Secondo: Transformation and Influence in Hannibal

This is an analysis of Secondo, the third episode in the third season of Hannibal. If you haven’t, you might want to read about the first and second episodes first. You’ll definitely want to finish watching the show first, as I’ll be referencing later episodes and ruining some surprises.

If you’ve done all that, let’s get started.

Antipasto and Primavera show us, respectively, Hannibal and Will’s attempts at coping with the season 2 finale. Each ends with its protagonist coming to terms with the fact that, despite himself, he can’t move on.

Secondo follows the aftermath of those realizations, with each contemplating what the other means to him and undergoing more drastic changes because of it. At its most basic, Secondo allows its characters’ early-season transformations to play out to the extreme.

Although they don’t meet, Hannibal and Will are in each other’s heads, and it shows in the structure of the episode. After watching each of them struggle alone, we now cut back and forth between them in alternating scenes. There’s a balance to their plots — both spend all of their time with a woman they manipulate into murder. The nature of the murders and the relationships with these companions, however, are completely at odds.

Will’s relationship with Chiyoh begins with her threatening to kill him and ends with him manipulating and leading her. Hannibal’s relationship with Bedelia begins with him terrorizing her (at the very end of Antipasto) and ends with her prompting him to kill the man he loves. These are shifts in power in opposite directions, and they’re indicative of the changes Will and Hannibal are undergoing — Will’s becoming and Hannibal’s loss of control.

Neither is comfortable with these changes, but they are hyper aware of them. The episode explores not only their transformations, but their struggles against them and their implications in an inevitable reunion.

It Was Nice

Secondo opens with Hannibal back from Palermo looking pensive and conflicted. Bedelia, who was in a real state at the end of Antipasto, has slipped back into her role as psychiatrist.

Was it nice to see him?

It was nice. Among other things. He knew where to look for me.

Hannibal is rationalizing. With no prompting he volunteers the information that Will knew where to look for him — it obviously means a lot to him.

And it should. He came to terms in Antipasto with the fact that his connection with Will is insurmountable, and now he’s gotten confirmation that Will feels the same way. It’s enough to throw anyone off.

You knew where he would look for you.

Bedelia points out that Hannibal plays just as much a part in this connection as Will does. Her driving point through this whole conversation is the mutual nature of Hannibal and Will’s relationship, the dependency that Hannibal has on him.

He said he forgave me.

There’s surprise here, and maybe even wonder. When Hannibal asks for Will’s forgiveness in Mizumono, it’s mostly for show. It’s vindictive and meant to hurt Will — not to be returned. Being confronted with Will’s forgiveness is probably even more of a shock than being confronted with the depth of his connection. It’s proof of the surprising depth of that connection.

Forgiveness is too great and difficult for one person. It requires two: the betrayer and the betrayed. Which one are you?

I’m vague on those details.

On top of this surprise is a real problem for Hannibal. He’s been so fixated on Will’s betrayal that he’s glossed over his own. In reality, Will did warn him — his betrayal was only a half measure. Hannibal’s betrayal, on the other hand, was complete. It was cruel and it was deliberate.

And Will’s forgiven him for it. What can he do, now, with his own obsessive lack of forgiveness for Will’s arguably lesser crime?

Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as something akin to falling in love.

You cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love.

You are going to be caught. It has already been set into motion.

Is that concern for your patient? Or concern for yourself?

I am not concerned about me. I know exactly how I will navigate my way out of whatever it is I’ve gotten myself into. Do you?

I did.

This is a whole new Hannibal. For maybe the first time, he doesn’t seem to have an ulterior motive. All his words are about lack of control, lack of knowledge. He even admits that he’s lost sight of how to keep from getting caught, which he doesn’t deny is inevitable.

For the first time, he’s genuinely lost. And that lost feeling is finally given a name: love.

Bedelia, meanwhile, has found her footing again. When we last saw her, she was petrified. She was moments from running out on Hannibal for good, then brutally coerced into staying. But now she’s regained her cool and, apparently, knows exactly how she’s going to save herself. What’s changed?

Will’s come back into the picture, that’s what.

Bedelia can see the effect Will’s presence has on Hannibal — she can see the unraveling of his plans. The man she believes knows everything doesn’t even know himself anymore. The best way to get out, Bedelia realizes, is to bide her time and let Hannibal bring himself down.

Maybe even provide some encouragement.

The next few episodes are full of quasi-therapy sessions between Bedelia and Hannibal. On a first pass these come off as not much more than exposition — we need to know what Hannibal’s thinking, and what better way than for him to work through it with Bedelia?

But Bedelia isn’t a static character, and her motivations don’t stop at telling the audience what’s in Hannibal’s head. She has purpose and drive, and she’s aware that she’s playing a deadly game.

All of Bedelia’s actions are rooted in self-preservation. As she became horribly aware in Antipasto, every day she stays with Hannibal could be her last. Running away is no longer an option, so the next best course is to steer Hannibal toward getting himself caught or killed, whichever comes first.

Luckily for her, the only person who could get either to happen has just shown up in Italy.

Over the course of this episode (and the next few as well) we’ll see a distinct shift in power between Bedelia and Hannibal — already Hannibal is calling himself her patient again. In this first scene she takes note of his loss of control, and she urges him to think more and more of himself and Will as a pair. She knows how she’s going to get herself out of this, and this conversation is the first step.

Living with an emotional Hannibal is dangerous, but not as dangerous as living with an unemotional one. Throughout Hannibal’s therapy sessions, she works to throw him more off balance, to assert his co-dependency on Will, and to build him up to a final solution.

The question is, how malleable is Hannibal right now? Is he susceptible to Bedelia’s driving? Based on his body language, he certainly doesn’t look stable.

We’ll come to that, but first let’s see how Will is handling things.

Lecter Dvaras

Hannibal looks straight into the camera and his face morphs into Will’s, in case we hadn’t caught on that the two of them are blurring. Will has also changed his clothes.

Will’s clothes are a constant indicator of the state of his soul. He spends the first season dressed as what I’ve read affectionately described as a “homeless fisherman.” After he’s released from prison in season 2, he starts dressing more and more stylishly, often wearing a long wool coat.

The change is at its least subtle in Shiizakana and Naka-Choko, when he kills Randall Tier. Before and during the fight, he’s wearing his canvas jacket, an old season 1 standby.

When Hannibal finds him in his kitchen with Randall’s body, however, he’s switched to his wool coat. Does he change coats because the old one is covered in blood, or because the new one represents the descent of his soul?

Tomato, tomahto.

Now Will has switched from canvas to wool yet again. He walks backward out of the chapel, stops, and then walks forward on the surface of a bubbling pool of blood. Essentially, he leaves the formal entrance to Hannibal’s mind and re-enters through a dark, bloody place. As he walks his face is reflected in the blood, and when he puts his foot down we see that he’s walking on top of it, despite its apparent depth.

Now Will can see himself in the most violent, dark parts of Hannibal’s mind, but he can go through them without sinking. As Hannibal says, Will is someplace he himself can never go.

This is confirmed when the blood turns to mud outside Lecter Dvaras (“Lecter Estate” in Lithuanian). He checks the gate — it’s locked. He checks a door to the house — it’s also locked. Even Will is meeting resistance this far inside Hannibal’s mind. Still, he climbs over the gate and manages to get invited into the house. As Bedelia tells Hannibal in a season 1 therapy session:

You spend a lot of time building walls, Hannibal. It’s natural to want to see if someone is clever enough to climb over them.

And climb over them Will does. Hannibal is inside his mind just as he’s inside his, available for a chat in the woods in their old Baltimore chairs.

It’s not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps measure whether you’re broken. How and why. Assuming you want to know.

I want to know.

The subject in this exchange changes halfway through. Hannibal begins talking about “your” childhood home, meaning his own. Coming to this place is meant to measure whether or not Hannibal is broken. But it’s not Hannibal who wants to know — it’s Will. Will is treating his and Hannibal’s lives as the same. He wants to know the trauma of Hannibal’s past so he can understand his own trauma — he wants to understand the source of Hannibal’s (and his) nature.

Is this where construction began?

On my memory palace? Its door at the center of my mind, and here you are feeling for the latch.

Hannibal seems genuinely tickled that Will is here, and Will smiles in return. This is almost tender. And while he is in Will’s head, Hannibal is not just the projection that Abigail was. This conversation is an elevation of Will’s usual empathy — it’s an almost preternatural understanding. Will is, after all, also in Hannibal’s head. While Hannibal’s feelings may be a projection of Will’s, they are just as much his own.

The spaces in your mind devoted to your earliest years, are they different than the other rooms? Are they different than this room?

This room holds sound and motion. Great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark. Other rooms are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted shards of glass.

Everything keyed to memories leading to… other memories. Rooms you can’t bring yourself to go. Nothing escapes from them that causes you any comfort.

Screams fill some of those places, but the corridors do not echo screaming, because I hear music.

The corridors of Hannibal’s mind are filled with music to drown out the screams locked away in certain rooms. This is just like his attempt at a new life in Antipasto, when the events in his kitchen need to be covered up with extravagance.

But the imagery in this scene doesn’t match. In Hannibal’s Baltimore office, a place of sound and motion, he and Will sit perfectly still, and the view of the room is fragmented. This vital place has become confused with the other rooms. Hannibal’s memory palace, just like his emotional state, is in turmoil. And when Hannibal mentions music, our music turns sour, sounding a bit like a scream. The scene shatters like glass.

This is because Hannibal’s attempt at distraction in Antipasto doesn’t actually work. With Will in his mind, he has to relive his worst memories and revisit his most dangerous rooms. Just like he’s confronted Will’s betrayal in his kitchen, he now has to confront Mischa’s death in his childhood home.

He can’t drown Will out, and the scene shatters. This is the loss of control that Will’s closeness bring out in him — he can’t even manage his own mind.

Back in reality, Will is brought out of his memory palace by the sound of gunshots. He catches his first glimpse of Chiyoh, and we get another heavy dose of physical likeness.

Chiyoh and Will are dressed identically — long dark wool coat with a high collar, dark pants, dark gloves, satchel. Will has found another version of himself.

Or has he?

That May Have Been Impulsive

Next we see Hannibal curing an arm that was, presumably, Dimmond’s. He skins it and rubs salt into it before eventually serving it to Sogliato.

(I don’t want to say it’s definitely deliberate, since food is always given an impressive treatment, but we’re watching Hannibal gently massage the arm of someone who reminded him of the man he’s just admitted he’s in love with. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk, but I wouldn’t put it past this show to make a salt rub sensual).

Hannibal serves Sogliato the cured arm and Punch Romaine and, after very little conversation, stabs him through the temple with an ice pick. There’s not much call to analyze his motivations, as he himself proclaims:

That may have been impulsive.

This is an extremely forward admission of loss of control. It seems every time we see Hannibal now, he’s claiming he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Unable to watch Sogliato suffer, Bedelia pulls the ice pick out of his head, prompting one of the funniest lines in the show:

Technically, you killed him.

This whole scene is unnervingly funny. It calls to mind their last dinner, when Hannibal, Dimmond, and even Bedelia managed to joke. Hannibal is still joking, but he’s not laughing anymore.

This is also a very clear repeat of Zachary Quinto and Dimmond’s deaths — in both cases Hannibal instigates their murders but implicates Bedelia in the act. The first instance is carefully plotted. The second is perhaps spontaneous, but the result at least is deliberate.

This time the layout is virtually identical, but the gravity is lost. Sogliato’s death is an impulse, and Bedelia takes part only because Hannibal can’t be bothered to finish the job.

If Hannibal really hasn’t planned any of this, it’s a sure sign that he’s losing it. Even if he has planned it, he’s making a deliberate mockery of his old carefully crafted manipulations. Either way, his days of holding every string are over.

No longer interested in preserving the peace you found here?

You cannot preserve entropy. It gradually descends into disorder.

Hannibal blames his loss of control on entropy, a key element in the show. Entropy has two main definitions that are slightly at odds with each other. One is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.” This makes sense in terms of Hannibal’s statement here — lasting peace is impossible because everything naturally falls apart.

Of course, entropy didn’t seem to be a problem in Baltimore, where he lived in peace for years. Not until Will, anyway. Which leads us to the other definition.

The other definition comes from physics (which my physicist partner was thrilled to explain). Basically, entropy measures disorder like length measures size — the amount of entropy an object has determines its disorder.

Or to put it another way, a broken teacup has much higher entropy than a whole one does.

With all of its pieces and shards, it’s in a greater state of disorder. While it’s common for entropy to increase (when a teacup breaks), it will never spontaneously decrease (the teacup will never come back together on its own). This is because the natural state of things is disorder. There are almost infinite possible ways for a teacup to be broken — there are only a few ways for it to be whole.

At the end of Mizumono, Abigail’s teacup does come together. Hannibal’s plan through the whole second season is to defy entropy for Will, to display control over physics itself. When he’s betrayed, however, he loses that control, and his life descends into disorder.

But where he fails with Abigail, he succeeds with Will. Will is a teacup that does come back together — we see it happen at the beginning of Primavera. And we’ll learn, in the next episode, that he’s survived because Hannibal knew exactly how to cut him — he orchestrated the reordering of his shattered self.

By keeping him alive, Hannibal decreases Will’s entropy — he undoes his disorder. In doing so, however, he increases the entropy in his own life. As long as Will is whole, he is the source of Hannibal’s loss of control, his gradual descent into disorder. Will is his entropy.

And Hannibal has accepted that he can’t fight against it.

Two men from the Capponi are dead.

I can only claim one… technically.

You’re drawing them to you, aren’t you? All of them.

This is, of course, a little nod to the audience to reveal the surprise that Jack is alive (and, with “them,” possibly Alana). But what does it mean within this scene? It means that Hannibal is giving up — not only has he lost control, he’s willfully throwing himself into a situation he can’t get out of.

This is what winds up happening, but I’m not convinced it’s really Hannibal’s plan. Hannibal has no reason, at the moment, to focus on anyone but Will. He knows that Will is in Lithuania, and he knows that he’s bound to come back. Whether for a reckoning or a reunion, Will is going to come for Hannibal very soon, and to deliberately muddy those waters with a cast of characters bent on revenge seems strange.

I think two men from the Capponi are dead because they’re the bookends of Hannibal’s vita nuova — the old curator’s death is the beginning, and Sogliato’s is the end. Hannibal might not be drawing Jack, but he is giving up on his new life.

So why does Bedelia suggest that Hannibal’s trying to be caught? Because that’s what she wants to happen. Bedelia is taking life much more in stride now. Her “murder” of Sogliato puts her off, but only briefly. She’s not afraid anymore — she’s practical. And practicality means interpreting Hannibal’s actions as self-destructive, urging him to bring himself down.

Bedelia is trying her hand at psychic driving.

Fireflies and Snails

Meanwhile, Will is spending the night in the woods on the Lecter Estate. He hears cracking twigs, and we see the antlers of the Stag Man looming behind him. But as he turns to where we know the Stag Man is, he sees fireflies. This leads him to a fountain full of snails — presumably Hannibal’s old cochlear garden.

Snails and fireflies are very important, and Hannibal and Bedelia will discuss them at length in Contorno:

I kept cochlear gardens as a young man to attract fireflies. Their larvae would devour many times their own body weight in snails. Fuel to power a transformation into a delicate creature of such beauty.

To the misfortune of the snail.

Snails follow their nature as surely as those that eat them.

Fireflies live very brief lives.

Better to live true to yourself for an instant than never know it.

This conversation will continue to take a real turn, but for this analysis we need only the beginning of it and the implications of this life-cycle. Just like his obsession with La Primavera and Leda and the Swan, it betrays Hannibal’s taste for transformation from the dull to the beautiful, from the mortal to the divine.

This transformation, however, doesn’t rely upon a higher influence. No one manipulates the firefly larvae into eating the snails — they do it because it’s in their nature. They are the authors of their own becoming. In the same way, Will is beyond Hannibal’s manipulations, now. Everything that he does in this episode he does of his own volition, because it’s in his nature.

And his transformation is going to be beautiful. The Stag Man represents Hannibal’s true self, and it’s always haunted Will. It’s the sound of the Stag Man lurking in the woods, however, that leads Will to this deeper understanding, to the light and beauty that lie underneath.

Will sees what looks like a bloody handprint on the fountain, and he reaches out to touch it. As he does, the music changes and repeats the first two notes from Bloodfest, the slowed down rendition of The Goldberg Variations that plays during the final Mizumono scene.

For the time being this song represents violence, and its repetition hints at the violence of Hannibal’s past, presumably against Mischa.

But while there’s violence in Mizumono, there’s also profound feeling. The song will reprise two more times— during Hannibal and Will’s meeting at the Uffizi gallery, and during their breakup (and Hannibal’s surrender) at Will’s house. What begins as violence will come to represent the deepest, most important moments of their relationship during the first half of the season.

This moment with the handprint is a bridge between the implications of violence and the implications of feeling. Will is faced with a sign of Hannibal’s violence, but at the same time he discovers the beauty of transformation that Hannibal fosters. He looks up from it to see the centerpiece of the fountain — an angel, a symbol of the divine.

It’s a moment of realization and deep meaning for Will, in which he comes to understand the beauty and divinity intrinsically tied up in violence, in Hannibal, and in himself.

Meeting Chiyoh

Will follows Chiyoh to an underground cell where he meets the Prisoner. He turns around to see Chiyoh with a gun trained on him.

He wants you to look at him, speak to him. But you’re not going to.

You’ve uh, cast aside the social graces normally afforded to human beings.

He’s cast them aside. All he’s allowed is the sound of water. It’s what the unborn hear. It’s their last memory of peace.

Water has always been a symbol of Hannibal’s influence, and it’s all the Prisoner is allowed to hear. As an instrument in Hannibal’s manipulations, he has no life outside what Hannibal chooses for him — he can’t even be acknowledged by anyone else. Just like an unborn baby, his entire world is his mother’s (Hannibal’s) influence.

What did he do?

He ate her.

Mischa? How long has he been your prisoner?

Chiyoh leads Will outside out gunpoint. When he realizes Chiyoh’s prisoner has to do with Mischa, he stops walking.

We have been each other’s prisoner for a very long time.

However did you find yourself in this situation?

That question applies to both of us.

Will realizes he and Chiyoh have Hannibal’s manipulations in common, and on his line he turns around to face her. Chiyoh’s reply reinforces this newfound equality, and as she delivers it she comes down the stairs to stand on the same step as Will. She still has her gun trained on him, but they are on the same level. They’re feeling out their equality.

The answer’s probably the same. What’s your name?

Chiyoh. How do you know Hannibal?

One could argue intimately.

This is a strange way to answer Chiyoh’s question. Rather than the implied meaning of “how,” as in “from where,” Will takes the very much secondary meaning of “to what extent.” Whatever “from where” explanation he could come up with won’t begin to cover the truth — that he feels himself becoming Hannibal, that he is inside his mind. It’s the antithesis of Chiyoh’s need for a story to explain the past.

Nakama? It’s a Japanese word for very close friends.

Yes, we were nakama. Last time I saw him, he left me with a smile.

A Japanese friend tells me that “nakama” is beyond a casual friend — it’s more like “comrade” or “member of your group,” or “person on your side.” This seems to be in line with what Chiyoh implies.

By calling his scar a smile, Will shows his ambivalence. Hannibal is both pleasure and pain to him. In spite of the violence of Hannibal’s actions, Will can’t help but feel good about him.

(For clarity’s sake, the word “ambivalence” is pretty commonly misused to mean “disinterest.” I’m using it with its Merriam-Webster definition of “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (such as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action.” It’ll come up later, so keep that in mind).

All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story. Tell me a story.

When Will shows his Mizumono scar to Chiyoh, she crosses the step to stand closer to him. She sees in him another victim of Hannibal’s manipulations, and Will sees it, too. Where Pazzi fails to match him in Primavera, Chiyoh is performing much more admirably, and dressing the part to boot.

But are Chiyoh and Will really the same?

In Roman Times

Chiyoh’s plea to tell her a story is answered by Hannibal, explaining the traditional division of meat “in Roman times.” Of course all of Hannibal’s favorite stories come from Ancient Rome — it’s the source of his beloved myths of divinity through coercion. And just for style points, the man he’s masquerading as is literally named Roman.

Hannibal is telling himself a story and he’s in high spirits again, feeding Sogliato to two adoring members of the Capponi. He gives them “purple artichokes served with spring lamb’s liver, lungs, and heart,” a meal that holds real significance.

I first prepared this dish in honor of my sister, when I was very young.

I’m sure you’ve perfected the recipe over the years.

The forbidden rooms in Hannibal’s mind are opening up. But all sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story, so he tells the story that he made this dish “in honor” of his sister, rather than out of her. This fantasy is the music that muffles the screams in his mind.

Bedelia picks up on the subtleties, however. She knows this meat is human, and she knows all that meat over the years was human. Logically, the main ingredient wasn’t really lamb the first time, either.

Bedelia’s mood is still on the upswing. She’s not thrilled, but she’s completely unafraid now. At worst, her expression as she watches her guests eat Sogliato could be described as distaste. Importantly, she’s still eating oysters, despite knowing they’re meant to improve her flavor. She is owning Hannibal’s tool of terror in order to keep from sharing in his meals.

Even though she’s keeping herself close to Hannibal, she’s not being terrorized anymore. She’s seen her way out, and she’s using it to her advantage. She’s watching the story of Hannibal’s new life fall apart, and she’s just gotten a clue to the story he tells himself about his past.

Tea with Chiyoh

This time Hannibal looks straight into the camera and his face fades into Chiyoh’s, the keeper of his story. She and Will have, presumably, just finished exchanging Hannibal tales, and Will muses on the necessity of storytelling:

We construct fairy tales and we accept them. Our minds concoct all sorts of fantasies when we don’t want to believe something.

The question, of course, is whose fairy tale he’s talking about. He’s likely referring to the story that Hannibal has told Chiyoh (and himself), that the Prisoner is the one who ate Mischa. But Will has his own fantasies. He spent the whole last episode pretending that Abigail was alive, after all. And now he has a new fantasy: that he and Chiyoh are both victims, lied to and manipulated by Hannibal.

Even though he’s accepted that he’s becoming Hannibal, Will suddenly has a new potential mirror for himself.

I accept what Hannibal has done. I understand why he has done it.

Mischa doesn’t explain Hannibal. She doesn’t quantify what he does.

He does what was done to her.

How do you know it was your prisoner who killed Mischa?

Hannibal told me so.

Chiyoh believes in the story of Hannibal’s becoming, that his nature was forged by the trauma of his sister’s death. It’s a fun disavowal of Hannibal’s reductionist backstory in the book Hannibal Rising which, legend has it, Thomas Harris wrote under pressure to create more film material.

It’s a disavowal because Will doesn’t buy it. He can tell the Prisoner didn’t kill Mischa, and if it wasn’t him then there’s only one other likely candidate.

Will’s come here in search of a story like Chiyoh’s — a explanation for Hannibal’s becoming. But he doesn’t find it. Instead he realizes that Hannibal ate Mischa himself, and that he used the situation to try to manipulate Chiyoh into murder. In the next scene Hannibal will confirm that nothing happened to him — he happened. Just like the fireflies, he fashioned his own becoming. And Will realizes, in this moment, that it’s true.

But what does that mean for him?

It means that if Hannibal became what he is because it’s in his nature, then the same is true for Will. The trauma he’s suffered because of Hannibal hasn’t made him what he is — it’s only brought out what was always there.

Hannibal took someone from you. Are you here to take someone from him?

If I were like Hannibal, I would have killed you already. Cooked you, ate you, and uh, fed what was left of you to him. That’s what he would do.

You’ve given that some thought.

Will realizes that he, just like Hannibal, is responsible for his own becoming. It’s a disturbing revelation, and he pushes back against it. After an entire episode of coming to terms with his similarities to Hannibal, he all of a sudden sets himself apart. He claims himself as different from Hannibal, not prone to his violence. This is the story Will is telling himself.

Chiyoh reminds him of himself — dressing like him and living under Hannibal’s influence. In an attempt to bond with her (and to convince himself that he’s like her), he tells her a story of the violence Hannibal would wreak but he never could.

Chiyoh says he’s given this some thought, and it’s true — he does little else these days but think like Hannibal. But is this really what Hannibal would do? Will’s here for information — now’s not the time for indiscriminate violence. And Hannibal isn’t (at least until recently) indiscriminate. Will tells Chiyoh a story that generalizes Hannibal, that makes him into a monster, so he can distance himself from him and better identify with her.

Do you know where he is?

Why are you looking for him after he left you with a smile?

I’ve never known myself as well as I know myself when I’m with him.

But Will is sending a strange mix of signals. He asks Chiyoh where Hannibal is despite, in the next episode, revealing that he knows he’s in Florence. He’s trying to bond with Chiyoh, to hunt for Hannibal with her. His next line, however, reveals the depth of their connection.

In Primavera, Will seems committed to Hannibal until Pazzi asks him outright what he’ll do when he finds him — that’s when he pulls back and admits he doesn’t know. Now he seems committed to aligning with Chiyoh until he’s pressed, and he has to admit how drawn to him he is.

Just like his scar that’s also a smile, Will’s feelings for Hannibal are a contradiction, at odds with each other. He’s learning the truth about himself, but he’s still far from comfortable with it. He is ambivalent.

You won’t find Hannibal here. There are places on these grounds he cannot safely go. Bad memories.

What do these grounds hold for you?

Hannibal wanted to kill that man for what he did to Mischa. I wouldn’t let him take his life. So Hannibal left his life with me.

He was… curious if you would kill? I imagine he still is.

Will doesn’t imagine Hannibal is still curious — he knows he is. You can almost see the two contradictory parts of his self as he speaks. The part that identifies with Chiyoh asks the question. The part that is Hannibal makes the statement.

Will is curious, too.

How Did Your Sister Taste?

Next we see Hannibal washing Bedelia’s hair. The bathtub holds a lot of significance that I talk about extensively in my Antipasto analysis. It’s a place of vulnerability—two episodes ago Bedelia sank into its water and nearly lost herself in Hannibal’s influence. Now, however, she’s the one influencing. Just like she eats the oysters he serves despite knowing what they mean, she lets herself be naked in the water to draw Hannibal closer to it himself.

And it’s working — in Antipasto he wouldn’t come near the bathtub, but now he’s sitting next to it. By Dolce he’ll be in it. This gradual submersion in the bathtub is Hannibal’s loss of control as orchestrated by Bedelia — she’s luring him into it gradually. And the conversation shows it.

What were you like as a young man?

I was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust.

Would you like to talk about your first spring lamb?

Would you?

Why can’t you go home, Hannibal? What happened to you there?

Nothing happened to me. I happened.

How did your sister taste?

Bedelia has been paying attention and put two and two together — she’s decoded the story Hannibal tells himself, and she forces him to confront it. In Antipasto she had terrified flashbacks of murdering Zachary Quinto. Now she doesn’t even flinch when Hannibal brings it up, instead driving home her own analysis of him. This time she sinks beneath the water deliberately, almost menacingly.

But what’s her aim in dissecting Hannibal’s past like this? She’s throwing him further off balance, to be sure, but the throw has a direction. She’s manipulating him, deliberately guiding him through a thought process.

It’s clear that she’s leading him, but where? We’ll find out in their final conversation.

Freeing Chiyoh

Before Will comes to him, we see the Prisoner eating snails. The whole cell is full of them — just as the snails are meant to attract firefly larvae to fuel their transformation, the snails in the cell are meant to attract Chiyoh. With every visit to the cell, she’s supposed to be tempted to kill and transform. This is Hannibal’s metaphor, and he may very well have established the snails there himself, just for fun.

By eating the snails, the Prisoner might be hoping to transform, too. And transform he does… kind of.

Will comes to free the Prisoner, but it takes a while to understand what he’s doing. Every action Will makes can be misinterpreted — twice it looks as though he’s going to kill the Prisoner, but both of these moments dissolve into moves to free him. Is this a trick for the audience, or is this the conflict inside Will?

The tire iron suggests the latter. Will uses it to break open the cell, but he’s still holding it when he releases the Prisoner outside. There’s an urgency to getting the Prisoner to leave — Will’s afraid he’ll kill him if he stays too long. This is his attempt at freeing Chiyoh the kind way, in which nobody has to die.

But someone has to die. The Prisoner returns to his cell, and we see him kill Chiyoh. But then time reverses and, in another world, we see Chiyoh kill him instead. The teacup comes back together and, in this world, Chiyoh does what she’s supposed to.

Will knows it’s what she’s supposed to do — as she screams, we see him sitting in the woods, waiting. Despite having “freed” the Prisoner, he’s not at all surprised at the outcome.

Importantly, Will is responsible for someone’s death in both possible worlds. Chiyoh’s capacity to kill may be in question, but Will’s isn’t. There is no scenario in which the Prisoner runs away and Chiyoh is freed by unviolent means. What Will is supposed to do is manipulate someone into murder. It can’t be any other way.

Will’s Becoming

You did this. You set him free.

It’s you I wanted to set free.

You said Hannibal was curious if I would kill. You were curious, too.

I didn’t want this.

Yes you did. You were doing what he does. He’d be proud of you. His nakama.

Despite what Will may have told himself about freeing the Prisoner, Chiyoh sees through it. She realizes now that she’s not dealing with another victim, but with another Hannibal.

And Will can’t deny it.

Did you know? On some level, you knew. He created a story out of events that only he experienced. All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.

For Mischa. I’ll help you find him.

Why would you help me?

I have no reason to stay here. Not anymore. You saw to that.

It’s important to remember that Will knows the Prisoner is innocent. He drives this point home to Chiyoh, presumably to prove to her the extent of Hannibal’s manipulations. In doing this, however, he also emphasizes the fact that she has tortured and murdered an innocent man.

And this means, by extension, that he has murdered an innocent and broken man. This wasn’t self-defense for Will, and it wasn’t righteous. Will is no longer killing bad people because it feels good — the Prisoner is only blood and breath undergoing change to fuel Chiyoh’s (and his) radiance.

In case there’s any doubt about how far Will is slipping, he dispels it by making his very own murder tableau. There’s no one to impress or trick now — not even Chiyoh seems to see what he’s doing. Instead Will, in complete privacy, turns the Prisoner’s body into an elaborate representation of a firefly. In a way, all those snails the Prisoner’s been eating have finally paid off.

The tableau is Will’s embrace of his own becoming. By manipulating Chiyoh into killing, he rises another step toward being Hannibal, toward being divine. And he does it all by himself. Hannibal really would be proud.

Will came to the Lecter Estate to learn the secret of Hannibal’s past, and found out there wasn’t one. As Hannibal says, nothing happened to him — he happened. No one ate or fed him Mischa — he ate her. In realizing this, Will comes to realize something vital about himself. Although Hannibal influenced him to become a killer, he didn’t make him one.

The potential was always there.

He Pays You a Visit or He Doesn’t

The final scene is between Bedelia and Hannibal, who is at the piano. He plays the harpsichord in season 2, when Will’s attempt on his life inspires him to compose a new piece of music and get him released from prison. Now he’s playing again — he knows Will is going through another stage of his becoming, and he has high hopes for him. But he’s not composing anymore. Will’s transformation is out of his hands now.

What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control or predict.

Or negotiate.

I would suggest what Will Graham makes you feel is not dissimilar. A force of mind and circumstance.

Love — he pays you a visit or he doesn’t.

This is another assertion that Hannibal has lost control of his life because of his love for Will. But now he’s much more cheerful about it.

The same with forgiveness. And, I would argue, the same with betrayal.

The god betrayal, who presupposes the god forgiveness.

We can all betray. Sometimes we have no other choice.

Mischa didn’t betray me. She influenced me to betray myself, but I forgave her that influence.

If past behavior is an indicator of future behavior, there is only one way you will forgive Will Graham.

I have to eat him.

Hannibal says he was never betrayed by Mischa, but was influenced by her to betray himself. He never does say what that influence entailed, but whatever it was, it’s experiencing a renaissance in Will.

Hannibal’s love for Will makes him betray himself — it makes him lose control and act rashly. It robs him of his dearly-held dominion over the people and events around him. Chances are good that this is what Mischa did. Hannibal’s whole existence requires secrecy and obfuscation — he walks a tightrope over the possibility of being caught, and he relies on brutality and utter control to maintain his balance.

Love doesn’t factor well into this lifestyle.

It’s strongly implied that Mischa was the first person Hannibal ate. And while it’s been proven not to be a formative event in Hannibal’s becoming, it is definitely meant to be traumatic. Is it really how Hannibal forgave her?

Probably.

But is it really how he wants to forgive Will?

Maybe not.

This conversation, just like the whole Florence half of this episode, is being led by Bedelia. She’s gained a huge amount of power and sway in this episode. She senses that Will is going to be Hannibal’s downfall, and that getting him to focus on that is the best way to keep herself alive. She’s forced Hannibal to think about eating his sister, and now she guides him into thinking about Will in the same way. She plants the idea in his head.

She also halts a little on her line “we can all betray”— she seems to have trouble with it. This brings up an important question: whose betrayal is she talking about? Could it be Will’s? Based on the direction this conversation is headed, Bedelia doesn’t seem keen on getting Hannibal to think about Will’s betrayal kindly. Could it be Mischa’s? That’s what Hannibal takes it to be.

But what if it’s her own? By saying that “we can all betray,” she includes herself in the pool of betrayers, seemingly unnecessarily. Throughout the episode Bedelia has been gaining ground on Hannibal, taking advantage of his instability to find herself a way out. She is betraying him, and she really does think she has no choice.

While Will makes Hannibal betray himself by losing control, Bedelia is making him betray himself by destroying the only thing he loves.

I know which one sounds worse to me.

But is Hannibal really so far gone? Can he really be driven like this? After all the last line, “I have to eat him,” is his.

This is a question that will have to be examined more in Dolce, because while Hannibal will try to eat Will, it’ll be Will who draws the knife first. Hannibal’s arc through the first half of season 3 is one of giving himself up more and more completely, culminating in the ultimate surrender of control in the name of love. This last attempt to free himself from Will’s influence is a blip on that arc, and while it makes sense for Hannibal to try to break free from the change he’s undergoing, it also makes sense for him to be pushed in that direction, especially when he’s in such a fragile state.

And even if Hannibal does plan to eat Will, it’s probably not with the conviction Bedelia pushes him into. Will’s arc over the course of this episode is full of ambivalence, and it only makes sense for Hannibal’s to match.

The bottom line is that while Hannibal may be telling himself that he needs to eat Will, I’m not at all convinced he believes it, or that he would have come to the conclusion on his own. But there’ll be more to explore on that front in the episodes to come.

Secondo is an examination of the profound changes Will and Hannibal influence in each other.

And with Hannibal’s final conversation with Bedelia, influence has taken on new weight. Hannibal and Will are changing in ways they never wanted in the beginning of the show. Each is causing the other to betray himself. From now on, the events of Mizumono are on the back burner. What has to be forgiven, now, is influence.

And “influence” has a very specific meaning when it comes to Will and Hannibal’s relationship. Just like the fireflies and Flora, Will is beyond Hannibal’s direct manipulations now — he’s achieved divinity and is becoming on his own. Similarly, Hannibal’s loss of control comes from his love of Will — it’s something within him that Will is no longer responsible for.

While Secondo shows Hannibal and Will’s profound realization of each other’s influence, it never has them meet face to face. “Influence,” for them, means simply knowing that the other exists, and feeling that existence inside themselves.

In exploring Will and Hannibal’s changing lives and understanding of each other’s influence, Secondo resets the stakes of their relationship. In showing their discomfort and ambivalence with these changes, it sets the stage for a final confrontation, and for a reckoning not just with each other, but with themselves.

Next Episode: Aperitivo