Season 1 and 2 spoilers ahead! Only spoilers from Season 3 should be blanked out.
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Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds
"Here we are: bunch of psychopaths helping each other out."
Played By: Lara Jean Chorostecki
"Would it be an imposition to ask a few things?"
Trashy tabloid blogger and aspiring journalist Freddie Lounds is as driven, ambitious, and cunning as she is unscrupulous, stopping at nothing to get her story. Freddie sees Will Graham and the FBI as targets, using them as fodder for her next sensational exposé.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: "Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt." Not words that could be used to describe Lara Jean Chorostecki.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Freddie embodies this trope in the second half of Season 2, vis-a-vis Hannibal.
- Blatant Lies: In "Hassun", when she testifies at Will's trial, she falsely claims that Abigail was afraid that Will would murder and cannibalize her in the manner of her father. Will's attorney quickly reminds the court that Freddie attracted six libel suits.
- Damsel in Distress: She's kidnapped by Abel Gideon in "Rôti".
- Deadpan Snarker
- Determinator: But a decidedly unpleasant one.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- She's clearly disturbed by Gideon's vivisection of Chilton in "Rôti". When law enforcement finds her, she looks visibly traumatized. She even keeps Chilton alive with the ventilator rather than abandon him.
- In "Mukozuke", she's genuinely shaken to find Beverly's dissected body, and warns Jack that he shouldn't be the one to go in.
- In "Naka-Choko", we learn that she harbors very strong emotions about Abigail's death.
- Evil Redhead: She's not evil per se, but she's definitely an amoral character.
- Evil Vegetarian: Which makes her the one person to avoid eating human meat served by Hannibal. She isn't evil per se again, but she's definitely amoral.
- Faking the Dead: In "Ko no Mono".Freddie: How was my funeral?
- Femme Fatale: Especially in the pilot to a police officer she seduces.
- Friend in the Press: Played With. The pilot Freddie is sleeping with a cop to get a scoop on the ongoing case. He gets fired as a result, and then immediately killed. Freddie offers him a job, but he gets shot and killed in front of her. She then tries to repeat this dynamic (non-sexually) with Will and Hannibal. Her method of doing this is to insult Will and describe him as insane, so she ends up in a more Enemy Mine position.
- Foil: Narratively, to Hannibal. He's a neatly dressed, outwardly warm psychiatrist liked by the police and the main characters; she's a garishly dressed, outwardly cold tabloid reporter greatly disliked by the main characters and the police. He's a murderous cannibal and she's not quite as bad as she seems.
- Gender-Blender Name: Freddie Lounds, full first name: Fredricka. Par for the course since this is a Bryan Fuller show.
- Gender Flip: Originally a man in the book, here Freddie is female.
- Hate Sink: In the first season in particular, Freddie's constant unpleasant interference in the FBI's investigations makes her this.
- I Call It "Vera": Keeps a derringer pistol in her purse,
which is apparently named Lois. - Immoral Journalist: She's convinced Will Graham is a psychopath, so she basically harasses and stalks him for anything incriminating she can write about.
- Intrepid Reporter: A very negative version of the trope.
- Jerkass: Quite so. Some of her appeal (in whatever appeal she has) lies in how completely aware and entirely unabashed she is about being one.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed, but present in Season 2, where she continues mistakenly pursuing Will and rightly pursuing Hannibal for their roles in Abigail's death.
- Karma Houdini: She sneaks into Will's hospital and takes a picture of his colostomy bag. This meant removing the covers he was naked under. In other words, she sexually harassed Will while he was unconscious. When Will confronts her she has no remorse and has the audacity to say "You're welcome," because she censored his genitalia with "a big black box." While Will assaulted Lounds and he's then horrifically murdered by Dolarhyde in the original novel, she suffers absolutely no repercussions in the series.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Freddie is objectively an awful human being, but she's not a criminal or a serial killer. When she screws somebody over, she's upfront about it, aware the victim will probably want restitution, and has an obvious motivation (the story). That, in a way, makes her less dangerous than Hannibal, who'd destroy someone's life and/or drive them to kill in complete certainty that he knows what's best. Or just for giggles.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Though only a hero in her own mind, this happens several times. First, after speaking to the police officer she got fired, he gets promptly shot in the head by the Gardener killer, who had been tipped off by reading her website and then later, the brother of the Shrike's copycat killer's (aka Hannibal) victim winds up dead when Abigail stabs him in self-defense, and he only came to see her after being goaded by Freddie.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: She has a close (and intentional) resemblance to former British newspaper editor Rebekah Brooks.
- Number of the Beast: In "Hassun", Will's attorney reminds Lounds that she has six prior libel suits against her. The number "six" is repeated; Freddie winds up saying it three times in a row, and nothing else.
- Paparazzi: Freddie, going beyond simple harassment and straight into flagrantly illegal territory in her pursuit of stories; she lies to the police, contaminates crime scenes, records a conversation between a psychiatrist and his patient, and it's made clear that she's gotten more than one cop fired.Freddie: Well, unfortunately, I did not evolve the ability to feel shame.
- Opportunistic Bastard: Such as pouncing on Abigail's story while she's still traumatized, this is Freddie's preferred modus operandi.
- Pet the Dog: When confronted by Jack over her first story about Will Graham, he asks how she got all her information, knowing she talked to a local police officer, but believing she could have got information from elsewhere as well. She had gotten info from Zeller (who is in the room with Jack and other FBI agents), but she doesn't give him up or get him in trouble. Later, when speaking to the police officer she got fired, she offers to get him a higher-paying job in private security though he gets shot in the head by the Gardener a few seconds later so it's a moot point. Her helping Abigail tell her side of the story could also be seen as another example, especially since she seems very supportive and makes it clear that Abigail will receive money for the story, something Abigail desperately needs.
- She also tries to keep Jack from seeing Beverly's remains.
- Her determination to keep digging into the real identity of the Chesapeake Ripper after Frederick Chilton is framed falls under this as well.
- Pragmatic Villain: To the point of barely being a villain sometimes, she wins Abigail over like this by reminding her that she needs money, and immediately tells the man she got fired that she'll help get him a cushy job in security.
- Quirky Curls: She has quite a mane of hair — its distinctiveness is even briefly a plot point (she left a strand behind on a crime scene).
- Shipper on Deck: She coined the term "murder husbands" in canon, though she obviously only uses it to profit from Hannibal and Will for financial and influential gain rather than any personal reasoning. She is also the first to believe that Will is just as much a killer as Hannibal and that they're courting one another, together forming the killer she thinks if the Chesapeake Ripper. She's partially right.
- Smart Ball: Pretty quickly deduces that Chilton is not the Chesapeake Ripper.
- Smug Snake: She's rarely anything other than cool and cunning. Occasionally, though, she's visibly rattled or irritated.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Does not share her book counterpart's fate at the hands of the Red Dragon, Chilton ends up being his victim instead.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: In "Rôti", she's clearly got one of these after Gideon kidnaps her and forces her to watch what he does to Chilton, including keeping him alive with a ventilator when Jack eventually finds them.
- Toplessness from the Back: How she's introduced.
- Too Clever by Half
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: While she wanted a good story in manipulating Nicholas Boyle, she only wanted a story, and seems genuinely upset that he's dead, having been killed by Abigail.
- Villainous Cheekbones: Her villainy may be questionable but she still has the cheekbones for it.
Abigail Hobbs
"I'm not normal. Not anymore."
Played By: Kacey Rohl
Abigail Hobbs is the daughter of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the murderer who came to be known as the Minnesota Shrike. After being attacked by her own father during the FBI's attempted arrest — in which he was gunned down by Will Graham — she is sent to hospital to heal and taken under the wing of Alana, Hannibal and Will to help her mentally heal, and protect her from accusations that she was involved with her father's actions and those of the copycat killer who soon springs up after her father's death.
- Abusive Parents: She was the lure for Garrett Jacob Hobbs to save her own life, as he claimed he didn't want to kill her.
- Accidental Murder: Out of self-defense, though Hannibal did set it up as part of his plan to manipulate her, as he had done with many of his previous patients.
- Alone with the Psycho:
- A zigzagged version with Nicholas Boyle, who is not a killer, but does violently attack her and shove her against a wall. She stabs him, proving that she's more than capable of handling herself when necessary.
- When Abigail flees from Will after witnessing his Sanity Slippage, she finds Hannibal at her old home. There, Hannibal reveals his true colors to her and cuts off her ear.
- Ascended Extra: Her role is vastly expanded from Red Dragon where she is only mentioned as having received psychotherapy and moved on with her life.
- Back for the Dead: In the finale of Season 2. She appears again in an episode in Season 3, but only as a hallucination of Will's.
- Beneath the Mask: Becomes a virtual Stepford Smiler as a coping mechanism with what's beneath only revealed around Hannibal and in her nightmares.
- Brainy Brunette: Although not pointedly book smart, Abigail is more than capable of holding her own with the adults in her life, even Hannibal.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Not to her own father (of whom she is understandably scared) but she plays this role for Hannibal several times, notably when she ensures Nicholas Boyle's body can be found so he can't hold it over her, and when she (subtly) confronts him over being "the man on the phone".We are her fathers now.
- Break the Cutie: Her father began using her to lure girls for him to murder with the reasoning that if she refused, she'd be the victim instead. When he's caught, he kills her mother and then non-fatally slashes Abigail's throat. Though she survives, her savior being none other than Hannibal Lecter indicates her troubles are only beginning.
- Hannibal does this again in the Season 2 finale, and right after it's revealed she's alive at that. After stabbing Will right in front of her, Hannibal slashes her throat just to make Will, who's broken and begging for her safety on the kitchen floor, suffer even more for his betrayal. He also coerced her to push Alana, who had been endlessly kind and maternal towards Abigail in her darkest moments, out of the second storey window of Hannibal's home.
Abigail: I didn't know what else to do. So I just did what he told me. - Broken Bird: She develops into one following the events of the pilot. After a dark and frightening past, her father kills her mother by slashing her throat, then tries to do the same to his daughter, but gets interrupted when he's shot dead by Will right in front of her eyes. Combine that with her guilt and the suspicions people have about her and you get a very glum young woman.
- When she shows up again at the end of Season 2, it's clear Hannibal has her completely under his sway, to the point where he's able to convince her to fatally wound Alana and even allow herself to be killed at his command. She's crying the entire time, especially when she finally encounters Will in the kitchen.
- Bunker Woman: She apparently spent the time between Season 1 and the end of Season 2 in Hannibal's basement, where Beverly Katz saw her.
- Consistent Clothing Style: Almost always wears sweaters whenever we see her.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Having been broken by her father, Hannibal sets about doing this, killing her only friend, forcing her into Accidental Murder of Nicholas Boyle, and blackmailing her. That's even before he fakes her death for her, and keeps her prisoner in his basement.
- Daddy's Little Villain: She was accused of being such, and it turns out to be true, although not of her own free will.
- Dark Secret: She reveals to Hannibal that her father forced her to recruit his victims.
- Death by Adaptation: Double subverted.
- Death Faked for You: Hannibal fakes her death by cutting off her ear at the end of Season 1.
- Dream People: She appears to Will in Season 3, but he knows that in reality she died from the second Slashed Throat Hannibal gave her.
- Empty Shell: By the time we see her again in the Season 2 finale, she can only sob hysterically and push Alana out of a window.
- Family of Choice: She possibly comes to regard Will, Hannibal, and Alana as this, in what is probably one of the darkest variants of this trope.
- Forced into Evil: See the above tropes.
- Guilt Complex: Because of her father, and her own killing of Nicholas Boyle.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The poor girl is clearly more comfortable with Hannibal than with Will, despite knowing that Hannibal gave her dad the tip-off.
- Meaningful Name: Abigail means "father's joy" and she was Garrett Jacob Hobbs's "golden ticket". However, given her strange relationships with her biological and surrogate fathers, the "joy" part is a bit complicated.
- Minion Manipulated into Villainy: She is a version to Garrett Jacob Hobbs, forced to help him hunt other girls so that she could live. She becomes a much clearer example to Hannibal, as he manipulates her into hiding Nicholas Boyle's body (she killed him in self-defence), and then into trying to kill Alana when he faked her death for her and locked her in the basement.
- Outdoorsy Gal: Although it seems to have been more her father's passion than hers, she accompanied him while he went hunting and was taught to hunt by him, as well as accompanying building and working in the woods. However, she does mention having wanted to to take a hiking trip with her mother for her birthday, so at least some of it is her.
- Scars Are Forever: She hides the scar on her throat with a scarf.
- Slashed Throat:
- He father tried to kill her by slitting her throat with a kitchen knife. Fortunately, she survived, but not without a scar.
- And then done by Hannibal in "Mizumono", in the exact same spot her father did. This isn't ironic in the slightest.
Phyllis "Bella" Crawford
"I resent that Jack has too much to worry about, to worry about me."
Played By: Gina Torres
Phyllis "Bella" Crawford is a NATO staff member and wife to FBI Behavioral Science Unit chief Jack Crawford. The two met many years ago in Italy; Phyllis earned the nickname "Bella" because the local Italian men kept calling her "bella, bella" ("beautiful, beautiful"). She and Jack have maintained a basically happy marriage, but as two headstrong, career-oriented individuals, communication between them has often been strained — especially during Bella's most recent crisis, which she hoped to hide from her husband.
- Affectionate Nickname: Bella, for beautiful, the nickname many admirers called her during her time as a NATO agent in Italy.
- Driven to Suicide: Overdoses on morphine in Hannibal's office. He then flips a coin to decide whether to save her life, and injects her with Naloxone he stores in his cabinet.
- Doomed by Canon: She reveals her cancer to Jack in the show, but is actively dying by the time of Silence of the Lambs and dies near the end of the book. Here, she dies quite some time before that.
- Face Death with Dignity: Bella longs for a dignified death, rather than a slow, painful death from cancer prolonged by futile and humiliating treatments.
- Forgiveness: She forgives Hannibal for saving her life, despite his condemning her to the slow demise she desperately wanted to avoid.
- Interrupted Suicide: After she overdoses on morphine, Hannibal injects her with a drug that counters the morphine's effects, thereby saving her life.
- Mercy Kill: It's implied Jack euthanizes her in her sleep, and lies besides her as she passes.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Her real name is Phyllis, but Jack only calls her that when they're arguing.
- Out of Focus: She completely disappears halfway through the first season. This may just be because she has no relevance to the overall plot beyond how her cancer affects Jack. She reappears in Season 2, but remains a mostly minor character.
- Pet the Dog: Hannibal sincerely respects her bravery in the face of death, and is genuinely saddened by her passing.
- Secretly Dying: Of cancer. Stage four lung cancer, to be specific. As she notes herself, there's no stage five
. She had hoped to keep this secret from Jack until she was too sick to hide it.
Frederick Chilton
Dr. Frederick Chilton
"Hmm. Hannibal the cannibal. That’s what they’ll call him, you know."
Played By: Raúl Esparza
Dr. Frederick Chilton is a psychiatrist and chief of staff at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. A man who has always taken great pride in his accomplishments, Chilton is especially proud to have discovered — or so he purports — that his prisoner Abel Gideon is in fact the Chesapeake Ripper, the notorious serial killer who has eluded the FBI for years.
Chilton is, of course, wrong, and suffers the consequences. Despite this blunder, he remains in his position at the hospital and a recurring character on the show.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Chilton is portrayed by Broadway actor Raul Esparza, while he was portrayed by the older Anthony Heald in the movies.
- Subverted in season 3 when his lips are torn off and he's lit on fire. Not very attractive anymore.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the books and movies Chilton was just a Smug Snake Jerkass who hated Hannibal for petty reasons. In this version however, while Chilton still has those annoying traits, his hatred of Lecter is far more justified, given that Hannibal personally abducts and frames him for murder (and had been seemingly being planning to do so for years), and is indirectly responsible for Chilton being shot in the face, not to mention that Chilton mistakenly identifying Abel Gideon as the Chesapeake Ripper (who is in fact Hannibal himself) leads to Gideon kidnapping Chilton and removing his organs. Not to mention that in this continuity, Hannibal and Chilton knew each other and Chilton, like many other characters, was frequently invited over to Hannibals' home for dinner (and of course unwittingly ate human meat), and like everyone else understandably feels Hannibal was manipulating him the whole time. Basically the character goes from "Why does he hate Hannibal so much?" to "No WONDER he hates Hannibal so much!"
- Adaptational Heroism: For all his flaws, the Fuller/Esparza interpretation of Chilton is about 50000% more likable and helpful than the book or movie incarnations of the character.
- And Show It to You: In "Rôti", Abel Gideon kidnaps him and begins taking out his organs while he's still conscious. He doesn't quite get to his heart and Chilton is still alive when Jack arrives because Freddie is keeping him alive with a ventilator. He eventually recovers by Season 2, minus one kidney and forced to go on a vegetarian diet.
- Continuity Nod: In "Yakimono", Hannibal disembowels one of the dead FBI agents in Chilton's house, knowing Chilton will be reminded of what Gideon did to him. This is a particularly cruel bit of genius since Hannibal's Batman Gambit relies on Chilton panicking and fleeing, which is exactly what happens.
- Ascended Extra: Has a far more central role than in the original novels and films, in which he'd occasionally show up to bother the main characters whenever they were at the asylum.
- Arch-Enemy: Chilton thinks Hannibal sees him as such in The Number of the Beast is 666 when he discovers that Hannibal refuted his entire book. However it doesn't go both ways:Chilton: Do you think I am your nemesis?
Hannibal: [Briefly amused look] No, uh, nemesis no. - Asshole Victim: A non-fatal instance, where Gideon kidnaps and performs torturous surgery on him. Less so when he's shot by Miriam Lass, considering he'd just been set up as the Chesapeake Ripper by Hannibal.
- Audience Surrogate: Temporarily assumes this role in "Futamono", giving voice to the "It's people" and "It fucking rhymes" jokes that have been a key part of fandom since the first season.
- Beard of Evil: Not so much evil as despicable. In Season 2, he's shaven it off. Whether this may be symbolic is yet to be seen.
- Boom, Headshot!: When Miriam hears his voice, she mistakenly thinks he was her captor and shoots him in cheek. Subverted, as he has been confirmed to be alive for Season 3.
- Break the Haughty: His experiences in Season 1, which damaged his professional reputation and left him minus one kidney and likely a hefty load of PTSD, seem to have tempered his smugness, if only slightly.
- Butt-Monkey: He is constantly being horrifically injured, framed, or bullied, and so it tends to balance out a lot of his more evil characteristics, and makes him a lot more popular with the audience than any other iteration of his character has been.
- The Chew Toy: Bryan Fuller has explicitly compared Chilton to Kenny in how the show delights in causing him grievous bodily harm.
- Classy Cane: He's using a fancy pimp cane when he returns in the second season.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: Especially when he works at the prison.
- Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder: It's hard to tell whether he's in an Enemy Mine with Will Graham or a Villain Team-Up with Hannibal. By "Mukozuke", it seems like Chilton's made his decision clear and is now distinctly working with Will, even if just to save his own skin.
- Composite Character: Although Freddie Lounds is still a character in the show, Chilton takes on certain roles of her literary counterpart. Unfortunately for him, this is book Freddie's fate at the hands of being abducted, tortured and immolated at the hands of Serial Killer Francis Dolarhyde, and possibly making matters worse is that Chilton doesn't die from his injuries like book Freddie did and is barely clinging to life support as a burnt out husk on top of all the other injuries he's sustained over the course of the show (and again unlike novel Freddie, this time Will Graham may have set him up intentionally to be captured by Dolarhyde) giving him a Fate Worse than Death instead.
- Dumbass Has a Point: In the second season, Chilton actually gives an extremely accurate summation of Hannibal's pathology and his A God Am I... The "dumbass" bit comes from the fact that Chilton believes he's profiling Will.
- Once again, during a joint interview with Will about The Great Red Dragon, Chilton is surprisingly perceptive. While Chilton is told he was going to be in The Tattler in order so he could lend some credibility to the exaggerated statements Will would make to draw the killer out, Chilton is still completely baffled by the ridiculous words Will chooses to support his theories. The dumbass part comes into play in that he somehow couldn't foresee being included in the article picture would put him in the crosshairs of the killer. Though he has the hindsight to see that Will purposely put him at risk by placing his hand on him.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Not him personally, but he has a terrible habit of doing this to Hannibal and/or Will.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Later in the second season, he's one of the first people to seriously suspect Hannibal and realize Will may be on to something, and bluntly tells Jack that he's letting his personal relationship with Hannibal keep him from seeing the obvious.
- Everyone Has Standards: As Will notes, he's not a killer, and is so confident of this fact he's willing to walk away from him when he's pointing a gun at him.
- Evil Cripple: Has trouble walking in Season 2 due to Gideon's vivisection of him. He's toting a fancy cane in most of his scenes as a result.
- Facial Horror: Getting shot in the face blinds one eye and destroys half his upper jaw. He typically wears a contact lens and bridge to make it easy on the show's makeup team.
- Taken even further when Francis Dolarhyde kidnaps Chilton and bites both his lips off before setting him on fire
- Foil:
- To Hannibal Lecter, as a nattily-dressed psychiatrist guilty of psychic driving, although Chilton quickly enters Even Evil Has Standards territory when he realizes just what Hannibal is guilty of. Will even recognizes Chilton as a poor man's copy. It's these similarities that make him the ideal person for Hannibal to frame as the Chesapeake Ripper.
- Also to Will Graham, with his flailing, terrified reaction to being framed by Hannibal a contrast to the more calculating way Will handled being in the same situation. Further similarities are highlighted in Season 3, such as the abdomen wounds.
- For Science!: His stated motivation, but he seems more interested in personal glory.
- Foreshadowing/Phrase Catcher/Mythology Gag: He coins the phrase "Hannibal the Cannibal" before Hannibal is ever caught.
- Frame-Up: Hannibal frames him for the murder of Abel Gideon and two FBI agents.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Towards Hannibal's position as a world-renowned psychiatrist and pretty much everyone more known than him.Gideon: But now I know your name... of course I am aware of your reputation, and I see why Chilton both reveres you and resents you. Estimated psychiatrist's circles still eludes him, yet he clings to you like soap to a baby's eyes. He very much wants to be you.
- Hidden Depths: He is visibly disturbed, and convinced to alter his diagnosis, when Will offers compelling arguments for how Hannibal framed him.
- In Season 3, despite his ulterior motives, he does feel sympathy for Will and Alana when they are in the hospital.
- Hope Spot: FBI agents knock on his door just as Hannibal chloroforms him. By the time Chilton comes to, the agents are not only dead, but dismembered.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He's an unethical Smug Snake, but completely out of his depth compared to people like Hannibal. Chilton's ineffectual villainy is actually invoked in-universe when Freddie Lounds looks into his background, and becomes convinced Chilton wasn't the Chesapeake Ripper because of his utter lack of any surgical skill, even when he was training to be one.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: We learn a lot of his bluster is to hide the fact he'll never get the acknowledgements of colleagues in his field that Hannibal does, and is the initial reason why he's willing to help Will.
- It's All About Me: Far more concerned with the backlash onto him of psychic driving Gideon into thinking he's the Chesapeake Ripper (causing him to kill again) than the actual moral consequences of it or the deaths it caused.
- Laughably Evil: Chilton, while still being an unethical jerk, takes a level in hilarity in the second season.
- Lip Losses: Gets his lips bitten off by Dolarhyde.
- Made of Iron: Over the course of the series, Chilton has survived partial disembowelment, being shot in the face, having his lips ripped off and being set on fire.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: What's more fun than convincing a patient they're really a much more famous patient? Dosing patients with medically-discredited drugs! ... Legally and with their consent, of course.
- More than Mind Control: He manipulated Abel Gideon to convince him that he was the Chesapeake Ripper, which aggravated Gideon's existing instability.
- Never My Fault:
- His reaction to Alana's outraged "You told him he was the Chesapeake Ripper!" was basically "Yeah, well, you told him he wasn't, so this is really your fault." Also counts as a case of No, You.
- He agrees to let Will's insulting quotes corroborate his theories about the Red Dragon, which leads to him being targeted and mutilated. The goal was making Will a target, but he blames Will entirely, even though Chilton was aware of the risks and seemed to be motivated by boosting his own ego.
- Though we learn later in conversation with Bedelia, Will may have set him up in order for those words to possibly put him at risk. "Just a little?"Will: I wonder.
Bedelia: Do you have to wonder?
Will: No.
- Though we learn later in conversation with Bedelia, Will may have set him up in order for those words to possibly put him at risk. "Just a little?"
- Not Quite Dead: After losing that many organs, he had to spend the entire night in surgery, but he's on his feet eventually. And Word of God has been intentionally vague as to whether or not Chilton survived being shot by Miriam. Season 3 confirms his survival.
- Pet the Dog: When Dolarhyde threatens to kill Reba if he makes a sound, Chilton obeys and makes no attempt to scream for help.
- Pride: He oozes it. Will uses Chilton's pride to his advantage in Season 2, offering Chilton the privilege of studying his mind as long as he removes Hannibal from the equation.
- Race Lift: He's played by a Hispanic actor in the television continuity.
- Rule of Three: Chilton is abducted by a different serial killer once every season, and the damage inflicted on him is increasingly less reparable. The last time we see him, he's in an oxygen chamber in the hospital, relying on skin grafts to survive.
- Shipper on Deck: Though his feelings for both Hannibal and Will never were all that positive and he greatly sours on them over the course of three seasons (for very good reason), Chilton is the only other character aside from Bedelia to point out the strange romantic qualities to their relationship.Crawford: Maybe it's one of those friendships that ends after the disemboweling.
Chilton: I would argue, with these two, that's tantamount to flirtation. - Small Name, Big Ego: He looks to his high-profile patients for validation while simultaneously resenting them; on the one hand, these famous criminals are his wards to analyse and question. On the other, all the attention goes to them, rather than him.
- Smart Ball: Picked it up and ran with it in the second season, to the fandom's delight.
- Smug Smiler: He is very convinced of his own talent for psychoanalysis, telling the seasoned FBI profiler Alana Bloom that her observations were "more or less helpful" to him. And his reaction to Will is appalling, describing the empathic gift as a "thing" he'd love to dissect to Will's face — basically embodying all the reasons Will doesn't much like psychoanalysts or psychiatric hospitals. In the Season 2 premiere, he can barely contain his excitement towards Will during their sessions as Will serenely ignores every single thing that comes out of his mouth. Just to drive Will's opinion of Chilton home, he disdainfully points out he's completely aware Chilton records any conversations he has and calls it "gossipy".
- Smug Snake: Chilton is extremely attached to the idea that he was holding the Chesapeake Ripper in his asylum, seeing it as a point of pride. Not only is this untrue, if it were true it would be a coincidence, not the result of anything Chilton did. That pretty much summarizes him as a character.
- Slimeball: He seems to consider himself charming, but his "charm" is clumsy and over-familiar, to the point in Season 2 that he is clearly attempting to copy Hannibal's sense of style, having shaved his beard and altered his wardrobe to checked suits. This is a plot point; Hannibal later uses their newfound similarities to frame Chilton for his crimes as the Chesapeake Ripper.
- Unwitting Pawn: To Hannibal Lecter.
- Wardens Are Evil: Boy howdy. He (unintentionally) brainwashes Gideon into believing he's the Chesapeake Ripper. He secretly records nearly all of his inmate's conversations, and secretly discusses Will's therapy with Hannibal without his consent. He also hired Matthew Brown as an orderly, despite Brown's history of mental illness and is overall an egomaniacal Glory Hound.
Chiyoh
"There are means of influence other than violence, but violence is what you understand."
Played By: Tao Okamoto
A woman Hannibal manipulated in the past, who joins Will in hunting him down.
- Action Girl: She's handy with a shotgun, is perceptive enough to sense Will, and fatally stabs her prisoner when he strangles her.
- Animal Motifs: Birds. She's introduced hunting for quail, compares herself to a bird in a cage, and perches in a tree to shoot at Hannibal's pursuers.
- Apologetic Attacker: When she kills the man that murdered Mischa.
- Ascended Extra: She was a very minor character in Hannibal Rising, the attendant to the wife of Hannibal's uncle who eventually left and wasn't mentioned again.
- Badass Longcoat: Wears a long green version and is a badass sniper.
- Cold Sniper: Shoots Will after appearing to consider killing Hannibal instead.
- Combat Pragmatist: Stabs her prisoner in the neck with a broken chicken bone.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Hannibal manipulated her into being the warden for the man who killed his sister, after she refused to let Hannibal kill him.
- Determinator: Chiyoh is loyal to her purpose alone. Once she has decided on a course, she will not waver from it, whether it's being the warden for her prisoner or attempting to recapture him. Thus she violently protective of Hannibal despite finding out what he is; he must be caged, not slain.
- Dragon Lady: Chiyoh is a younger version of this, but otherwise fits, being a stern and often oppositional Asian woman.
- Only One Name: She only gives a brusque "Chiyoh" when Will asks her name.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Though she's perfectly capable of doing so if need be. She prefers life imprisonment for heinous crimes — she convinced Hannibal to do so to Mischa's killer, and states that Hannibal should be locked up for his crimes, rather than killed.
Reba McLane
Played By: Rutina Wesley
A blind co-worker of Francis Dolarhyde who enters a relationship with him, not knowing he's actually the serial killer the "Tooth Fairy".
- Blind and the Beast: A subversion, as Dolarhyde is not actually unattractive, but perceives himself to be.
- Broken Bird: After Francis' faked suicide she is left traumatized and saddened.
- Deaf Composer: Being blind doesn't stop her from working as a photo tech.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: One of the reasons she likes Dolarhyde is because he doesn't pity her.
- Morality Pet: An unwitting one to Dolarhyde.
- The Power of Love: Her love for Dolarhyde keeps him from killing her and led to him attempting to change.
- Race Lift: She was white in the book, and previously played by white actresses (Joan Allen and Emily Watson).
Molly Graham
Played By: Nina Arianda
Will's wife, who he married during the 3 year time skip.
- Action Survivor: She managed to outsmart and survive The Great Red Dragon nearly unscathed (with only a bullet to the shoulder).
- Damsel in Distress: Initially with Dolarhyde although she evolves into...
- Damsel out of Distress: She manages to outsmart him and escape, only getting shot in the shoulder.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She is blond, and has a kind and understanding personality.
- Happily Married: With Will in the three-year time skip.
- The Load: Her main role in Season 3 is to be kidnapped (although she does survive) by The Great Red Dragon.
- Nice Girl: She's very sweet and supportive of Will.
Walter Graham
Played by: Gabriel Browning Rodriguez
Molly's son and Will's stepson.
- Action Survivor: Survived an encounter with The Great Red Dragon.
- Adaptational Name Change: Called Willy in the original books.
- Satellite Character: Well, he's Will's stepson and Molly's son. He likes baseball. That's it.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Asks Will not to capture Dolarhyde, but to kill him instead. To be fair, Dolarhyde is a dangerous killer and if he and Molly came across him a second they most likely wouldn't be able to defend themselves, and this request was in the interest of protecting his mom, but still.
