All the love interests that Hannibal draws into his web and exerts his influence upon throughout the show experience a symbolic dream of drowning— but out of Alana, Bedelia and Will, Will’s is unique. It’s framed as a contrast to theirs to show how only he is capable of and willing to accept Hannibal and his darkness actively and completely rather than passively and selectively. He alone understands it, craves it and is addictively drawn to it and to Hannibal with no limitations other than the ones he decides upon and ultimately discards.
During Mizumono (S2Ep13), Alana recounts a reoccurring nightmare she’s had as the truth about Hannibal has come to light to Will, drowning in a sea of black, inky liquid that rises from the bed she shared with Hannibal to fill her lungs and every space inside her, consuming and drowning her. It’s clearly a subconscious representation of the emotional trauma she’s facing with these new revelations about her relationship with Hannibal and Hannibal himself, and she describes it as something predatory and poisonous, corruptive. Her face is blotchy and pallid, lashes wet and expression sharp and shaky with horror and regret. Alana’s eyes are closed in the dream, she isn’t aware of the truth of Hannibal quite yet. Her skin is a bright contrast against the darkness around her, trying to stay true to her morals in the face of the circumstances she’s facing. Her face is turned away from the rising liquid, seeking escape. Bubbles burst from her mouth— the darkness is a foreign thing. She can’t live with it. Alana’s nightmare precedes permanent injury thanks to Hannibal’s influence, her leg broken and disabled. Hannibal promises that he will kill her.
In Antipasto (S3Ep1), Bedelia undresses and bathes with Hannibal’s aid after attending an event at the Palazzo Caponi. She mocks him about his past traumas before sinking into the bathtub to rest and recollect on how she’s ended up here with him long enough for him to leave, potentially entering a half-conscious state between sleep and waking influenced by the tension of living with a killer and her growing proclivity for painkillers. Bedelia, too, dreams of sinking into dark liquid, but her eyes are open. She reaches for the surface when she continues to sink, bubbles streaming from her thanks to the same sense of foreign invasion that Alana experienced. The light may be murkier, but her form still stands out brightly. She isn’t the same as Hannibal. Her morals are flexible when it serves her interests or survival— at least up to a point. She flinches from his violence when it is put into practice before her rather than in theory alone. Bedelia’s nightmare also precedes permanent injury and demise due to Hannibal’s influence, her leg amputated before the consumption followed by murder that Hannibal and Will have both separately vowed is in her future is presumably performed.
Will’s dream occurs in Primavera (S3Ep2). The episode opens on his memories of the events of Mizumono in Hannibal’s kitchen while he’s unconscious and dreaming in his hospital bed, his and Abigail’s blood smearing across the tiles. His connection to Hannibal— represented by the ravenstag in Will’s subconscious blending of the black stag statue in Hannibal’s office and the scavenging ravens on the stag head of Cassie Boyle’s tableau, Hannibal’s “gift” to him— has been gutted, opened for harvest. The truth of it has been bared in a way he can no longer ignore and obfuscate through separation and tragedy, and so too has the truth of who he is willing and wanting to be and be with as a result. The ravenstag’s blood subsumes everything, and he sinks in it. Where Alana and Bedelia stood out as bright spots in the darkness, unwilling to literally sink to Hannibal’s level and maintaining some level of moral standards and more humane views no matter what, Will is cast in the same color as the blood around him. Where they sank face-up, discomfited and desperate as they reached for the surface and lost their air, Will peacefully sinks face-down. He extends an arm to the shadowed depths of the blood ocean in a way that’s reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, as if reaching for his personal devil in the depths rather than God. Reaching for Hannibal so they can be made whole once more, so the scar on his abdomen can have a partner who shares his feast of the forbidden to match it as the rib God ripped from Adam formed Eve.
An interesting fact about that painting is that Michelangelo originally painted God and Adam’s fingers touching. Contact was made with the divine, elevating the mortal and humanizing the godly, a representation of the intertwined natures and biblical histories of both. The Church deemed it heretical and the painting was “amended” to add distance. Where Alana and Bedelia’s dreams were disturbing sources of distance between them and Hannibal and preceded injury at his hands, Will’s fueled his desire to seek out Hannibal again after he was gutted. The sea of blood saw him off when he woke as a bloody kiss mark over his bandages that he caressed. The most damning detail of all is that where Alana and Bedelia only ever dreamed of a mysterious black liquid, representative of how they never reveled in the visceral, brutal realities of Hannibal’s appetites the way Will did, Will saw the truth. He was aware of all the details, the minutiae, the cruel and savage processes of Hannibal’s proud mutilation and butchery. He saw a vast expanse of blood, a realm of all-consuming red. Hannibal tells him blood can look black in the moonlight. When they exsanguinate Dolarhyde under the light of the moon, Will knows what that darkness is, he’s the one that’s painted it there at his side. And he speaks the truth at last, and calls it beautiful.
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