The Wrath of the Lamb Part V — The Final Session with Bedelia

Will is usually honest with Bedelia. Or rather, he tells her the lies he tells himself, and she breaks them down. She helps him digest what he is becoming. We can trust him to reveal his true intentions to her more than to anyone else right now. We open just after he has told her about the FBI plan:

We assign a moment to decision. What you propose is so thoughtless, I find it difficult to imagine that moment exists.

This hearkens back to Will and Jack’s conversation about Will’s phone call to warn Hannibal:

Not all our choices are consciously calculated.

No. But our decisions are. You remember when you decided to call Hannibal?

I wasn’t decided when I called him. I just called him. I deliberated while the phone rang. I decided when I heard his voice.

You told him we knew.

I told him to leave. Cuz I wanted him to run.

Why?

Because… because he was my friend. And because I wanted to run away with him.

Well here we are again: A moment of decision that hinges around Will’s desire to run away with Hannibal. The difference here, perhaps, is that this decision has time to mellow. Will’s decision to warn Hannibal was the act of a moment, and it set into motion events that couldn’t be undone. This decision, however, has set rolling a very slow moving ball that’s being analyzed and coordinated from all sides. There is ample time and opportunity for this decision to be reversed. Maybe that’s what the lack of interference from Alana and Jack means, at least stylistically — this decision is for good, and it won’t be overcome.

Decisions are made of needed feelings. They’re more often a lump than a sum.

This is Will’s counter to Bedelia. What is the difference between a lump and a sum? A sum, perhaps, would be the accumulation of all of Hannibal and Will’s experiences and feelings. In that case Will may, for instance, take into account the fact that Hannibal very nearly fed him his own brain.

A lump, however, is messy. You can’t see all its constituent parts. You can only get a sense, and Will’s sense, presumably, is that he does in fact ache for Hannibal. These are his needed feelings.

However you think you’re going to manipulate this situation to your advantage, think again.

There’s no advantage. It’s all degrees of disadvantage.

Who holds the Devil, let him hold him well. He will hardly be caught a second time.

I don’t intend Hannibal to be caught a second time.

This last line can, of course, be read in two distinct ways. If Hannibal is not going to be caught, he’s either going to escape or be killed. And it’s tricky to be sure which Will is getting at. There’s a hardness in his voice, but whether it’s hardness toward Hannibal whom he’s going to kill or hardness toward Bedelia and other future victims, it’s unclear.

As the conversation carries on, however, it becomes more and more plausible that Will is not planning on having Hannibal killed.

Can’t live with him, can’t live without him. Is that what this is?

I guess… this is my becoming.

What you’re becoming is pathological.

Extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy.

This last line is important. It’s in reference to Will and Bedelia’s earlier conversation about what to do with an injured bird. It was Bedelia herself who suggested Will consider crushing the helpless instead of helping them. Who is helpless in this situation? It sure isn’t Hannibal. He may be in prison, but he chose to be there, and he’s already demonstrated that he has agency in the world.

The one who’s helpless is Bedelia — her life hinges completely upon Hannibal’s incarceration. And Will has decided to crush her.

You’ve just found religion. Nothing more dangerous than that.

I’d pack my bags if I were you, Bedelia. Meat’s back on the menu.

You righteous, reckless, twitchy little man. He might as well cut all our throats and be done with it.

Ready or not, here he comes.

By the end of this exchange, it’s all but certain that Will is planning Hannibal’s escape. Let’s see how Hannibal takes it in Part VI.