The concept in the Hannibal fandom of Will being some innocent, troubled person with no true agency or control that Hannibal corrupted into a murderer is something Iāve never agreed with. They both were the same person at the very beginning as they are at the end of season 3. They are their own mirrors, reflections, vanity, self-hatred, restrained and unrestrained, a strange, toxic softness in their similarity. Hereās my reasoning:
As Bedelia said, āExtreme acts of cruelty require a high level of empathy.ā Itās psychological fact that people who have sociopathic tendencies see how others react to certain emotions and social cues differently, and may utilize that in order to appear ānormalā or unthreatening, or to manipulate people easily. This isnāt to say Will is a sociopath, he canonically isnāt, itās just that he displays some similar behaviors or characteristics, an appropriate application of the medical term āsociopathic tendenciesā. They experience emotions in unique ways and amounts, but that isnāt to say they are without their own emotions and convictions. He may paint himself as an unassuming, quiet, messy, and confused person to cover his tracks, but still certainly has some true social or emotional conditions to some degree. These arenāt exclusive, nor are they the same thing.
Willās traumatic childhood, full of abuse and neglect, most likely led to him wanting to be accepted by others. He tried to find a sort of family with Jack and the other FBI members, his co-workers. He was a professor, a job full of human interactions, spending the day in a room of people who were listening to him, asking him about his views or advice for academics, and yet more co-workers. He was pretty much addicted to buying or otherwise acquiring tons of dogs, āmanās best friendā, whom he cared for immensely. Iām sure it gave him a false veneer of community, of mental kinship, surrounded by people or animals he could pretend he wasnāt pretending for, who could never understand him or equal him.
Hannibal taught him he didnāt have to put on a mask of sanity, of common commonalities, to be accepted by those who truly understood him, truly appreciated him, loved him, even. Even when he found Hannibal, who was so similar to his core self, it was too close for comfort, at least at first. A strange dance of empathy and camaraderie, a twin tapestry of bloodlust and carnality and loneliness and desire and destruction, woven with betrayal and manipulation on both sides. How they both are and have always been. They found kinship, appreciation, understanding, love. And in the end, the betrayals and the wounds they inflicted on each other, both physical and mental, drew them both together instead of tearing them apart, because they saw themselves reflected in that, too.
When Will accepted that he wanted to be like Hannibal, that he already was like Hannibal, when he became, as Hannibal puts it, it wasnāt new, it wasnāt unlike himself. All it truly was was Will wiping the soil off a mirror he had buried as deep as he could in the fields of his mind. He buried his true self so he could live without the pity, fear, or disgust others might have towards him, and the subsequent intrusions and examinations, which was very much related to his original loathing and resistance to Jack assigning him a psychiatrist, as well as a number of his antisocial behaviors. It was him finally deciding to live as himself, for himself, damn the consequences. It was Will choosing to finally be open with how the face in the mirror is his just as much as it is Hannibalās. That they are very much the same.
Will Graham was not forced to dig for the similarities in his mind and his heart that he and Hannibal Lecter have. Hannibal only handed him the spade.
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