we talk about it all the time because that’s really the heart of the show #but im obsessed with the idea that Abigail changed Hannibal too #he never got to eat her like his other victims #but he internalized her a different way. honored her. changed. #only HARDCORE murder family truthers can reblog this post!!!! /j