will graham, the collector of strays with no home, no family. left out in the world to fend for themselves. giving them a place that is warm and welcome, someone to trust. loyalty and love. strays he would risk his life for. and then he meets hannibal. another stray without a pack, and then will becomes the first person hannibal is truly vulnerable and open with. the fact will tells hannibal he would miss his dogs but not him, directly comparing hannibal to his dogs, almost admitting they were comparable to him in some way. chiyoh telling hannibal some beasts should not be caged. hannibal seeing himself as better than people and will seeing dogs as better than people, preferring the company of his dogs and hannibal. hannibal having an extremely heightened sense of smell, able to detect disease and cancer. hannibal also asking will after three years apart if he “came to get the old scent back” like a dog trying to recognize and remember an old friend. “man’s best friend” being a dog, and will is constantly trying to figure out where he and hannibal stand, eventually saying “he was my friend. I wanted to run away with him.” dolarhyde killing the family dog first to eliminate the alarm system and shooting hannibal first. the fact will was told “I’ve muzzled the dog, now you need to put it down” when he was asked to kill hannibal. how desperately hannibal wanted a family, trying to curate a pack of his own to run away with him. the “prized meat” of wolves and dogs being the organs, eaten first and often leaving the lean muscle of the carcass behind. the fact dogs will hunt in packs and by the end of the show, will and hannibal finally kill together and that was all hannibal wanted for them. and while it isn’t the true origin of the word, the word “cannibal” as we know it today was connected to the word “canis” aka dog by 16th century writers in reference to their shared voracity…..
honestly it was so big brained to have will graham be a fisherman cause like everything else about him is so prey-coded; he’s the dog rescuer, he has seventeen mental illnesses, his brain is on fire, he’s the lamb in the grip of the lion. but he’s also the fisherman. he ties his own flies, he goes out into the river, he baits and waits and sinks his hook in, barbs and all. from the beginning he always has power, even when he seems like he’s at hannibal’s mercy, at jack’s, at his own, he still rolls a cast and waits for the bite
absolutely adore that freddie lounds never faces consequences for her actions. she just shows up pisses off the most emotionally unhinged murderers for her own profit. then cashes a fat cheque and never has to deal with any real backlash whatsoever. incredible. inspiring. influential.
imagine being jack crawford going to work everyday to solve the most horrendous crimes known to mankind only to discover later that not only you ate human flesh with the perpetrator of those crimes but you also had to witness one of your agents spiralling into madness and falling in love with a cannibal to the point of crossing an ocean on a boat and following him to italy
the thing that really gets me about mizumono is that will doesn’t even fight back. he saw alana mangled outside. he knows jack might be dead. he has a loaded gun in hand. but not once does he try to hurt hannibal. he doesn’t even shoot. will just lets him caress his cheek, fingers curling into his hair. there’s no resistance. when hannibal stabs him, will leans into it. he doesn’t want to escape. and it all hurts so badly because it’s not like will tricked hannibal into loving him; he simply persuaded him that he might love him back. because that’s what will thought hannibal did to him in s1, and only now does he realise that maybe it was more real for hannibal than he thought. or worse, that maybe he wants to be with hannibal regardless of whether hannibal genuinely loves him. that maybe it’s worth it to be close to him, even if his touch splits his stomach open
“could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you?” is such a romantic line because despite cannibalism sustaining the illusion that hannibal can control everything and determine outcomes and reverse time, loving will has changed him so drastically that instead of consuming will, will consumes him. and hannibal hungers for him, yearns and aches for him, but is content to just exist near him. to stay in his orbit somehow, if only will allows it. hannibal, who needs to cannibalise others to stay in power, finds nourishment just by looking at will. he loves him so profoundly that he could be imprisoned forever and still it would be better than knowing he might never see will again. it sates him more than eating the pigs beneath him. in will, he finds religion
if you think about it, will’s tendency to call things that are morally wrong “ugly” instead of bad or unethical or any other synonym, is him already subscribing to hannibal’s philosophy of “ethics being aesthetics” before hannibal even influenced him in that direction. hannibal just changed it from “ugly” to “beautiful”.
ALSO WHEN HE SAID KILLING WAS THE UGLIEST THING IN THE WORLD THE STAGE DIRECTION SAID SOMETHING LIKE, HANNIBAL KNEW HE WASN’T TELLING THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND ALSO HE REFERRED TO THE RIPPER KILLINGS AS ART ON HIS OWN
