Characters / Hannibal – Main Characters

Main Character Index | Main Characters | F.B.I. | Verger Family | Supporting Characters | Notable Killers | Minor Characters

Season 1 and 2 spoilers ahead! Only spoilers from Season 3 should be blanked out.

---

Will Graham

Will Graham

"This is my design."

Played By: Hugh Dancy

"It isn't very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living."

Former homicide detective turned teacher, Will Graham is pulled into the dark world of criminal profiling by Jack Crawford to help catch some of the most demented serial killers known to man. Socially awkward, but brilliantly gifted, Will navigates his way through the dark amalgam of haunting cases, guided by his FBI-appointed psychologist, Hannibal Lecter. Will is constantly on guard against and fearful of being consumed by the darkness he confronts on each case.

---

• Adopt the Dog: In a quite literal sense. The first episode shows him as odd, glum and unsocial — until the halfway mark, when he rescues and adopts a stray. His compassion for the dog (as well as for the five others he rescued before) marks him as a genuinely good person.
• Alone with the Psycho: In "Savoureux", Will takes Hannibal back to Abigail's house in Minnesota. There, Will is horrified to realise that Hannibal is a serial killer and has been cruelly manipulating him all along.
• Ambiguous Situation: In the season three finale, After embracing following the murder of Dolarhyde, Will pushes himself and Hannibal off of the cliff and into the Atlantic ocean. It's possible he intended for both of them to die once he fully succumbed to the violent urges Hannibal had spent the entire series trying to bring out, but it's also possible Will did so in an attempt to evade the FBI. He warns Bedelia of his plan to let Hannibal escape beforehand, and that Hannibal will most likely come after her, implying this was his plan. On the other hand, there was likely a much less dangerous way for them to both escape. This is assuming this really happened, and is not just one of Will's intricate hallucinations.
• Anti-Hero: He uses his perception to capture serial killers, but is tormented by the idea of coming closer to them in personality. He's also cold, unreceptive to social niceties, quiet, scruffy, and distinctly odd — in many ways, someone your average person would suspect of being a criminal on first impression, if they didn't know any better.
  • His time in Chilton's mental hospital darkens him considerably, to the point he directly attempts or considers murder several times and he begins manipulating those around him to achieve his goal of catching Hannibal. Edging closer to Villain Protagonist in Season 3 after he manipulates Chiyoh into killing her captive so she will be free to assist him in finding Hannibal. By the end of the series (and once he manipulates Hannibal's escape from prison), it is clear that Will's limits on what he will do have lapsed substantially.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He can exactly work out a killer's methods, motivation and mindset by studying crime scenes. While this is often disturbing, he uses this ability to directly profit himself once, by mimicking Dr. Gideon's method to escape a van when handcuffed. He was nice enough to skip the parts where he murdered anybody.
• Badass Bookworm: Although he rarely shows off this attribute, Will is more than capable of holding his own in a fight. He beat Randall Tier to death, and kills Dolarhyde with Hannibal despite being severely injured and bleeding out.
• Batman Gambit: In Season 2, Will starts to perform these. In "Mukōzuke", he plays on Freddie Lounds' obsession with him and offers her an exclusive interview as part of his plan to discover his secret admirer. He then plays on his admirer's affections by convincing him to kill Hannibal. He also clearly plays with Hannibal's perceptions of him. After being released from the asylum, he resumes his therapy with Hannibal, and plays a careful balancing act with his own behavior to entice Hannibal in a move that Word of God has outright referred to as "seduction." The problem is, however, that not all of it is an act, and Hannibal is very persuasive...
  • When Will tells Hannibal that he doesn't want to have anything to do with him anymore and will no longer seek him out, Hannibal turns himself in to spite Will. Will later reveals that he actually manipulated Hannibal into doing so, since he predicted what would happen. But when he originally rejected Hannibal, there were two possible outcomes: if Hannibal decided to leave, then Hannibal would gone from his life permanently. If Hannibal turned himself in instead, then he would finally be in prison for all his crimes; therefore either outcome favors Will.
  • This continues into Season 3, first with Will's gambit that rejecting Hannibal will lead to him turning himself in, then attempting to lure Dolarhyde into a trap by first badmouthing him publicly, getting Chilton permanently and severely mutilated, then by engineering Hannibal's escape to have both him and Dolarhyde killed.
• Battle Couple: In the series finale, he helps Hannibal take down and kill Francis Dolarhyde. Bloodied and beaten, they embrace afterward... before Will throws them both off a cliff.
• Berserk Button:
  • Will puts up with a lot of shit, but someone hurting his beloved dogs? Absolutely not. In "Shiizakana", he beats a man to death for doing precisely that. Poor Buster.
  • Hannibal sending Dolarhyde after his family turns Will absolutely livid, although he directs his wrath specifically towards Hannibal rather than Dolarhyde himself.
• Better with Non-Human Company: He's much better at dealing with animals. His reluctance to interact with others slowly diminishes, though he's still twitchy and awkward around others most of the time.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: While this is always present throughout the show, Will initiates it himself in Season 2. While Hannibal is a deeply evil man who must be stopped, Will's efforts to undermine him grow morally darker as Season 2 progresses. He uses manipulation and quid pro quo tactics to influence events while imprisoned. In "Mukōzuke", grief over Beverly's death drives him to collaborate with another serial killer to bring down Hannibal. Later, when he's released and begins planning his Batman Gambit to catch Hannibal out, he makes a mural out of Randall Tier's body parts in order to maintain the illusion he's on Hannibal's side. While Randall's murder was justified self-defense, even Jack begins to wonder if Will is far gone as a result of these actions, and once it's revealed that Hannibal has goaded some of his other patients into going to similar extremes in their self-defense, it becomes a scary case of not so different.
• Blessed with Suck: His gift, while helpful where work is concerned, has made Will unsociable and mentally disturbed. And then there is how his empathy attracts the attention of the worst kinds of people, from one serial killer to another serial killer.
• Broken Pedestal: To Alana in Season 2 after he attempts to get Hannibal murdered from behind bars, until she discovers the truth.
  • The reverse also applies, what with Will acting cold to her after he gets out of prison. Though some of it seems to be part of his plan to catch Hannibal, some of it seems genuine since not only did she not believe him about Hannibal, she also started a relationship with him.
• Brutal Honesty: He is very blunt when voicing his opinions, such as when he flat-out tells Hannibal he doesn't find the latter an interesting person.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: But a decidedly unfunny use of the trope. Will's empathy makes him approach profiling killers very differently and causes him to come across as strange and off-putting to others.
• Cassandra Truth: Will is the first person to realize that Hannibal is indeed the Chesapeake Ripper, and he spends most of the second season repeating this to anyone who would hear him out, but by that point Hannibal has well and truly both framed Will for his murders and driven him insane to the point where he's more or less an unreliable witness. Alana, while sympathetic, believes Will is delusional and trying to misdirect his guilt, while Jack outright indulges the possibility that Will is an intelligent psychopath trying to frame someone for his murders.
• Catchphrase: When he is taking on a killer's persona, he describes the killer's actions and reasoning in first person with the phrase "This is my design." Averted frequently, however, as Will does not always drop this line. This usually indicates that he's dwelling upon a different crime. Subverted with the mural killings in Season 2, when he angrily notes an element outside the killer's intention is "not my design".
• Comes Great Responsibility: Despite how much his gift torments him, Will feels this way with regards to it, explaining his need to sleep in victim Abigail Hobbs' hospital room night after night — something Jack questions, but Hannibal understands. In "Coquilles", he realizes just how bad profiling and empathizing with serial killers is for him, despite all the good it does, but he ultimately can't bring himself to leave the job.
• Composite Character: His working with Hannibal to catch other serial killers and forming a romance with him brings the novel version of Clarice Starling to mind.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: For Hannibal. Despite the nasty affair of Hannibal framing him for his murders and getting him thrown in jail before getting him right back out again, Will immediately returns to resume their therapy. He spends the rest of season two acting hostile toward his previous crush, Alana, who is Hannibal's partner at the time. Where he once treated her with warmth and sympathy, Will is now cold and snippy with her especially when their conversations steer towards Hannibal. While some of it is revealed to be an act to cozy up to Hannibal enough to trap him, Will is at the very least genuinely competing for his attention on a subconscious level, and his relationship with Alana only improves after she sees Hannibal for what he is and becomes uninvolved with him.
  • Season three proves even worse as the relationship grows more and more romantic. Where Will once thanked Bedelia for believing him about Hannibal's true nature, he is utterly savage in his disdain for her after he finds her in Florence, clearly upset that Hannibal had taken her with him in Will's place. After going to see Hannibal in prison after three years apart, his first move is to immediately go see Bedelia, wherein he mocks her and asks if she's been to see Hannibal, too. He tells her that if Hannibal ended up eating her, she'd have it coming. The Stinger at the end of the entire series is Bedelia sat at a table set for three, her leg severed from her body and roasted before her, implying it was Will's idea to go after her.
  • He even seems to be jealous of Hannibal trying to drive other people to murderous insanity. After comparing notes with Margo and realizing the villain of the week was Hannibal’s former patient, he confronts Hannibal with an uncharacteristic level of bitchiness, even petulance, in his voice. Like he suddenly felt like he wasn’t as special to Hannibal as Hannibal was to him.
• Creepy Good: In Season 1, Will is a good person who wants to help others, but most people keep their distance around him and vice versa. Taking on the personalities of serial killers does not make him the most friendly or comforting individual.
• Dark Is Evil: He starts to wear darker clothing once he seemingly allies himself with Hannibal. This is at first subverted when it was revealed it was just a ploy but is then played straight in Season 3 when he switches back to long, dark coats and styled hair, symbolizing his genuine fall into darkness.
• Deadpan Snarker: Between his neurotic tics and reserved nature, Will finds time to weave in some truly beautiful snark.
• Dead Person Conversation: In prison, with barely any contact to the outside world (except Chilton, who's Chilton), Will takes to occasionally addressing shades of people he's lost, recalling what they said to him in life, especially in his mental river-space. He also does this in Season 3 with Abigail.
• Defective Detective: As Freddie Lounds cruelly points out.
• Destructive Romance: Essentially his relationship with Hannibal, though season three shows that as their relationship gets more romantic and Will starts fully succumbing to his repressed darkness, their mutual tendencies towards violence get turned on everyone else around them rather than at each other.
• Drugs Are Bad: Hannibal was secretly administering mind-altering drugs to Will in order to induce his blackouts and possibly aggravate his encephalitis...
• Drugs Are Good: ...in Season 2, however, narco-analytic therapy allows Will to recover buried memories and reconstruct Hannibal's machinations.
• Easily Forgiven: For his treatment towards Hannibal during his incarceration by both Jack and even Hannibal himself. Subverted with Alana Bloom, to whom Will becomes a Broken Pedestal until she discovers he was right.
• The Empath: Deconstructed. His ability is described as "pure empathy." He can feel exactly what others feel and get into their heads to take on their point of view. The downside is that the impressions he get are often so strong that they overwhelm him both mentally and physically, leading to him be deeply disturbed, finding himself too able to sympathize with killers while rarely getting exposure to those with kinder natures, and often considered to be on the edge of madness himself by those around him. This bites him in the ass at the end of Season 1 when Hannibal convinces everyone that Will murdered Abigail.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • In "Savoureux", he realizes that Hannibal is a serial killer.
    Will: I know who I am. I'm not so sure I know who you are anymore. You... you have no traceable motive., which is why you were so hard to see. You were just curious what I would do. Someone like me, someone who thinks how I think — wind 'em up and watch 'em go. Well, apparently, Dr. Lecter... this is how I go.
  • Has another in "Takiawase", when he realizes that Hannibal's a cannibal.
• Evil Tastes Good: In the second half of Season 2, though it's unclear if it's genuine as a result of Sanity Slippage or if it's part of his Batman Gambit to finally catch Hannibal out. It's revealed to be the latter in "Ko no Mono."
• Eyes Always Averted: He wears his glasses in such a way that he doesn't have to make eye contact but can still maintain a measure of courtesy. Jack Crawford explicitly calls him out on this.
• Fallen Hero: Though his moral compass grew gradually darker over the course of the series, Will cements himself firmly as this trope in the series finale, where after his actions directly lead to Dolarhyde permanently scarring and mutilating Chilton, he manipulates both Jack and Alana in order to plan Hannibal's escape from prison and participates in the brutal killing of Dolarhyde alongside Hannibal.
• Frame-Up: Hannibal frames him for several of his murders. In the Season 1 finale, he is incarcerated at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Hannibal later arranges for his exoneration and release, however.
• Friend to All Living Things: Will has a soft spot for stray dogs, patiently rescuing a skittish one, taking him home, and giving him a bath in the pilot. It's revealed it's his sixth dog. He named it Winston. As of "Fromage", he's up to seven.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Ultimately why Will decides to stop following Hannibal. After trekking across half of Europe to find him while attempting to understand his mindset, Will figures it's a lost cause, saying to Hannibal that he "doesn't share [Hannibal's] appetite." This unintentionally turns out to be the straw that breaks Hannibal, driving him to turn himself in, unable to cope with Will's dismissal.
  • Subverted in "The Wrath of The Lamb" where it was revealed that Will only feigned rejection so that Hannibal would turn himself in, implying everything he said was actually false.
• Good Is Not Nice: Will's involuntary mental intimacy with hardened psychopaths (and general lack of social skills) makes him somewhat hard to get along with, in contrast to the charming Hannibal Lecter. He has a kindly nature (if inappropriately honest) when he's not flipping out. It's just that he's usually flipping out.
  • He starts becoming more ruthless in Season 2 in his desperation to catch Hannibal. He bargains his help with an ongoing investigation for another look at the evidence against him from Beverly, and he later tries to arrange Hannibal's murder, though he does not seem happy resorting to either for obvious reasons.
• Guile Hero: Will at first very rarely encounters physical confrontations and uses his sidearm rather than fighting hand-to-hand. He instead overcomes challenges using a combination of his native intelligence, lateral thinking and his empathy — though he almost never does so until later seasons, he can manipulate people's emotions and perceptions as well (or nearly) as Hannibal.
• Happily Married: From what is seen in his scenes with Molly in the latter half of Season 3.
• Happy Place: Will's coping mechanism in Season 2 is to imagine that he's fishing in a quiet river, alone and free. The alternative is to rot in his cell. Occasionally, he imagines extra factors influenced by recent experiences, such as Abigail when he's trying to avenge her death, and floating corpses when he thinks about a murder. He later discusses it with Hannibal in "Mizumono", which Hannibal later mentions as a possible coping mechanism when Will is bleeding out.
• Hearing Voices: He starts having auditory hallucinations in "Fromage", the cause of which are unknown, until "Buffet Froid" where he is revealed to have encephalitis. And by "revealed," we mean to the audience, not to him.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Subverted. His extreme empathy is very useful in his line of work but is a source of massive psychological issues and makes it hard for him to have even casual social relationships. And that was before Jack started using him to back-engineer the psychoses of serial killers.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Just how many times does he alternatingly assist and try to kill Hannibal?
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Courtesy of Freddie Lounds and, as of the first season finale, Hannibal himself. This is reversed after his exoneration to an extent.
• Heroes Love Dogs: He has adopted many stray dogs (to the point of being a Crazy Dog Dude) and seems much more comfortable around them than he is around people.
• Heroic RRoD: The more he uses his empathy to scan crime scenes and extrapolate what happened, the more problems Will seems to develop.
• He Who Fights Monsters: People around him wonder whether he's on the path to becoming a killer himself. Naturally, he shares their fears. Illustrated vividly in "Mukōzuke", when he imagines growing his own pair of Wendigo antlers after asking a serial killer to murder Hannibal. As the second season wears on, Will realizes that he must play into Hannibal's expectations to bring him down, and it's more and more difficult to tell how much of what Will does is for that end — including by Will himself.
  Will: It's not very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Described by Word of God as a heterosexual man who happens to be in love with Hannibal.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Inverted. In Season 3, Chiyoh points out that Will fears if he doesn't kill Hannibal, then he will end up being like him.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Subverted. It's strongly implied that he's killed Freddie Lounds to endear himself to Hannibal but she's revealed to be just hiding.
• Imaginary Friend: Hallucinates Abigail for eight months in an attempt to deal with the grief of losing her again.
• Important Haircut: After he's released from the asylum. Will's curls had been growing steadily longer and wilder, but are now cut shorter than they were originally, presenting a much less hapless face to the world (and to Hannibal).
• The Insomniac: As a side effect of his abilities.
• Karma Houdini:
  • While he's nowhere near as bad as the titular antagonist, one does wonder how Will got off with little more than a slap on the wrist and the eternal scorn of Alana Bloom for attempting to murder Hannibal by manipulating Matthew Brown, although there was little to no evidence he could've been involved beyond Hannibal's word.
  • He also gets off relatively lightly for his murder and mutilation of Randall Tier, though Kade Prurnell's comments prove the FBI is aware of his involvement. This seems like it's leading into this being averted, as the FBI puts out a warrant to arrest him for the murder in Mizumono, but by Season 3 this plot point has vanished, most likely because the FBI now knows that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper, which would then — if not pardon — clarify Will's actions.
  • Although he's called out on it by Chilton and Bedelia, there was no real way of bringing him to task for his hand in Chilton's mutilation.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Will might not much like being around people, and he might regularly expose himself to the worst they have to offer, but his foremost priority is bringing killers to justice. Even behind bars, he wants to escape because only he knows Hannibal for what he is, and refuses to lie and plead guilty even if it would save his life.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • In "Mukōzuke", he asks another serial killer to kill Hannibal.
  • And again in "Ko no Mono", where he sets Mason Verger against Hannibal since he has reason to want both of them gone.
• Loners Are Freaks: At the beginning of the series, Will does not have friends unless you count his dogs. His empathy makes others wary of him and Will himself prefers to be alone. This starts to change as the series goes on — the list of people Will has become familiar with includes Jack, Hannibal, Abigail, Alana, Beverly and Margot.
• Made of Iron:
  • He survives Hannibal gutting him like a fish with nothing but a scar to show for it (though, admittedly, it's mentioned that Hannibal deliberately cut him surgically and in a way that ensured his survival), and gets up impressively quickly after being thrown off a train.
  • In the series finale, he manages to assist Hannibal in killing Dolarhyde despite multiple stab wounds, including one to the face. The third place setting at Bedelia's meal in the final scene implies that he may have survived the fall off the cliff.
• Man Bites Man: Restrained, he bites a chunk out of Cordell's face out of spite for his coming execution.
• Manipulative Bastard: Will starts to show shades of this in Season 2, after Hannibal frames him and gets him sent to an insane asylum. His conversations with Beverly in particular begin to evoke this feeling, starting as early as "Sakizuki". It's clear from the beginning of the episode that he is willing to lie and deceive those around him to bring Hannibal down. However, "Mukōzuke" really marks the beginning of Will's manipulative tendencies, as continues to play everyone in his ongoing game of Xanatos Speed Chess with Hannibal, this time by playing on his secret admirer's affection to convince him to kill Hannibal. It really comes to a head after his release from prison, wherein he manages to manipulate Jack, Hannibal, Alana and Freddie to varying degrees to the point where nobody is really sure whose side he's actually on (perhaps not even Will himself).
  • He puts Chilton in the line of fire through specific hand placement during their attempt to lure out the Red Dragon, although this seems to have been subconscious.
  • His arrangement of the plan in the series finale is also remarkably cunning — he convinces Jack to "fake" Hannibal's escape in an attempt to lure out Dolarhyde by supposedly having Hannibal transported in a van to another secure location, but unbeknownst to Jack, he'd also made a deal with Dolarhyde himself behind Jack's back that results in Dolarhyde shooting and killing the police officers escorting them, allowing Hannibal and Will an opportunity to escape the van and drive off, culminating in the joint-killing of Dolarhyde.
• Mathematician's Answer:
  Hannibal: Am I your psychiatrist or are we simply having conversation?
  Will: 'Yes', I think is the answer to that.
• The Mentally Disturbed: His ability to empathize with serial killers leaves him unstable and gives him terrible nightmares. They only get worse as the first season wears on. As it turns out, his way of escaping this is turning toward the darkness inside him and embracing it rather than rejecting it. He seems much more stable and confident the more his morality evolves to be more like Hannibal's.
• Messianic Archetype: He's tempted by a Satan figure (Hannibal), persecuted by Freddie Lounds, betrayed by one of the men he trusted most, and unjustly punished. His daydreams in Season 2 show him standing in a stream, as if to invoke the image of baptism. In "Hassun", Hannibal likens himself to the disciple Peter and Will to Jesus when he says that he cannot deny Will a third time, a reference to Matthew 26:69-75. In "Mukōzuke", however, Matthew Brown compares Hannibal to Judas for his betrayal, so he similarly hangs Hannibal while ironically crucifying him.
  • Hannibal directly refers to him as "The Lamb of God" during a conversation with Jack.
• Messy Hair: It doesn't matter whether he's asleep, just woken up, wandering around semi-conscious in his underwear, dressed for teaching, or visiting someone; his hair is always the same mass of untamed curls. One suspects that if he does own a comb, it gets used on his dogs (who all have very well-maintained coats). Likewise, though he owns a hair dryer, we only see him using it to dry a dog after its bath. As of the end of "Yakimono", however, he's sporting a quite neatly styled new 'do as part of his new "lure" for Hannibal.
  • Subverted through most of Season 3 where he keeps it styled back, especially when he plans on meeting with Hannibal.
• Missing Mom: His dad looked after him as a child.
• Missing Time: Experiences periods of this as a symptom of his encephalitis which disturbs him greatly.
• Mr. Fanservice: Nearly every episode so far has featured him in tight briefs (they're his usual sleepwear, and we frequently see him suddenly awakened) that leave little to the imagination. In "Sakizuki", he winds up totally naked.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Beverly's murder disproves Will as the Ripper, he decides to send another killer after Hannibal in revenge, leaving very obvious hints from Gideon to tip off Alana and Jack about it, and thus incriminating him for conspiring to kill another man. Thankfully nothing serious comes of it, but it's the moment when Will becomes a Broken Pedestal to Alana.
• Not Helping Your Case: While incarcerated, his repeated accusations of Hannibal tire Jack and Alana to no end, with each subsequent accusation causing more and more disbelief.
• Odd Friendship: Pretty much any friendship he manages to have is odd, because he still exudes discomfort when interacting with anyone, even people he likes. High-powered, dominant, loud Jack and twitchy, sensitive Will are a particularly strange match, but Will's relationship with Hannibal takes the cake for strange friendships on the show. Despite all the horrors Hannibal puts Will and his loved ones through, the end of "Mizumono" seems to imply that Will genuinely has some form of respect towards Hannibal; when Hannibal is discussing the fact that he trusted, opened up to and let Will see him, with the latter apparently repaying that friendship with betrayal, Will denies it. Also, when Hannibal accuses Will of wanting him dead, Will denies this as well.
• Official Couple: With Hannibal at the end of season three.
• Once More, with Clarity: In Season 2, Will regains some of his lost memories from Season 1, and relives events with his hallucinations removed, showing that in spite of his illness he could perceive reality on some level. Will learns some things the audience already knew, such as the fact that his hallucination of Garrett Jacob Hobbs was in reality Dr. Gideon^note Hannibal lied and claimed that there was no one there at all. and Hannibal's lies about the clock drawing test. But new things that the audience missed are also shown, such as Hannibal force-feeding Will an ear and purposefully inducing his seizures.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: At the end of "Yakimono", when he goes to resume his therapy with Hannibal, he's better-groomed than we've ever seen him, indicating he has an ulterior motive.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Averted. Hugh Dancy is able to constantly maintain his American accent all throughout the show despite his natural accent being British.
• Parental Substitute: He has paternal feelings towards Abigail Hobbs, although we haven't seen him in that role outside of dream sequences. When he tries to act on his paternal impulses toward her, the fact that he killed her father makes her resentful. But she also looks to him for understanding about how it feels to kill somebody. By the end of Season 2, he finally confronts Hannibal about Abigail's death and accuses him of taking her away from him. And then in "Mizumono", it's revealed that Abigail was alive all along and under Hannibal's control, and that Hannibal was planning to take both Will and Abigail away with him until he learned of Will's betrayal. The whole idea sounds like Hannibal wanted to start a family with them.
• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Will always wakes up sweating, and frequently sweats when stressed or scared. In "Rôti", his sweat reaches new levels of moisture as his illness worsens.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Begins embracing this after Beverly's death at Hannibal's hands.
  • He sends Matthew Brown to murder Hannibal, a task that Brown almost completes.
  • In "Su-zakana", he would have killed a particularly loathsome serial killer in cold blood if Hannibal hadn't stopped him.
  • In the series finale, he concocts a trap with Alana and Jack to kill both Hannibal and Dolarhyde — though, in reality, he is actually planning Hannibal's escape and is manipulating them in order to allow himself and Hannibal to kill Dolarhyde together, therefore invoking this trope toward Dolarhyde.
• Perma-Stubble: It adds to his scruffy, disheveled look.
• Perpetual Frowner: Not that he has much to smile about.
• The Philosopher: He can be quite poetic and philosophical at times, and is capable of holding a conversation with Hannibal in this regard.
• Precision F-Strike: In Season 3, Will is furious with Hannibal for trying to kill his family, his verbal reaction being this:
  Will: I'm just about worn out with you crazy sons of bitches.
• The Profiler: This is Will’s profession. Like most TV profilers, he builds hypothetical psychological profiles of serial killers. Unlike most profilers, his extreme empathy means that he eventually becomes just like the people he hunts.
  • Profilers, generally, tend to have mental breakdowns because they realize they share traits with the killers they hunt. For Will though, rather than run scared, he begins to embrace this identity.
• Prone to Tears: But it isn't so much "bursting into tears" as it is "becoming insane". He does exhibit extreme distress to the point of tears after one exceptionally brutal re-imagining in "Entrée" and has to take a moment or two to gather himself. Subverted in "Sakizuki", when Will breaks down crying during a prison visit with Hannibal and Alana, begging Hannibal to help him, and Hannibal accepts. Will's fragility lasts exactly as long as it takes to get back to his cell. It turns out Hannibal isn't the only one who can manipulate other people's perceptions of him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Manly Man to Hannibal's Sensitive Guy and the Sensitive Guy to Jack's Manly Man.
• Sleepwalking: Starts having bouts of this. First, he wakes up on the road a few miles from his house, and then later wakes up standing on his own roof, having somehow gotten out there during the night.
• Sanity Slippage: As detailed above — he feels the way killers feel, and worries he'll eventually do as they do. Suffering from a neurodegenerative illness which he was unaware of from as early as "Coquilles" certainly didn't help one bit. In Season 2, he gets treated for his encephalitis, so the worst of his neurological madness is behind him. However, as the season goes on, he begins to indulge in some worrisome habits that seem to be egged on by his philosophical musings with Hannibal.
• Serial-Killer Killer: Not that Will starts the series as a killer willingly, but as his character develops from twitchy and nervous to composed and confident under Hannibal's influence, he does eventually start committing more murder attempts and actual murders, realizing more and more that it feels good to do bad things to bad people. He starts the series shooting Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, went after Abel Gideon, he killed Randall Tier in self defense after Hannibal sent him his way, almost shoots Clark Ingram for being human garbage, goads Hannibal into breaking Mason's neck hoping it would kill him, and eventually he and Hannibal take down the Great Red Dragon together. He eventually reveals in the finale that he considers these acts "beautiful."
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Just like his literary counterpart, there are times he gives this to the Trope Codifier himself.
  • He confronts Hannibal in "Su-zakana" with a hint of Tranquil Fury when Hannibal continues to play innocent towards him, telling him that he won't put up with any more of his lies.
  • In "Digestivo", he tells Hannibal that he no longer cares what he does anymore. Hannibal tries to get a rise out of him by claiming that he still denies the fact that he enjoys killing. Will counters that he merely tolerates his darker urges whereas Hannibal revels in it, and concludes by saying that he doesn't share Hannibal's depravities.
  • In the Red Dragon arc, almost like in the novel, when Hannibal attempts to make a verbal jab at him, Will immediately prepares to leave while telling Hannibal that he's tired of that tactic.
• Specs of Awesome: In their first scene together, Jack cannily realizes Will uses his glasses as a means to avoid direct eye-contact. He always removes them when about to analyze a crime scene. You can generally tell how much he trusts another character by whether he wears his glasses in their presence. Tellingly, if Freddie Lounds is in the same scene, he always either has them on or puts them on. However, this trope is relatively void from Season 2 onwards, as he almost never uses his glasses.
• Stalker without a Crush: His obsession with Abigail Hobbs is only healthy in comparison to her real dad's, though he genuinely means well for her.
• Taking You with Me: He pulls Hannibal over the edge of the cliff with him in the series finale, in what Hugh Dancy described as an attempt to rid the world of the danger of both of them. Whether he succeeded or not is left uncertain.
• Thinking Tic: Will is twitchy and tends to move around a lot anyway, but it's especially noticeable when he's deep in thought. When hashing out a case he often wanders around Hannibal's office fidgeting with whatever's in reach (another contrast with Hannibal, who maintains a predatory stillness and moves very deliberately).
• Took a Level in Badass: When Will gets released in "Yakimono", his entire demeanor has shifted. No longer is he the nervous, mentally unstable wreck he was prior to his incarceration, but he is clear-headed, confident in his words and even colder than he was before, but out of determined clarity rather than from his antisocial tendencies.
• Tragic Hero: Will's talents as The Empath are what allow him to be a successful FBI agent, but these talents also cause him to empathise with monsters and psychopaths to a degree that could change him for the worst, something he's aware and terrified of. These talents also end up drawing the attention of Hannibal Lecter, who gradually attempts to use Will's abilities to corrupt him, and in order to fight back, Will is forced to not only think like a Serial Killer, but act like one, a course of action that begins to consume his kind nature. By the end of the series, his relationship with Hannibal has permanently altered him and he attempts to prevent himself from becoming a monster by throwing himself and Hannibal from the top of a cliff. Depending on how one interprets The Stinger, he may have survived and become a Fallen Hero alongside Hannibal.
• Übermensch: How he describes himself when he discusses his renewed outlook on life in "Naka-Choko", complete with an "above good and evil" spiel. Although this was merely part of the facade Will adapts to lure Hannibal into a false sense of security as part of his plan to entrap him.
• Unscrupulous Hero: He begins to have a few more traces of this (as well as Nominal Hero). After being institutionalized and framed for Hannibal's murders, Will is forced to use increasingly questionable methods in his attempts to expose Hannibal. When working with Beverly results in her death at Hannibal's hands, Will goes all out and sends Matthew Brown to kill him. After his exoneration, he remains significantly more willing to kill and even admits to finding the experience empowering.
• Weirdness Magnet: Although partially a result of his profession, Will seems to be attractive to killers who love his "pure empathy" and want him to understand them. Hannibal Lecter is obsessed with him from early on in the first season, Matthew Brown protects and kills for him throughout the second season, Georgia Madchen stalked him and Abel Gideon turns to Will to confess his fears about his lost identity. On the less murderous side of things, Peter Bernadone appreciates Will for treating him like a human being, while Margot Verger drags Will into her macabre family affairs during her attempt to sire a child to steal the family business from Mason.
• Wendigo: Appears in Will's imagination/hallucinations as the embodiment of Hannibal's true nature.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Alana in Season 2. After attempting to have Hannibal killed, she no longer considers him a friend, even pursuing a relationship with Hannibal to cut ties with Will, and and she all but gives Will the cold shoulder from then on. This is subverted when they reconcile in "Mizumono" after Alana realizes what Hannibal really is.
• When He Smiles: It's usually a little awkward and he's obviously not used to the expression, but it's all the sweeter for it. The three best examples of genuine, not-awkward-at-all smiles from Will throughout the show are when he is reunited with his dogs after being released from prison in Season 2, his smile to Hannibal when they see one another in the gallery for the first time in eight months in "Dolce", and the one he gives (also to Hannibal) after killing Dolarhyde in "The Wrath of the Lamb" before declaring that the murder they committed together was beautiful.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He has terrible nightmares and hallucinations that worsen the more involved he becomes with serial killer cases.
• Xanatos Gambit: Setting Mason on Hannibal serves Will's purposes no matter what the outcome is, since he has reason to want both of them dead at that point. However, when Mason gives him the opportunity to kill Hannibal, he chooses instead to risk his life to free him.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: At the end of "Su-zakana", Hannibal is openly delighted to see Will ready to execute a serial killer in cold blood. The later in the show we go, the less shame Will feels about his approval, though.

Hannibal Lecter

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, AKA "Hannibal the Cannibal", "The Chesapeake Ripper", "The Copycat Killer"

"It's nice to have an old friend for dinner."

Played By: Mads Mikkelsen

"Killing must feel good to God, too. He does it all the time. And are we not made in His image?"

Accomplished psychiatrist, and sociopathic serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper, at the height of his career(s). Hannibal Lecter is assigned to be Will Graham's psychiatrist — helping navigate the increasingly disturbing cases Graham encounters, while gaining unprecedented access to the FBI for himself. Excepting his homicidal tendencies, Hannibal is every bit the gentleman, with his impeccable wit, astonishing intellect, gourmet palate and eye for the more refined aspects of life.

---

• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the Thomas Harris novels, Hannibal is described as small and wiry. In the TV series, he's tall and relatively well-built.
• A God Am I: Implied. He justifies his murders by claiming that God enjoys killing and that all humans are made in God's image. When he discovers the human "mural", he looks down on the "muralist" through an opening in a grain silo, making him appear high and godlike. However, he fails to realize that he's merely a devilish man imitating God's power over life and death. See Fallen Angel below.
  Hannibal: This isn't cannibalism, Abel. It's only cannibalism if we're equals.
• Affably Evil: In addition to being Faux Affably Evil, since it seems he does genuinely have sincere regard for the other characters he interacts with. The events of the first season can be seen as the doctor's efforts first to make Will into his friend and get him to quit profiling in order to ensure he never captures Hannibal, and then deciding to betray Will and make him an enemy, because otherwise Will would ultimately capture Hannibal. Allowing Will's encephalitis to cloud his mind could similarly be seen as pre-emptive self-defence. He seems to display genuine regret for Will's incarceration and Abigail's murder, evil though he might be. Of course, in keeping with the source material, this is left deliberately ambiguous...
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: A creepy variant. Hannibal has a habit of stroking people's faces, as if to comfort or caress them, right before or after doing something horrible to them. Sometimes you could pass it off as simple practical touching, such as the brief physical check-up (pulse, muscle tension, temperature) on Will when he has a seizure brought on by an illness that Hannibal knows about and Will doesn't. Other times, it seems like genuinely trying to reassure them that what he will do/has done/is doing means he cares for them even while administering cruelty. Examples are when he strokes Miriam's face in "Entrée" as he chokes her (and then kisses the top of her head when she goes limp), when he cradles Abigail's face moments before killing her, drugs Will and shoves a tube down his esophagus to stuff a human ear into his stomach and pets him afterward, touches Bella's face after aborting her suicide attempt, does something like embracing Beverly Katz before he strangles her, and gently strokes James Grey while sewing him into his own mural before he dies.
  • Several times, he has touched Will as though to reassure him after Will has done something to compromise his morals. In "Trou Normand", he only rests a hand on Will's shoulder after Will decides not to tell the FBI that Abigail killed Nicholas Boyle; by "Su-zakana", when Will tries to shoot a helpless serial killer whom he thought couldn't be prosecuted, he cups his cheek with open delight.
  • In the Season 2 finale, he does this twice to both Will and Abigail, right before gutting him and cutting her throat, respectively.
  • In the series finale, Hannibal affectionately nuzzles Will's head before they fall off the cliff.
• Agent Peacock: He loves elegant (and brightly-colored) clothes, opera, art, interior design, and fine food. He's also a formidable serial killer and skilled fighter, as his encounter with Tobias and later Beverly and Jack demonstrate.
• Antagonist Title: His first name is the name of the series, and he's its primary Big Bad.
• Anti-Villain: Subverted. The first season was crafted to lull the audience into developing a fondness for him before really springing the duplicity and mind games and worse, and eventually clarifying his depraved motives for what were earlier seemingly, possibly well-intentioned actions.
• Armor-Piercing Question: It's a key part of his job as a psychiatrist and he tends to do this more than Breaking Speech.
• Bad Boss: It's implied in the very first episode that he killed and ate his former secretary.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In "Savoureux", Hannibal successfully frames Will for his murders.
  • In "Mizumono", he also manages to beat Jack in hand-to-hand combat and grievously wound him, have Alana pushed out of a window by Abigail (who he secretly kept alive all season), gut Will, and then cut Abigail's throat. He then makes his escape, leaving all four of them to their gruesome fates. The last shot of the season is him on a plane out of the country. This time it is, at least, a bitter victory; he was very hurt by Will's "betrayal" or he wouldn't have reacted so violently.
  • In the Season 3 finale, depending on how one interprets the ending. Hannibal convinces Will to kill Dolarhyde with him, and they embrace afterwards... before Will throws them both off a cliff. It's left intentionally ambiguous, as we don't know if Will was sacrificing himself to stop Hannibal, succumbing to Hannibal and sacrificing himself to save the world from both of them, or if he was launching them both off the cliff in an attempt to escape from the authorities so they can begin killing together.
• Bad Samaritan: It's kind of his thing, along with a heavy dose of persuasion.
• Badass Boast: To Matthew Brown when he attempts to kill him.
  Matthew: Maybe your murders will become my murders. I'll be the Chesapeake Ripper now.
  Hannibal: Only if you eat me.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: A wickedly efficient Serial Killer who happens to favor fine suits.
• Badass in Distress: He's captured and almost killed by Will's other murderous admirer in "Mukōzuke", and then again in "Tome-wan" when captured by Mason Verger.
• Bait the Dog: Hannibal is pretty enjoyable as a character and likable (despite us knowing his true nature) until "Entrée". See Offscreen Villainy.
  • Similarly, the episodes "Sorbet" and "Fromage" seem to be about Hannibal's admittedly peculiar way of approaching friendship with Will. But in later episodes, it turns out being Hannibal's friend might be worse than being his enemy, and more like being his plaything.
  • Fuller confirms that this was entirely deliberate:
    Bryan Fuller: I wanted to lull the audience into a false sense of security with who this character was. We had seen him in the films and the literature post-incarceration where the world knows exactly who he is and what he is and what he's capable of. He had no motivation to hide any of it, so I wanted to really get the audience into Hannibal's corner as a likable character. Then when he does terrible things, you've already fallen in love with him and like him as a character. So you have to then juxtapose what you've just seen against what you've experienced in the previous episodes. But the first time he smashed Alana Bloom's head against the wall, it's startling. It's like, "Oh, yeah. We're watching Hannibal. He's that guy."
• Battle Couple: In the series finale, he helps Will take down and kill Francis Dolarhyde. Bloodied and beaten, they reveal their mutual feelings not even two minutes later.
• Beneath the Mask: His civilized facade masks his depraved appetites and propensity for horrific crimes.
  • While Hannibal always speaks to Jack politely and respectfully, he's contemptuous of him behind his back. He derisively refers to him as "Uncle Jack" in a conversation with Will and cultivates distrust between Jack and Will.
  • Bedelia even calls Hannibal out for wearing a "person suit" to veil who he is inside. Despite professing friendship, he manipulates Jack into mercy-killing his wife for no reason beyond his own amusement.
  • As of "Mizumono", the mask has been fully dropped, and everyone sees him for who he truly is.
  • The mask slips more when Hannibal is engaging in dangerous fights. His hiss of "he's in the pantry" when Alana asks where Jack is shows the animalistic side of him, and he looks at Jack with seething hate when they fight in Italy.
  • In prison he cares less about talking about his depravity, but doesn't have a chance to showcase his darker side. When he does get his hands on human meat, he shows his true character with aplomb◊.
• Berserk Button: He cannot stand rudeness. If you fail in courtesy around him, your best hope is that he finds you useful for manipulating someone he cares more about (as with Lounds). He is forgiving of Will's brusqueness, though, maybe a concession to Will's personality disorder. How... nice?
• Beware the Quiet Ones: To almost everyone in the show, he appears very polite, kind, and gentlemanly, which is not anything you would expect from a Serial Killer... a cannibal, no less.
• Big Bad: He's gradually shown as being the main antagonist of the series. Though near the end of the third series, he becomes something more of a deuteragonist, with the role of the main villain passed on to Francis Dolarhyde.
• Big Bad Friend: To Will.
• Blade Enthusiast: Doctor Lecter knows his knives. He engages a knife dealer at a fair, where they discuss blades before he settles for a serrated Spyderco, used for gutting a deer.
• Blatant Lies: From the audience's perspective, anyway. But in-universe, he mostly relies on twisting things or loopholes and ambiguities to cover himself, so it's noticeable to the viewer when he just flat-out says something that contradicts what they've seen.
• Blood Lust: When not using his civilized veil, Hannibal exhibits this trait (the character in any medium has often been compared to Dracula). When testing the point of a fish hook in "Œuf", he draws blood and sucks at the cut for a disquietingly long time. In "Fromage", when the inside of his mouth is bleeding, there's a brief shot of him licking his teeth.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Possibly, if he truly means it when he refers to Will as a friend. In "Kaiseki", his session with Bedelia and his scene with Will both indicate that he seems to genuinely consider his relationship with Will friendly, despite his actions.
  • Alana and Bedelia also note how distastefully Hannibal views rudeness, which is one of his primary motives for murder, and Hannibal even seems offended by the accusation that he poisoned a dinner — he would never do that to the food. It is possible he was also referring to the accuser himself, considering his proclivities.
• Character Tic: Hannibal always takes a little pause before and after taking a sip or a bite to savor the taste and smell. He may even give the fork an appreciative smile, which is kind of awful when you consider what was probably on it.
• The Chessmaster: He has years worth of backup alibis and contingency plans.
• Close-Range Combatant: Hannibal is a devastating melee combatant, and will kill his foes with anything at hand — except guns, in contrast to all the FBI characters and several serial killers. This is used in one murder to show the audience that Hannibal wasn't responsible.
  • He's so effective that he manages to get close to and disarm a gun-wielding Beverly Katz from halfway across the room.
• Combat Pragmatist: As an ex-surgeon, Hannibal knows where your weak points are, and will use anything at hand to strike them. Weapons he has used include: scalpel, ladder, pen, heavy statue, candlestick, kitchen knife (multiple), pepper mill, fridge door, shard of broken glass, his own apron and a freaking dish cloth.
  • When he encounters Beverly Katz snooping around his house, he switches off the lights to prevent his opponent drawing a bead on him while he approaches.
  • This is also clearly shown at the start of Season 2 in his fight with Jack, whom he is outmatched by. Mads Mikkelsen himself remarked the only way for him to win in that fight was to cheat.
  • During the confrontation with Dolarhyde, Hannibal bites out the man's throat to finish him off.
• Control Freak: Comes with being a psychopath, but Hannibal is so intelligent and immaculately prepared for every crime he commits that it's rare we ever see him lose his cool. When he does, however...
• Consummate Liar: Lies to everyone around him and is rarely caught. When he does get caught, he flawlessly spins a new lie.
• The Corrupter: His true modus operandi. He gets a kick out of manipulating his patients into killing, and actively gets involved in their lives, even setting some of them on one another to do so.
  • Will isn't his first victim, but he seems to treat him as his magnum opus, convinced that goading Will to use his empathetic abilities will eventually lead him to agree with a killer's mindset instead of just understanding them. Everything Hannibal does to Will throughout the first two seasons seems to be setting him up to become a protege of sorts.
  • Bedelia Du Maurier is implied to have been a victim of one of Hannibal's patients.
    • The truth is later revealed to be that and worse: it turns out Hannibal had been planting thoughts in Bedelia's head to point where she believes that her self-defense against Hannibal's patient went into full-blown murder. Her initial reluctance to speak to the FBI isn't because she's defending Hannibal; it's because she's defending herself. It's not till this revelation that we realize how terrifying Hannibal's manipulations are. Bedelia even says it goes well beyond coercion and into persuasion.
  • Hannibal's involvement with the Verger siblings, whose relationship is already morbidly twisted and abusive, exacerbates it to ungodly levels by coercing the two into playing a game of "who will be the first Verger to kill the other". And of course being Hannibal, he doesn't jump straight to the killing before indulging in a bit of Gaslighting.
  • He instilled Miriam Lass with a fear-response that caused her to lash out with lethal intent when she came across whomever he hypnotically convinced her was the Chesapeake Ripper; in this case, Chilton.
  • He actively encouraged Randall Tier's psychotic urges, and even sets him on Will as part of his greater plan to turn Will into a true killer.
  • In the Season 2 finale, it is revealed that Abigail is alive, and her reveal comes with pushing Alana out a window. Abigail later admits to Will that she did not know what to do, and that Hannibal got in her head.
  • By the end of the series, it is made clear that Hannibal has corrupted nearly everyone around him to some extent.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Hannibal's affection for Will often worsens his already existing homicidal, Yandere tendencies, especially after Will resumes their therapy. He actively alienates Will from both Jack and Alana and pretends to and later does kill Abigail to keep Will all to himself (in Will's own words, he's "fostering codependency"). He then surrenders to the police and goes to jail, something he'd always worked diligently to avoid at all costs, to spite Will, to reject his rejection and to make sure Will knew where he was when he inevitably changed his mind. After waiting it out for three years, Hannibal learns that Will has married and manipulates Dolerhyde to try and kill Will's wife and step-son by proxy, and though he fails, he succeeds in getting Will's attention again.
  • In Season 3, he figures out that Will is married with a step-child. He says, “I tried to give you a child.” Singular. He was referring to Abigail, who was orphaned by Will and Hannibal simultaneously, making them surrogate co-parents. But he didn’t intend Margo to get pregnant by Will, so doesn’t feel like he gave him that baby. He manipulates Mason into aborting the pregnancy and never refers to it again, even when needling Will about fatherhood.
• Cruel Mercy: Showcases a variation of this to Bella Crawford in the "Takiawase" by keeping her alive when she attempts suicide by drug overdose. He later reveals to Jack that he did it so the latter would be forced to Mercy Kill his wife himself.
  • He does the same to Mason Verger, snapping his neck and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down as well as horribly disfigured.
• Crocodile Tears: Zig-zagged in "Savoureux". During a session with Dr. Du Maurier, Hannibal sheds tears for Abigail and Will, one of whom he himself killed and the other which he framed. Whether or not the tears in question are sincere is left extremely ambiguous.
• The Dandy: He's near-obsessed with his appearance and likes to leave an "indelible impression" wherever he goes.
• Dark and Troubled Past: According to Mads Mikkelsen, Hannibal never killed Mischa. She was murdered by a man implied to be the prisoner Chiyoh was guarding, being molested at the same time, and Hannibal only ate her after that. While his mindset was probably already close to what it is nowadays, finding his sister in such a state certainly didn't help.
• Dead Person Impersonation: In Italy, he passes as Roman Fell, an arts professor he murdered.
• Deadly Doctor: Used to work as a surgeon and thus still has the medical experience to use in carrying out his killings or saving a life.
• Depraved Bisexual: Downplayed; he's a confirmed omnisexual and quite a sadistic serial killer, but a connection between these two traits is not drawn within the show.
• Destructive Romance: Essentially his relationship with Will, though season three shows that as their relationship gets more romantic and Will starts fully succumbing to his repressed darkness, their mutual tendencies towards violence get turned on everyone else around them rather than at each other.
• Deuteragonist: With Will being the protagonist, and Jack and Alana sharing the role of the tritagonist.
• Devil in Plain Sight: While the audience certainly knows what Hannibal is, nobody in the series does, nor do they even suspect him until Abigail in "Relevés" and Will in "Savoureux". He almost seems aware this is the case (or possibly fond of private jokes); any meal with him will usually involve a food-related pun, or several.
  Bryan Fuller: If you look at Hannibal Lecter, he is — beyond the European dandy aesthetic and the accent, you're essentially dealing with Frasier Crane. It would be like suspecting Kelsey Grammer. Most audiences wouldn't suspect him of doing horrible things. Frasier Crane is very uptight, very fussy, he wouldn't dream of doing something terrible, because he's such a gentleman. That was the idea behind portraying Hannibal Lecter as an idiosyncratic guy, as opposed to somebody who instantly sets off everybody's alarm bells.
  • By the end of Season 2, this is no longer the case, as everyone in the cast is aware of Hannibal's true nature as a killer. In fact, he has either wounded or killed most of them.
• Disney Villain Death: Will pulls him off of a cliff in the series finale, though it's ultimately ambiguous whether this killed them. Word of God confirms that he survives the fall, along with Will.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He brutally murders people who have been discourteous to him. As seen in "Sorbet", he collects business cards, then waits for years before collecting their owners.
  • His treatment towards Will is also this, giving the impression of a possessive and jealous lover. When it's revealed Will has betrayed him, he reveals Abigail is actually alive and was hoping to flee and start a new life with the two of them, but then spitefully maims both of them just to get back at Will. And this time, Abigail really does die.
• Dissonant Serenity: A master of this, of course.
  • Just watch him near the end of the pilot. Hannibal walks calmly and sedately into the house, simply observing Will and what's going on as people bleed to death.
  • He's also unnervingly calm as he strangles Miriam Lass. He doesn't even flinch as she fights and struggles.
  • He also saves the life of Bella Crawford after she overdosed on morphine to kill herself before the cancer could with a look of pure cold inquiry.
  • Both times that Will holds him at gunpoint, Hannibal speaks calmly to him and gives no more reaction than to look away slightly.
• Distressed Dude:
  • Will forces Hannibal to drive with him to Minnesota in "Savoureux", and he's narrowly rescued by Jack.
  • In "Mukōzuke", Matthew Brown knocks him unconscious with a tranquilizer dart, then arranges him in a crucifixion pose with a noose around his neck. Jack and Alana shoot Brown and narrowly rescue Hannibal.
  • In "Tome-wan", Hannibal is once more captured, this time by Mason Verger. It's Will, of all people, who assists in his escape.
• Doesn't Like Guns: He's never seen using a gun, even in his murders. It's part of what makes him so terrifying; he's able to take down armed victims without need of a firearm of his own.
• Egocentrically Religious: He justifies his murders to himself and to the "muralist" by claiming that God enjoys killing and that humans are made in God's image. He killed the "muralist" and placed him in the pupil of his human "mural" to symbolically reflect the light of God, assuring the "muralist" that God does exist.
• Establishing Character Moment: His first appearance comes with a succession of these. We first see him in decidedly sinister lighting, but enjoying a fine meal as classical music plays. The scene comes directly after Will having a realization that the killer they're hunting is eating his victims... specifically, their livers, as a nod to arguably Anthony Hopkins's most famous line.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In the penultimate and series finales, it is made crystal clear that Hannibal is in love with Will. Despite having his freedom, Hannibal decides to help Will kill Dolarhyde even at the risk of his own life.
  Hannibal: My compassion for you is inconvenient, Will.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Repeatedly subverted. If Hannibal seems to spare someone or offer them help, he's always willing to destroy them if need be to save himself and will torment people simply out of curiosity. For example, while he clearly despises Mason and seems to like Margot, he quite casually induces the former to forcibly sterilize the latter simply to further his manipulations of Will.
  • He does have one very odd standard, falling in line with his Blue-and-Orange Morality; he would never serve someone a poisoned meal. Not because he thinks it's cowardly or anything; but because he wouldn't do something like that to the food.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Hannibal could not understand the unconditional love that Mischa gave him, and the love he felt for her. He eventually rationalized this as undue influence she was exerting on him, so he ate her after she was killed.
• Evil Feels Good: Almost says as much when he compares the act of killing to acting in God's image.
• Evil Is Petty: This comes with his narcissistic nature. After all, he kills his victims due to their lack of manners or courtesy, and if he is wronged in any way, even if the other party had perfectly good reason to act against him, he will make them suffer in the worst way possible if he thinks killing them would be too easy or boring, and will continue to torment them throughout simply because it amuses him.
• Evil Mentor: Appears to take this role toward Abigail, in addition to the complex relationship he has with Will. He certainly seems to like corrupting others or at least lead them down mentally unhealthy roads. Late in Season 2, he implies that he's been trying to make more serial killers for years, as he does successfully with Randall Tier.
  • To add, he's a former university professor of psychology, although how evil he was in that capacity is not stated.
• Evil Tastes Good: But the audience already knows that.
• Fallen Angel: Certainly not a literal example, but the concept is a strong influence on the show's characterization of Hannibal Lecter.
  Bryan Fuller: [Mads Mikkelsen] talked about the character not so much as "Hannibal Lecter the cannibal psychiatrist", but as Satan — this fallen angel who's enamored with mankind and had an affinity for who we are as people, but was definitely not among us — he was other. I thought that was a really cool, interesting approach, because I love science fiction and horror and — not that we'd ever do anything deliberately to suggest this - but having it sub-textually play as him being Lucifer felt like a really interesting kink to the series. It was slightly different than anything that's been done before and it also gives it a slightly more epic quality if you watch the show through the prism of, "This is Satan at work, tempting someone with the apple of their psyche".
• False Friend: To everyone but especially Will, Jack, and Alana. Throughout the first season, he counsels Will and speaks of him as a friend, only to undermine Will's sanity, frame him for murder, and gloat over him at the psychiatric facility once Will is incarcerated. Regarding Abigail, despite his outward concern for her, he's certainly made sure she feels trapped and alone by convincing her to hide the body of Cassie Boyle's brother and not tell anyone she unwillingly helped her father with his murders. When she seeks solace with Hannibal after witnessing Will's sanity slippage, he murders her.
  • This is played with later on; it's clear that he genuinely likes Will, Alana, and Abigail at the very least (Word of God also confirms this). It just doesn't make him unwilling to hurt them, manipulate them, kill them, frame them for his murders, or otherwise act as a friend wouldn't. It's difficult to say whether his friendship is false or not because Hannibal himself certainly doesn't see it as such.
  • Averted with Will and exemplified in the series finale, where Hannibal stands between him and the Red Dragon in order to Take The Bullet for him. Seems even sadistic serial killing cannibals have loved ones.
• Fatal Flaw: According to Bedelia, it's narcissism. Also, his affection for Will, since Hannibal himself says that Will makes him "betray himself".
• Faux Affably Evil: He counsels Will and speaks of him as a friend. His definition of friendship, however, involves driving Will to the brink of a mental breakdown, and in "Buffet Froid", he hides the fact that Will has severe encephalitis, which is terrible for his mental state and could also kill him or leave permanent brain damage. In "Savoureux", he frames Will for Abigail's murder and gloats over Will in the psychiatric facility.
  • Hannibal also ventures into Faux Affably Evil territory when he considers someone being rude to him or to anyone else he knows, a future snack of his or a threat to his schemes. And also, he's an unrepentant cannibal.
• Feel No Pain: When Hannibal is branded with an iron in "Digestivo", he barely even flinches. Same goes for his torture session with Matthew Brown. He also takes knifes, punches, grappling hooks and a shot to the stomach remarkably well. He does feel pain but has extreme control over himself and is too proud to let it show.
• Foil: To Will. Where Will is an anxiety-ridden, twitchy, scruffy, Good Is Not Nice Anti-Hero, Hannibal is a calm, splendidly well-clothed, Affably Evil Villain Protagonist. To boot, Will is brutally honest, while Hannibal lives a life of deception. Finally, they both share stunning, paralyzing insight into other peoples' personalities. But Hannibal does it through detached analysis while Will gets under their skin and walks a mile in their shoes.
• For the Evulz:
  • At the end of "Relevés", Hannibal admits to Abigail that he called her father just to see how he would react to news that law enforcement was coming for him. He also arranged for Abigail's tormentor to confront her because he wanted to see how she'd react.
  • When Will finally realizes Hannibal is a killer, Will specifically says the reason Hannibal was so hard to "see" was because he has no motive. He was simply curious to see what would happen. One could interpret his gaslighting and framing Will in this manner as well.
  • "Yakimono" reveals that all his crimes as the Chesapeake Ripper are more or less works of art he does for personal enjoyment rather than any sort of vengeance or self-preservation.
• Frame-Up: He murders Dr. Sutcliffe, then frames Georgia for the killing. In the Season 1 finale, he framed Will for his murder of Abigail, leading to Will's incarceration in a psychiatric facility. In Season 2, he frames Chilton for the murders of Abel Gideon and two FBI agents.
• Freudian Excuse: Averted. Unlike the novel and film Hannibal Rising, which gives Hannibal one hell of a Freudian Excuse, the series version of Hannibal is indicated to have always had homicidal impulses with no dramatic origin other than simply having been born that way. It's made clear that the death of his sister Mischa was never the impetus for his lifelong murder spree, but rather simply an excuse for him to stop being The Fettered.
• Friendless Background: It seems being a sociopathic serial killer and cannibal makes it hard to relate to people and have friends.
• Gaslighting:
  • Starting from when Hannibal smells Will in "Coquilles", Hannibal discovers Will has encephalitis but decides to keep this from him, and convinces Will that his various symptoms, including hallucinations, lost time and other unpleasant effects are the result of a mental illness. He also convinces Will that Gideon (who Will is seeing as Garrett Jacob Hobbs) isn't actually there when he bursts into his house with Gideon at gunpoint in "Rôti".
  • He also did this to Miriam Lass, setting her up as his insurance policy to frame Chilton.
  • Almost everything he does to the Verger siblings has this intent. While he genuinely likes Margot and hates Mason, he's more than willing to tip Mason off to what Margot's plans to outmaneuver him are.
• Genius Bruiser: His fight with Tobias left no doubt of this. Also, the fact that he can overpower and murder multiple people suggests that he's physically formidable. He also gives Jack a run for his money in the opening sequence of "Kaiseki".
• Gentleman Snarker: Despite his refined demeanor, Hannibal is capable of delivering some spectacularly witty remarks of his own, even when he is at his enemies' mercy.
• Hazmat Suit: Hannibal wears a plastic body suit, sans head covering, so that he won't get blood and viscera on his elegant clothes.
• Hidden Badass: Much like the literary counterpart, Hannibal Lecter can be badass when he needs to be. As shown in "Fromage", Hannibal managed to kill Tobias by using his office library ladder to break one of Tobias' arms, throat punching him, and finally smashing his head in with a statue. And when the FBI come and see what happened, Hannibal "explains" it was all self-defense.
• Hypocrite:
  • Hannibal repeatedly tells Bedelia that he wants to be Will's friend, and yet acts in ways that no real friend would, such as manipulating Will, lying to him about his encephalitis, and knowingly undermining his sanity.
  • In "Rôti", Hannibal waxes poetic about mental illness, telling Bedelia, "Madness can be a medicine for the modern world ... a boost to the psychological immune system to help fight the existential crisis of modern life." This from a man who is watching his colleague's life fall apart due to a mental illness, and who knows firsthand how mental illnesses can drive people to destructive acts!
  • Following the above, in "Digestivo", Hannibal admonishes Will for "delighting in wickedness", acting like a slighted friend who's been toyed for Will's own amusement... in spite of everything he's done to Will and everyone else over the past two and a half seasons for his own amusement.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: While Hannibal gets fixated on Will's empathetic abilities and repressed violent tendencies early in the series, he seems to get more and more smitten with Will the more Will manages to successfully manipulate him in return (which in turn leaves him even more open to Will's manipulations). At one point he comments admiringly that despite all his manipulations, he could never actually predict Will. By the latter half of the series, Will seems to be playing Hannibal even more than Hannibal played him earlier on - but Hannibal seems to love it.
• If It's You, It's Okay: It's emphasized throughout the series that Hannibal is a narcissist who isn't capable of loving anyone or anything besides himself. However, it's revealed in Season 3 that Will is the one exception to this rule and unlike every other partner Hannibal is connected to, Will is the only one he loves or even remotely cares about.
• I'm a Humanitarian: This is Hannibal Lecter, after all. It's heavily implied that most of his meat dishes qualify — even the ones he serves to others, making much of the cast unwitting cannibals.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Shows shades of this in "Sorbet", and much of his fascination with Will is in the idea that he may have found the one person who can understand and accept him.
• Implied Death Threat: In "Kaiseki", when Bedelia expresses discomfort with the idea of lying to the FBI about Hannibal, he delivers a subtle threat.
  Bedelia: Jack Crawford doesn't know what you're capable of.
  Hannibal: Neither do you.
• Indirect Serial Killer: While he's a Serial Killer, he also takes pleasure in manipulating people to kill. He sends Nicholas Boyle to confront Abigail while she's alone. When she panics and kills him in self-defense, Hannibal pretends to be helping her but also manipulates her with a view to controlling her. It's heavily implied that he sent the patient who attacked Bedelia after her and then used her overkill against her. He then also manipulated Will into murder.
• I Shall Taunt You: He taunts Jack about Bella's death before their struggle in Italy.
• It Amused Me: In several situations he would be better served by simply doing nothing, but instead acts because he can't help but wonder what would happen. For example, given his extreme dislike of Mason Verger, if he had let Margot go though with her plan; Mason would have been killed anyway, and he would be completely blameless. However, he couldn't resist informing Mason For the Evulz, despite the potential negative outcomes for him.
  • He has no reason to inform Garrett Jacob Hobbs that he has been discovered, other than he was curious about what he would do.
  • Hannibal gained nothing by informing Dolarhyde their conversation was being monitored but did it anyway solely out of spite.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For Will, and only Will in the series finale, where he selflessly fights to defend Will despite having been shot.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Every time it is implied that Hannibal may care for another person or does something seemingly altruistic, it is always eventually revealed to have been a manipulation or superficial gesture. His relationship with Will is based around horrifically abusing him psychologically and emotionally into mirroring his own mind. He slits Abigail's throat out of spite towards Will, even though she herself did nothing wrong. He ate his sister Mischa because she loved him and he loved her. This is proven once and for all in "Dolce", where when Will is revealed to no longer reciprocate his feelings, he tries to murder him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He may be antagonistic, but Hannibal is not wrong to be annoyed and unnerved with Franklyn's closeness, as he approaches him outside of their appointments, which is highly unprofessional and rude.
• Karma Houdini: At the end of seasons one and two, where in the former he frames Will for all his crimes, and in the latter he escapes scot-free while leaving Will, Jack, Alana, and Abigail mortally wounded. Finally subverted in the third season, when he turns himself in.
• Kick the Dog: Natural, he's a serial killer. But slitting Abigail's throat in front of a dying Will, minutes after he discovered she was still alive stands out as an act of pure, sadistic cruelty.
  • He simultaneously expresses sympathy for Bella's death and taunts Jack about it when he confronts him in "Contorno".
  • A huge example in "Dolce", when he drugs and ties Jack to a chair, forcing him to watch while he saws into Will's head with the intention of feeding him the latter's brains.
  • In "... And the Beast From the Sea", he sends Dolarhyde to murder Will's wife and step-son, with him remorselessly admitting it when Will confronted him. Bedelia even noted that Hannibal waited for Will to form a family of his own, for him to take away from Will. Be it out of jealousy or just because, it was still a cruel move.
• Lack of Empathy: For the banal and the rude especially. In one conversation with Will, he is unusually heartfelt, apologizing for taking Abigail away from him. In their next scene he makes a callous remark about Will vomiting up her ear.
• Leitmotif: Has one in Bach's "Goldberg Variations", which plays when Hannibal has successfully gotten away with something. An electronically-slowed, elegiac version accompanies the last act of "Mizumono".
• Lightning Bruiser: Of the several fights we see Hannibal engage in over the course of the first two seasons, we see that he can dish out a lot of pain when necessary, and he is incredibly fast. His speed in particular is showcased at the end of "Takiawase", when he manages to outmaneuver and overpower Beverly while she has a gun pointed at him. It's mostly off-screen, but it's there.
• Long Game: "Yakimono" reveals that everything Hannibal has been doing as the Chesapeake Ripper has been leading towards a culmination of all his crimes. To what exact end is yet to be seen, but you can tell how far back he's been planning it since keeping Miriam Lass alive and using Chilton to hypnotically influence her, in the process setting him up to be framed as the Ripper. He did this over the course of at least two years.
• Mad Artist: He executed several of his copycat killings in an artistic manner. He also completes a human "mural" created by another artistically-inclined serial killer, by using the serial killer's body. One of his later victims is painstakingly inserted into a tree, with bouquets of poisonous flowers trained through his chest cavity.
• Mad Doctor: Both of psychiatry and surgery. He even lampshades it to Abigail right before he kills her off-screen, saying he wanted to see what people would do given the problem in a very For Science! type of way.
• Made of Iron: Walks away from both of his fights with Jack, even though the second fight was more of a crude torture sequence. And after being shot in the stomach in "Wrath of the Lamb", Hannibal continues to fight and kill Dolarhyde with little more than a grimace. The final scene of Season 3 even implies that he survived his fall off the cliff after the fight.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: He kills Tobias by clobbering him with a statue. Hannibal leaves no fingerprints on the statue, and carefully topples the stand it was on as well, making it appear that the statue fell on Tobias' head during their struggle.
• Man Bites Man: Hannibal bites a chunk out of Dolarhyde's throat, effectively killing him.
• Manipulative Bastard: Hannibal is this in spades. He's brought in to help Will mentally, but, if anything, only serves to quietly undermine his stability. He also manipulates Dr. Sutcliffe into not telling Will about his severe illness by playing on the research merits of watching a man go insane in real time.
  • In "Futamono", he seduces and drugs Alana in order to use her spending the night with him as an alibi for extracting Abel Gideon from the hospital. It's especially potent since Alana herself seems genuinely invested, with Hannibal playing on her disillusionment of Will to fuel it.
  • Taken even further in "Yakimono" when it's revealed he let Miriam Lass live so he could use her to frame and possibly even kill Chilton for his crimes.
  • In "Mizumono", he manages to top it all: he has been keeping Abigail alive all season, hoping to "give her back" to Will, and she's sufficiently under his sway to hurl Alana through a glass window. Hannibal then uses Abigail to basically freeze Will in his tracks before gutting him. At that time, both Jack and Alana are already grievously injured.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Everything he owns or wears screams, "I am very wealthy and not afraid to show it."
• Master of All: He's a skilled surgeon, an expert psychiatrist, a gourmet chef, a musician and composer, is trained in hand-to-hand combat, and stays in peak physical condition. It's almost impossible to believe how many fields Hannibal is expertly talented in.
• Master Poisoner: In "Takiawase", we learn that Hannibal was secretly administering drugs to Will in order to induce his blackouts and possibly aggravate his encephalitis. In "Futamono", he sedates Alana with drugged wine after they have sex so that she won't wake up when he departs to amputate Gideon.
• Mirror Character: From Franklyn. Both men try to dissolve professional boundaries with their respective psychiatrists. Also, both men have an unhealthy fixation on another person that leads to unpleasant behavior. Franklyn is obsessed with Hannibal and stalks him, whereas Hannibal is fascinated with Will and plays deadly mind games with him.
  • Also from Mason. Both men are wealthy, proud, and prone to tormenting those close to them.
• Moral Myopia: When Will ultimately turns on him in "Mizumono", Hannibal is livid and even cuts Abigail's throat out of spite for the "betrayal", totally ignoring the living hell he had put Will, Abigail and everyone else through. In particular, he is mad that Will wants to take his life or his freedom, which is pretty hypocritical given that he is a Serial Killer, and speaks to the fact that he doesn't think he should be held to the same standards as anybody else.
  • The whole scene contains several references to Hannibal the movie (including the "life or freedom" argument), and the biggest example of just how myopic and egomaniacal Hannibal can be is when you realize that he gutted Will the exact same way he guts Inspector Pazzi in the novel/film — "bowels in or bowels out, like Judas?"; in other words, he's comparing Will to Judas.
• Morality Pet: Subverted with both Abigail and Will, both of whom he professes to feel a genuine connection for. In spite of these feelings, he manipulates and cajoles them both into becoming killers and warping their psyches to mirror his. In spite of valuing their presence, Hannibal is clearly incapable of truly treating them as independent people instead of valued toys.
  • Double Subverted at the very end with Will. In spite of everything that's happened, Hannibal does love Will as much as he is capable of and fights Dolarhyde to save his life.
• Mr. Fanservice: He receives several shirtless scenes in Season 2.
• Narcissist: His murders are motivated by his god complex and disdain for people he feels are wasting their lives. He demonstrates his superiority by degrading them and either leaving them on display or turning them into lavish meals. Moreover, he sees the people around him, even the people he likes, as being far beneath him — toys at the very best and mindless animals at worst. He indirectly refers to the common people as sheep in a very condescending way. Regarding the murder of Cassie Boyle, Will remarks that her killer "thought that she was a pig", and then there is Will's "wind him up and watch him go" speech.
• Nephewism: He was apparently raised by his uncle and mentions cooking meals for an aunt.
• Nerves of Steel: Inhumanly calm and calculating in any situation. This overlaps with Dissonant Serenity in some cases.
• Noble Demon: Hannibal displays honor, politeness, affection and loyalty, albeit often in a twisted form. He mentions that he always keeps his promises, as he did so to spare Alana and save Will. He's a monster, but when compared to Mason he is clearly a monster with some standards and dignity. Also subverted, as any standards he has are self-serving and abandoned if they become inconvenient for him.
• The Nose Knows: He recounts how he was able to use this to tell his teacher was dying of stomach cancer before the teacher was diagnosed. He also uses this to find out that both Bella and Will are sick, and suffering from stage 4 lung cancer and encephalitis respectively, and is able to tell that Georgia has entered the room where he's killing Dr. Sutcliffe when he smells her.
  • In "Mizumono", he realizes that Freddie Lounds is still alive after smelling her on Will and it clues him in to Will's deception. It's especially insidious because as brilliantly as Will attempts to manipulate Hannibal, he can't prepare for the bloodhound-like sensitivity Hannibal possesses.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: To an extent this has always been a feature of the character in adaptations, as Lecter is a Lithuanian native who's adapted to life in Baltimore and has been played by British actors Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins, but Mikkelsen's blatantly Scandinavian take is still worthy of note.
• Odd Friendship: With Will. He even lampshades it in "Fromage".
• Official Couple: With Will at the end of season three.
• Offing the Annoyance: Before his fight with Tobias, Hannibal snapped Franklyn's neck because Franklyn annoyed him one too many times.
• Offscreen Villainy: His kills are mistakenly attributed to another serial killer, a copycat. As is often the case with this show, the aftermath of his killings are shown over the actual deeds. It takes quite a while before the audience witnesses him killing. There are even one or two fake-outs. In "Entrée", when he strangled Miriam Lass, she wasn't killed in that moment.
• Outlaw Couple: Possibly becomes this with Will after the season 3 finale.
• Paranoia Gambit: Pulls off a sinister variation of this on Jack, to erode his trust in Will.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He comforts Abigail when she confesses that her father forced her to recruit his victims. Hannibal hugs her and assures her that she is a victim, not a monster.
  • When Margot comes to him for therapy, he's respectful and supportive of her, giving her the affirmation that her family will not. Hannibal gives Margot another pet-the-dog moment, albeit an extremely twisted one, in "Tome-wan". He administers psychotropic drugs to Mason and encourages Mason to mutilate his own face, then renders Mason paralyzed. In doing so, he liberates Margot from further abuse at her brother's hands and leaves Mason at his sister's mercy.
  • After Bella's death, he sends Jack a card expressing his condolences. And this is actually even bigger than its equivalent scene in the Silence novel, as he hasn't been caught yet and is thus risking giving Jack a way to track him down.
  • After his cover in Florence is destroyed and he has to flee, Bedelia decides not to leave with him and asks how they will part. Hannibal tells her he will support whatever story she decides to tell, meaning she can lie about being with Hannibal willingly, because she actually asked him rather than trying to force him.
  • He follows through on his promise to Alana to save Will from Mason and agrees to take the blame for killing Mason so that Margot can have her freedom and revenge.
• Perverted Sniffing: Occasionally overlaps with the above trope.
• The Philosopher: Many of his conversations with Will segue into discussions on the nature of life, death, God, and other similar topics. Much of the initial draw between them is from Will being able to not only keep up in their conversation but contribute his own ideas right alongside Hannibal's.
• Pride: Every single thing about him, from his dress sense to his dietary habits, is a way of proving his superiority over everyone else. Even his crime scenes are theatrical and showy.
• Psycho Psychologist: A zig-zagged trope; he's psycho, he's a psychologist; but he's actually a psychiatric genius. It's whether or not you're on the receiving end of his mind games that determines how psychopathic he is at any given moment. He also encourages some of his patients to embrace their urges to kill.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Despite being cultured, cunning, and a strategical genius, Hannibal regularly displays downright petty behaviour, for example making veiled confessions to the FBI agents he's toying with or killing people because they offended him. His main motive for his crimes seems to be curiosity, as he says: "Occasionally, I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. Someday perhaps, a cup will come together." He just wants to see what happens. At some point, he shows mannerisms that resemble a child in an unsettling manner, like toying with a pencil, deliberately pricking his thumb on a fishing hook, then sucking the blood off his finger, or his childlike happiness about seemingly meaningless, little things.
• Parental Substitute: For Abigail Hobbs — even up to the moment he kills her offscreen, in a twisted way.
• Pragmatic Villainy: When Hannibal is killing with the intention to eat the victim, he minimizes their stress and suffering. He's not showing them kindness: a stressed animal releases hormones that cause the meat to taste off.
• Pyrrhic Victory: A variety of this: Hannibal finally managed to corrupt Will completely, but Will still manages to hold enough morality to end him once and for all by pulling a murder-suicide. It ends up being a failed attempt, but the series was cancelled before Hannibal's reaction to that act could be explored.
• Renaissance Man: Gifted psychiatrist, chef, surgeon, artist, and musician.
• Sadist: Made explicit in one particular episode when somebody copies his crimes; the key difference turns out to be that the copycat didn't torture his victims to death. Beyond that, of course, is the way he psychologically messes with everybody in the show, often simply for his own amusement or curiosity.
• Satanic Archetype: He tempts, manipulates, deceives, and destroys those around him. He appeals to the worst impulses in his targets (fear in Abigail, guilt in Jack, and ambition in Sutcliffe). He mimics God's power over life and death and arrogantly thinks he understands the Almighty, as suggested by his conversation with Will about how God enjoys killing, and his conversation with the "muralist" about reflecting God's light in his "mural". In several scenes, he's lit with bright light from behind, evoking Lucifer as an angel of light. In Will's dreams and hallucinations, Hannibal is symbolized by a monstrous horned man. Just as Satan imprisons his victims in the pits of hell, Hannibal imprisons Miriam Lass in a hellish pit. A traumatized victim tries to describe him, but can only say all they ever saw was light. See Fallen Angel above.
  Will: Hannibal's not God. Wouldn't have any fun being God. Defying God, that's his idea of a good time. There's nothing he'd love more than to see this roof collapse mid-Mass, choirs singing...he would just love it, and he thinks God would love it, too.
• Serial Killer: He's the Chesapeake Ripper, a well-known serial killer with over a dozen victims. In his youth, living in Florence, his murders led him to be called Il Mostro.
• Serial-Killer Killer: In Season 1, he kills Tobias in self-defense, although it's also to remove him as a threat to his professional life and own murderous activities. He later kills Georgia because she witnessed Sutcliffe's murder. In Season 2, he murders the man responsible for a wave of killings and installs him in his own "mural" made of human bodies. Subverted in that Hannibal kills other serial killers for pragmatic rather than moral reasons, since he also kills plenty of innocent people.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Again, in contrast to the often scruffy-looking Will.
  Beverly: You might want to think about supplementing your wardrobe.
  Hannibal: I often do.
  • It's been noted that while he dresses in stylish clothes, that doesn't mean he's exhibiting much taste. They're garish and attention-getting, basically the opposite of the stereotypical shrink's. In Season 3, he tends to dress more soberly and tastefully, and more like the archetype.
• Shirtless Scene: He has several in "Mukōzuke", such as when he's swimming, and later when Matthew Brown torments and nearly kills him while he's wearing nothing but swimming trunks. His love scenes with Alana in Season 2 also shows him shirtless.
• The Sociopath: Played With. Hannibal exhibits all the signs of aggressive psychosis, lacking empathy for others, cultivating and fulfilling murderous urges, yet is also impossibly calculating and restrained. His feelings for Will, while possessive and harmful, appear genuine. All in all, it's hard to describe what Hannibal is. This much is discussed in universe, with Alana stating he "defies categorization" and the psychiatric community not knowing whether or not he should simply be considered criminally insane.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He speaks calmly and gently at all times. There are only two times when he does not: when he is being hanged by Matthew Brown, likely because he has to in order to be heard, and when rasping to Alana that Jack is in the pantry.
• Stealth Pun: All the time with respect to having friends for dinner, given many cannibalism-related stealth puns. Of particular note is this one:
  Hannibal: You slice the ginger.
• Step into the Blinding Fight: On the attack against Beverly Katz, who is armed, he slams the light off before lunging.
• The Stoic: His demeanor is always calm and reserved. In "Mukōzuke", while he's clearly in agony, he remains calm even as Matthew Brown tortures him. When Jack skewers his calf, Hannibal merely grunts. He does not even visibly react to Cordell branding him.
• Stunned Silence:
  • Hannibal's reaction to Mason Verger stabbing his furniture. For a man who kills others largely based on rudeness, Hannibal can only stare at Mason open-mouthed◊.
  • Will reveals to Hannibal that he predicted that Hannibal would rather surrender to hound Will rather than choose his freedom and leave him be, therefore he manipulated Hannibal to allow himself to be arrested for said reasons. Hannibal's reaction is a subtle example of this trope, as unlike in other instances, he could not make a single comeback to that statement.
• Supreme Chef: Hannibal is an amazing chef, and his guests almost always rave about his food. However given what's usually in it it crosses into Food Porn Fan Disservice. Food Gorn?
• Taking the Bullet: In "The Wrath of the Lamb", Hannibal knows that Dolarhyde is standing right behind him, but he purposely stays in front of the window to shield Will from being shot. He ends up taking a bullet to the stomach, although that doesn't stop him from charging back into the fight to defend Will.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: After tormenting, murdering, and publicly displaying countless victims, Hannibal gets a taste of his own medicine in "Mukōzuke". Matthew Brown tortures and nearly kills Hannibal, and had Brown succeeded, Hannibal's corpse would have been on public display. He also now bears prominent scars on his wrists and forearms from Brown cutting into them.
• Tastes Like Friendship:
  • In the pilot, he turns up at Will's doorstep with scrambled eggs and suspicious sausages. As the two eat breakfast together, Will warms up to the psychiatrist.
  • In "Savoureux", he arrives at Bedelia Du Maurier's house with an elegant dinner, and their mealtime conversation suggests that they are bonding.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Most of his students thought he was having an affair with Alana. He wasn't, but he was having an affair, according to Alana. Then later, they do indeed start having a relationship.
• Tranquil Fury: When he discovers Beverly in his basement, he says not a word, but his displeasure is palpable.
• Treacherous Advisor: Or perhaps Traitorous Counselor?
• Übermensch: An extremely dark take on one. He holds himself to his own standards all right, and those standards center around murder and cannibalism. His digressions on morality, compassion and other subjects seem reminiscent of Nietzsche, albeit in a suitably twisted way.
• The Unfettered: Hannibal has absolutely no restraining morals or principles, and is in fact driven largely by curiosity or self-amusement. This is shown best by his choice to let Bella die peacefully or not being decided by a casual coin toss.
• Unusual Eyebrows: Of the non-existent to barely visibly variety.
• Villainous Crush: Develops a pretty intense one for Will, enough that, despite previously doing a ton of work to remain unnoticed by authorities, Hannibal surrenders himself to Jack after Will rejected his affection and goes to jail out of spite and to keep himself in Will's thoughts.
• Villainous Cheekbones: Seeing as he's played by Mads Mikkelsen, it's hardly a surprise.
• Villainous Glutton: Hannibal is one more to a degree of decadence than amount. When he kills, he usually just takes enough from his victims to last him a couple of meals and disposes of the rest. While he doesn't gorge himself on human meat, the rate at which he goes through murdering folks for a few choice cuts makes him qualify for this trope nonetheless.
• Villain Protagonist: In the first episode of the third season "Antipasto", with it being the only episode Will isn't present in. Otherwise, he's a deuteragonist.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Actively maintains a reputation as a brilliant and cultured psychiatrist with close friendships with Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford. He even enhances his seeming innocence by framing others for his crimes, such as Will and Chilton. This ends after Season 2, when the facade comes crumbling down.
• Voice Changeling: During Miriam's captivity, he discarded his European accent and mimicked Chilton's voice so that Miriam wouldn't know he was her captor. When Hannibal chloroforms Chilton, he mimics Chilton's voice to call out to two FBI agents who are knocking on the door.
• Wakeup Makeup: He looks more put together first thing in the morning than Will does ever.
• Wendigo: In "Savoureux", Will hallucinates that Hannibal is a wendigo, with a black, emaciated body and antlers. Hannibal's monstrous crimes and cannibalism make the symbolism appropriate.
  • The statuette in Hannibal's library is of the same creature in its earliest appearances in Will's dreams.
• What Is Evil?: As shown in "Antipasto", he doesn't consider morality as factoring into anything he does, and doesn't even believe in it.
  Hannibal: Morality does not exist. Only morale.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: In true Hannibal Lecter fashion no one is quite sure what his accent is. ^note  Mads Mikkelsen is Danish, and is more or less using his natural accent. Season 3 reveals Hannibal to be Lithuanian, like in the novels.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Part of his initial obsession with Will was in reply to how the sleuth dared to call him "uninteresting" to his face.
• Wicked Cultured: Obvious enough, with his love of refined music, food, and wine. "Sorbet" confirms this by showing him attending the opera where he is in tears by the end of it and is the first to give a standing ovation. His appreciation for Glenn Gould appears earlier on, as a Call-Forward to The Silence of the Lambs when he butchered two prison guards in his successful escape from the asylum to the accompaniment of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations.
• Will They or Won't They?: Bryan Fuller's interview with Collider indicated that future seasons would explore romance with Hannibal. Fans noticed romantic tension between Hannibal and Bedelia in Season 1. This tension also existed with Alana, although it wasn't highlighted as much.
  • In "Futamono", Hannibal becomes sexually involved with Alana.
  • In the series finale, it's definitively revealed that Hannibal is in love with Will and everything he's done has been to bring them together. Will reciprocates.
• Worf Had the Flu: The only reason he's so easily subdued by Matthew Brown is because he was caught off guard and sedated by a villain absolutely no one would have suspected.
• Yandere: To Will. Season 2 suggests that his manipulation of Will and many of his murders are attempts to understand Will and express a twisted "love" for him.
  Hannibal: This killer wrote you a poem. Are you going to let his love go to waste?
  • Will's contemplation of fatherhood definitely doesn't sit very well with Hannibal.
    Hannibal: How quickly we form attachments to something that does not yet exist.
  • Will even lampshades it in "Tome-wan".
    Will: You don't want me to have anything in my life that's not you.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Despite preferring to be Crazy-Prepared for any contingencies, Hannibal is equally a master of this as he is of long-term scheming, notably when he kills Tobias, his framing of Will at the Hobbs' old house, and in "Mizumono" when Jack, Alana, and Will all end up at his place in an effort to stop him... and they all end up either dead or dying while Hannibal makes his escape.

Jack Crawford

Special Agent-in-Charge Jack Crawford

"Are you beginning to appreciate my lack of sympathy?"

Played By: Laurence Fishburne

"When you doubt yourself, you don't have to doubt me too."

Head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Jack Crawford is laser-focused on his mission to apprehend the most vicious serial killers known to man. His unstoppable drive and dogged determination sometimes cause him to lose sight of the well-being of his team, particularly his most valuable weapon, Will Graham, who Jack keeps on a tight leash. It also constantly threatens the delicate balance he strikes between his professional and personal life.

---

• Adaptational Badass: Crawford has never been portrayed as good a fighter as he is in this version.
• Aesop Amnesia: The events of Seasons 1 and 2 made it clear to Jack that Will's job as a profiler and his association with Hannibal is extremely detrimental to his well-being, and he himself did not help by pushing Will despite being warned or advised against it. Then in the Red Dragon storyline, when Will had already resigned from the FBI, Jack manipulates Will to go back, with Molly pointing out that he won't take no for an answer. Jack even counted on Will consulting with Hannibal to unravel the Tooth Fairy's identity, since as he states, Will is most effective as a profiler when with Hannibal, even though he knows that Hannibal might toy with Will yet again. It's as if Will had not suffered enough to convince Jack that putting Hannibal and Will together, no matter the reason, will invite more danger.
• Anxiety Dreams: As a result of My Greatest Failure.
• Bald of Authority: He's the head of the BAU and Will and Hannibal more specifically.
• Big Eater: He was "thin as a boy" and is a huge fan of Hannibal's cooking, good-naturedly grumbling that neither his mother nor his wife are great chefs.
• Collateral Angst: The loss of Miriam Lass caused this for him.
• Combat Pragmatist: In "Kaiseki's" flashforward, he uses a kitchen knife that he's been stabbed with, a chopping board and his own tie as weapons. After gaining the upper hand on Hannibal, Jack proceeds to punch the man in the face while he's lying stunned, then strangle him.
  • In "Contorno", he avoids any semblance of a fair fight when facing Hannibal. He sneaks up behind Hannibal and then throws him through two glass cabinets, before driving a meat hook through his calf, punching him repeatedly on the ground, then crushing his arm in the spokes of a wheel. He finally knocks Hannibal out a window, only failing in killing him when Hannibal grabs Pazzi's body to break his fall.
• The Chessmaster: Throughout the latter part of Season 2, once Will has been released, both of them go to great lengths to capture Hannibal for his crimes. They even fake Freddie Lounds' death to make him think that Will had killed her. Alana even calls him out on this.
• Da Chief: Of the FBI Behavioral Investigations Unit. Until he loses his job after his attempt to kill Hannibal fails.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: During flashbacks to the first investigation of the Chesapeake Ripper, he has a lot more facial hair than in the present day, where it's confined to a small patch under his chin.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A sad version, since he puts the pieces together and figures out his wife is dying of cancer as they're discussing the Angel killer.
• A Father to His Men: To Miriam Lass and Will, although he still disregards Alana's professional advice because Will was saving people.
• FBI Agent
• Forced to Watch: Narrowly averted. Hannibal tries to inflict this on him by drugging and tying him to a chair while he saws open Will's head, intending to force-feed him parts of his brain. Luckily, Hannibal was interrupted.
• General Failure: Aside from his Season 2 plan to finally catch Hannibal red-handed, all of his stratagems and schemes end up backfiring or at least failing spectacularly (and even the aforementioned example only works because Hannibal wanted it to). To name but the most prominent examples: everyone he's put on Hannibal's case on their own either gets killed (Beverly), captured and tormented for years (Miriam), or turned against Jack (Will). Every time he sets someone up as bait, they suffer a horrible fate for no gain at all, and more often than not innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire^note his plan to lure out the Red Dragon before he could kill another family costs the lives of at least seven cops, probably more than what the Dragon himself would've killed unprovoked, plus it ruins the lives of the victims' families, too. All in all, if Jack wants you to be part of a plan he came up with, stay the hell out of it.
• Genre Blind: In "Futamono", he very blatantly asks Hannibal if he can take some food to go. Even if Hannibal wasn't prepared (all the meat he prepared was proper animal meat, not human meat), that alone would have given the very intelligent Hannibal time to think of a contingency.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's obviously quite intent on catching serial killers, but isn't beyond strong-arming Will into helping him or threatening Freddie into silence. He also encouraged Miriam Lass to follow her own leads, even though she's rapidly moving out of her depth. Then there's Clarice from the novels...
• Good Is Not Soft:
  • Jack's pursuit of Hannibal in Season 2 strays in and out of the boundaries of the law, hiding the fact that Will mutilated Randall Tier's body and plotting to bait Hannibal into assault so he can arrest him. When he can't get FBI-support to arrest Hannibal, he goes to his house alone to try to kill him personally.
  • When he and Hannibal meet again in Season 3, Jack beats him bloody with the clear intention of not stopping until he's dead.
• Hyper-Awareness: As the head of the Behavioral Science Unit he's very good at reading people. He already knows that his wife is keeping something from him, but also says that he won't ask her about it.
• I Did What I Had to Do: His general attitude to his less moral decisions, such as pushing Will to continue investigating despite the obvious mental toll it is taking. He believes in serving a greater good, even if it means perpetrating some lesser evils along the way.
• It's Personal: After the disappearance of Miriam Lass, he's particularly obsessed with catching the Chesapeake Ripper, especially after he's convinced the Ripper is Hannibal.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can come across as harsh and demanding to Will, but he means well. Both he and Will agree that Will is saving people's lives and stopping dangerous killers. Jack is well aware that he's endangering Will both physically and mentally, and he even has nightmares about Will sharing Miriam's fate. Ultimately, however, he believes that he must serve a greater good. He won't force Will to continue investigating, but he'll do everything short of it. (Hannibal, of course, likes to twist Jack's focus on the needs of the many into Will being dragged into performing an ugly job he doesn't want at the behest of a "devil" to erode Will's trust in Jack.)
• Made of Iron: Survived being stabbed in the neck.
• Manipulative Bastard: He knows that Will's obviously not doing well mentally, but keeps pushing him to help him solve more murders. And aside from that, he's also fine with taking less than legal means to get what he wants.
• Manly Tears:
  • He tears up when he realizes that the reason his wife is so distant from him is because she is dying of cancer.
  • And again when he sees Beverly's corpse, leaning over and sobbing.
• Mercy Kill: It's implied that he euthanized Bella, leading to her dying in her sleep. Hannibal taunts him for it, but Jack neither confirms or denies the accusation.
• My Greatest Failure: He's obviously still feeling quite guilty about the death of Miriam Lass the point that it's successfully used to manipulate him.
• Never My Fault: He forces his way in a lot of situations where people advise him otherwise, and then gets mad and yells at other people when their Cassandra Truth comes true. When everyone thinks Will has snapped and become a serial killer, he yells at Alana for not seeing the signs even though she and every other member of the starring cast have tried to get him to cut Will some slack, for fear of Will snapping. He even admits to pushing Will anyway, without acknowledging the connection between that and their current outcome.
  • Miriam's disappearance is unusual in that he internalized responsibility for it. When they are reunited, it is clear the apologies he tries to give have been things he's thought about often through that time.
  • He develops beyond this in Season 2, accepting his complicity in what happened to Will, and telling Alana she was right to report him, even though it may destroy his career.
• No Indoor Voice: Occasionally.
  • In "Coquilles", his voice actually manages to echo in the alleyway even though he didn't shout, "I did not just hear that, did I?"
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Outwardly, he appears to completely swallow the Frame-Up of Chilton as the Chesapeake Ripper, but still clearly knows it's Hannibal.
• Pragmatic Hero: Jack is firmly on the side of good, but he's entirely willing to play it loose with the law when pressed if it means catching criminals. His team-up with Will in the latter half of Season 2 to catch Hannibal involves hiding Will's mutilation of Randall Tier's body and baiting Hannibal into some sort of confession or mistake so he has an excuse to arrest him. When that plan falls through, Jack simply walks into Hannibal's home and allows himself to be attacked, though it could potentially cost him his career and his life.
  • Progresses to Unscrupulous Hero in season three, where he faces off with Hannibal with the clear intention of killing him in Florence. Later he, Will, and Alana premeditate a plot to kill both Hannibal and Dolarhyde.
• The Profiler: He would have to be, to be the head of the Behavioral Science Unit.
• Race Lift: The character was white in the books and the movies, but it was mentioned only in the context of describing his appearance and has no effect on the plot.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: Especially apparent in the flashbacks with Miriam Lass.
• Stout Strength: Jack possesses incredible physical strength, to the point he can easily manhandle opponents in a fight, throwing them around or slamming them to the floor.
• Suddenly Shouting: A recurring trait of his.
• Tranquil Fury: When he confronts and attempts to kill Hannibal in "Mizumono".
  • And again in "Contorno", where he is almost completely silent while beating Hannibal to death, blank-faced and relentless.

Alana Bloom

Dr. Alana Bloom

"I don't need religion to appreciate the idea of Old Testament revenge."

Played By: Caroline Dhavernas

Dr. Alana Bloom is a psychology professor, FBI consultant, and colleague to Will Graham, who is able to keep her work at a strict intellectual distance from her private life. She recognizes Will's strange gift of empathizing with the murderers he hunts, but worries about Jack putting Will in harm's way. A former student of Hannibal Lecter, Alana sometimes clashes with him over his unconventional treatments.

---

• Anti-Hero: An Unscrupulous Hero in Season 3, first planning on letting Hannibal be tortured by Mason Verger before handing them both to the police before using Hannibal to save Will's life. She even guns down a man without flinching and helps Margot murder Mason.
• Ascended Extra: Her basis, Alan Bloom, appears only briefly in the film Manhunter and is Adapted Out of the Foster/Hopkins canon.
• Berserk Button: Calls Hannibal Lecter, serial killer who murders people specifically for their lack of courtesy, rude for removing her patient (Abigail Hobbs) from psychiatric care without even consulting her.
• Big Sister Instinct: Somewhat, in the first season. Despite the romantic tension between her and Will, she is the only character to consistently show concern for him and try to genuinely help him, compared to Hannibal who deliberately manipulates Will for his own pleasure, and to Jack who continues pushing Will to do his work in catching criminals despite knowing the effect it would have on Will's mental state. She also returns to this, admittedly more jaded, in Season 3.
• Break the Cutie: Hannibal's betrayal has significantly changed her.
• The Cassandra: As she points out to Jack in the Season 1 finale, she told him not to put Will out in the field but was ignored.
• Chickification: In Season 2, she goes from being the Only Sane Man who refuses to be involved in a romantic relationship with Will because of his clear mental instability, to being weaker and emotional after having sex with Hannibal. It's inverted in Season 3, but this crosses over with Real Women Don't Wear Dresses, as she also gives up her feminine wrap dresses and softness for a tough trousers-only wardrobe.
• Classy Cane: After Abigail pushes her out a window in the season 2 finale, Alana is seen throughout season 3 with a nice gold-topped cane that compliments her wardrobe of pantsuits.
• Composite Character: She takes the role of Clarice Starling in the show's recreation of the novel Hannibal.
  • In her interactions with Mason, she combines the roles of Clarice and Dr. Doemling, Mason's psychologist consultant. She also takes on the role of Margot's lesbian lover and mother of the Verger heir.
• Consistent Clothing Style: In Seasons 1 and 2, Alana always wears a jewel-colored wrap dress with a matching coat or a wrap shirt and wrap skirt. This makes her Significant Wardrobe Shift in Season 3, where she wears nothing but vivid trouser suits, all the more noticeable.
• Deadpan Snarker: She always had shades of this, but took several extra levels in it after her fall.
• Destination Defenestration: At the end of Season 2, she's pushed out a third-story window and last seen flat on her back, gasping and spitting blood outside Hannibal's front door. The experience left her with difficulty walking on her own, and she now requires a cane. After the three-year time skip, she no longer uses a cane.
• Distaff Counterpart: As an old apprentice of Hannibal's, she shares several of his mannerisms and psychiatric techniques for the first two seasons.
• "Eureka!" Moment: In the Season 1 finale, after she hears Will mention that Hannibal had him draw a clock she asks him to do it again, and sees how distorted it is because of his encephalitis. She looks ready to cry when she sees this since it tells her that there is a physiological reason for Will's behavior.
• Evil Costume Switch: Her makeover in the third season, to go with her darker turn, includes shorter, tighter hair and suits reminiscent of Hannibal himself, along with more severe, almost gothic makeup.
• Fairytale Motifs: Her Deal with the Devil with Hannibal to spare Will's life, while also negotiating a delayed death from Hannibal to enjoy a happy marriage (to a rich partner) and child, is compared to the peasant girl's deal with Rumpelstiltskin.
• Gender Flip: Of Alan Bloom from the previous continuities.
• Heal the Cutie: Her goal, as she attempts it with Abigail and Will in Seasons 1 and 2. It totally fails, and she moves away from it completely in Season 3.
• The Heart: At complete odds with certain other psychiatric professionals on the show, Alana wants to help her patients heal and be happy on their own terms.
• High-Heel Power: Always wears heels of some kind - whether boots or stilettos - although she often works in dangerous environments.
• Hypocrite: In "Ko No Mono", after she becomes suspicious that Will killed Freddie Lounds and that Hannibal isn't who he seems to be, she warns him to stay away from Hannibal... when she is currently in a relationship with him, with Will even giving her the same warning beforehand in "Yakimono" and her refusing to listen to him.
  Alana: I don't think Hannibal is good for you and I think your relationship is destructive.
  Will: Hannibal is good enough for you.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Though they turn less innocent and more icy as the series goes on.
• The Jailer: To Hannibal after he's convicted.
• Jerkass Realization: When Jack shows her that Freddie is alive all along in "Ko No Mono", she realizes the truth and puts the pieces together; and consequently feels guilty and foolish for not believing Will and treating him badly. By "Mizumono", the two have already reconciled.
• Lipstick Lesbian: More accurately, Lipstick Bisexual. By the end of the series, Alana, a very feminine woman, has had romantic connections with Will, Hannibal, and Margot Verger.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Or blind, specifically. When she engages in a relationship with Hannibal shortly after Will's attempt to have him murdered, she lets her feelings for Hannibal blind her to the point that she adamantly refuses to listen to anyone who would consider Hannibal being the Chesapeake Ripper, even as she ought to know better.
  Chilton: You cannot see it, and you will not see it until it is too late.
  • This becomes subverted in "Ko no Mono" as she begins to harbor doubts about Hannibal after Freddie's apparent death, with her finding out the truth at the end of the episode.
• Nice Girl: She's quite concerned for both Abigail and Will.
• Never My Fault: Repeatedly says that Hannibal is responsible for Chilton being burned and bitten by the Great Red Dragon, to both Hannibal and Chilton's faces, when in reality it was Will, Jack and herself who put Chilton in Dolarhyde's crosshairs. Both Hannibal and Chilton point this out to her.
• Not So Stoic: After remaining composed even through the events of the first season, she outright yells at Jack in "Savoureux", and then bursts into tears in her car.
  • She loses her appetite for "Old Testament revenge" when she realizes more people than just Hannibal will get hurt.
• Only Sane Woman: She is the only one who seems to put Will's and Abigail's well-being first in the first season, although she succumbs to Sanity Slippage with the rest afterwards.
• Parental Substitute: For Abigail Hobbs, while not as obviously and more reluctantly than Hannibal, it becomes apparent when she and Hannibal appear as Abigail's biological parents in a hallucination.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of the series, she goes into hiding with her family following Hannibal's escape.
• Sex for Solace: In "Futamono", pretty much directly stated to be the reason she winds up in bed with Hannibal, since they've both symbolically "buried" Will by cutting ties with him.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's kindly and compassionate, and she will pursue what she believes to be the right course with unyielding will.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Season 3, she becomes another plotter in the cast.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Any semblance of the kind idealism Alana had in the first two seasons has vanished by the third season, after her experiences with Hannibal left her greatly embittered.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Halfway through Season 2. She goes from being kindly, sympathetic, and very level-headed (if disillusioned) with Will to resenting him for trying to kill Hannibal. After she enters into a romantic relationship with Hannibal, her screen time is basically split between her chiding Will or Jack for Will getting off lightly over the attempted murder, to her in bed with Hannibal lamenting about how much pain and grief Will's actions have caused the both of them. It doesn't help that the audience knows Will is completely correct and that Hannibal is just using Alana as part of an alibi. This is reversed in "Mizumono" after she learns the truth about Hannibal. She admits that she allowed herself to be blind to the truth, even showing remorse to Will by acknowledging that "[he] saw what no one else could."
  • In Season 3, Alana is far more ruthless, allying with Mason to get revenge on Hannibal. She still keeps some principles though, giving up her revenge on Hannibal to save Will, though she still helps Margot kill Mason.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Will, and with Hannibal. In "Futamono", she becomes romantically involved with Hannibal, although "Mizumono" has her learning his true nature and in return, he has her thrown out of a window. In the end, she marries and has a son with Margot Verger.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Alana's recommendation of Hannibal to keep an eye on Will in the pilot is the sole reason that Will is even on his radar at all, and the sole reason that he is privy to anything to begin with
• We Used to Be Friends: With Will in Season 2. After he attempted to have Hannibal killed, she no longer considers Will a friend, even pursuing a relationship with Hannibal to cut ties with Will, and gives Will the cold shoulder from then on. This is subverted when they reconcile in "Mizumono" after Alana realizes the truth about Hannibal. While her personality has gone colder by Season 3, their relationship has returned to being more or less a friendly one, but she now has this trope with Hannibal.
• Woman Scorned: After learning the truth about Hannibal, her personality takes quite a dark turn, with her even being willing to team up with the despicable Mason Verger to get revenge on him.

Bedelia Du Maurier

Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier

"The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive."

Played By: Gillian Anderson

"I've had to draw a conclusion based on what I glimpsed through the stitching of the person suit that you wear. And the conclusion I’ve drawn is that you are dangerous."

One of the few people whom Hannibal Lecter calls "friend", Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier had a thriving career as a psychiatrist until she was brutally attacked by a patient. Now extremely reclusive, she has abandoned her practice, with the exception of one client: Hannibal.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: In The Stinger of the Season 3 finale, she sits at her dining table ready to dine on her own left leg. It's ambiguous as to how she ended up in that position, but if the series isn't continued (and Will and Hannibal really are dead), it's implied that she sliced off and cooked her own leg awaiting Hannibal (and possibly Will, since there are three chairs and table settings) to join her.
• Ambiguously Evil: Very carefully doesn't really confirm or deny Jack's growing suspicions about Hannibal, flat-out tells Hannibal to stop "whatever [he's] doing with Will Graham", but says she likes what she's seen of Hannibal's true self and omitted significant details about her attack when talking to Jack.
  • She knows he has a hard time understanding friendship and expresses an awareness that he has a habit of getting deeply involved with his patients who have tendencies toward violence (which might include the patient he referred to her who attacked her), but Word of God states that she doesn't know any more about his proclivities than the other characters do.
  • It's later revealed she actually killed the patient who attacked her herself, taking it past the point of justifiable self-defense by stuffing his own tongue down his throat. And the truth is that she was lying about it the whole time. Her patient never attacked her, he fell into a seizure and starting choking on his tongue. Instead of helping save his life, she killed him.
  • In "Mizumono", she joins Hannibal on his plane flight to escape the FBI. Whether this was done willingly remains unclear.
  • "Antipasto" strongly suggests that she's been under Hannibal's thumb at least since she killed patient Neal Frank. Though when she tries to pull Will's "I was curious what would happen" excuse, Hannibal forces her to admit she knew exactly what would happen from setting someone up to be killed by him, and is now fully complicit in his crimes.
  • Not quite as ambiguous anymore after she admits to Will that when she sees something vulnerable, her first instinct is to crush it, and she is very pleased with herself about it. She never intended to save Neal's life, she shoved his tongue down his throat instead when he started choking from the seizure.
• Beneath the Mask: Throughout Season 1, Bedelia presents herself as calm and confident. In Season 2, when she ends her therapy sessions with Hannibal, the mask drops. Her voice and body language become that of a fragile, traumatized woman. Season 3, however, reveals more of Bedelia's true self: she is just as manipulative and ruthless as Hannibal.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Turns into one in Season 3. While she was always icy, Season 3 reveals her much darker motives and willingness to go along with Hannibal's evil.
• Broken Bird: Was the target of an obsessive patient who attacked her, which is why she doesn't officially practice clinical psychology anymore. This patient may have been sicced on her by Hannibal, and she may or may not know that.
• Canon Foreigner: Unlike the other main characters, she has no direct equivalent in the previous Lecter-based books and movies.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Throughout Season 1, she presents a cool exterior while maintaining professional boundaries with Hannibal. By "Savoureux", however, she agrees to see Hannibal outside of a clinical context when they dine at her house one evening.
• Dirty Business: In "Kaiseki", Hannibal signs a form authorizing her to speak with the FBI about their therapeutic relationship. Bedelia understands that he expects her to lie to the FBI, and is visibly disgusted.
• Distaff Counterpart: Various viewers have noted too distinct to be coincidental parallels between Dr. du Maurier and her patient: the way they part their hair, the way they tilt their head, their perpetually immaculate presentation. The vast majority of their sessions are also shot head-on, in contrast to the side-view we're given when Hannibal talks to Will or even Franklyn, as if Hannibal is talking to a mirror.
• Face–Heel Turn: Possibly at the end of Season 2, as she's present with Hannibal on his escape flight. Even she seems confused on her motives. Confirmed in the premiere of Season 3, where is is revealed she was waiting for Hannibal to arrive after the bloodbath at his home and her continued stay with him in Florence.
• Forced into Evil: Deconstructed. We're encouraged to think of her murder of her patient this way, but Season 3 reveals it was not quite this.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Zig-zagged; she's the first character to recognize Hannibal isn't what he presents himself as, but conjectures that she likes what she's seen of the real him thus far. Subverted in Season 2 when she realizes that Hannibal is dangerous, and that he may have had something to do with Will Graham's institutionalization. And then Double Subverted and Justified in season 3 where it's she is fully aware who and what Hannibal is, and is then later implied to have been subjected to a similar method of brainwashing as Will. And finally triple subverted and ultimately explained as her being, in her own way, almost as much of a Sadist as Hannibal is and possibly Evil All Along, or at the very least darker than she lets on, which further implies that Hannibal, far from manipulating her at all, was simply trying to get her to admit to him that they are alike.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: A minor example, as Gillian Anderson is merely using her own natural mid-Atlantic accent. But as those tend to do, it occasionally tilts sharply to the American or British sides, making it sound like a put-on.
• Orgasmic Combat: Bedelia's facial expression and vocal sounds while she is shoving her patient's tongue down his throat strongly suggest that she is having an orgasm.
• Pet the Dog: She's more ambiguous than an outright villain, but visiting Will gained her nothing and had no motive besides mercy. She had every reason to skip town immediately, but held off long enough to tell him that someone believed he was innocent and that he could survive what Hannibal had done.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: In Season 3.
• Sanity Slippage: In the series finale, it is implied that Hannibal's escape has broken her and she is about to eat her own leg. Subverted however, in that Word of God says that Hannibal, and apparently Will as well, are responsible for cooking her leg. Her sanity is, however, indeed very damaged.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Season 2, she realizes that Hannibal is dangerous and ends their therapeutic relationship. Soon thereafter, she goes into self-imposed exile, disappearing without a trace.
• Servile Snarker: She doesn't actually work for Hannibal, but she is in his power, and she does frequently snark at him in Florence.
• The Social Darwinist: Reveals herself as this to Will in Season 3, with her desires to "crush fragile things" such as her deceased former patient, Neal Frank.
• The Sociopath: Subverted. Despite her comparisons to Hannibal, she feels genuine feelings of selfless altruism, such as visiting Will in prison to support him, and trying to save Neal Frank. But she still exhibits disturbing impulses, such as desiring to kill small animals.
  • She later admits that she never tried to save Neals life and was actually trying to kill him but simply failed, and she also admits to having sadistic impulses and desires of her own; it is still unclear if she qualifies as a genuine sociopath or not as this alone wouldn't be enough to meet the criteria, but she is certainly a much darker person than she likes to let on.
• The Shrink's Shrink: Hannibal's insistence that she be his shrink is, in fact, the only reason she isn't retired.
• Stockholm Syndrome: Seems to be particularly wary of falling into this in Season 3. It may happen anyway.
• The Stoic: Maintains this demeanor professionally, due to the need of a psychiatrist to, as she put it, "take a step back" whenever they feel the urge to take a step forward.
  • Not So Stoic: In the premiere of season 3 the cracks in her image are revealed, as the audience is shown the aftermath of her patient attacking her, and sees her struggling against Hannibal's control.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 3, she goes from fleeing from Hannibal and helping Will to joining forces with him and revealing what a sociopath she is who killed her own patient.
• Unexpectedly Abandoned: After Bedelia stops providing therapy to Hannibal, he breaks into her house while wearing his plastic body suit in order to murder her. Instead, he finds Bedelia gone and her house abandoned.
• Wakeup Makeup: Like Hannibal, Dr. Du Maurier looks more put together when surprise-visited by Jack Crawford in the middle of the afternoon than Will or even the rest of Team Science does... ever.

---