Hey! Love your blog your metas are great! when Hannibal said to Will “my compassion for you is inconvenient” I thought that was weird. it’d make more sense if he had said “My love for you is inconvenient” or do you think Hannibal just wasn’t ready to confess his love like that?
I mean I don’t think compassion is the word for Hannibal’s feelings for Will he’s in love and wants to be together it’s not really about compassion or mercy or pity or anything like that. Did I interpret that wrong? Also why doesn’t Hannibal just confess his feelings to Will? What’s stopping him? He should know Will reciprocates his feelings no?
Hi! Thank you, I'm so glad you've enjoyed my metas! This is a great question and I have several answers at once to it.
On the one hand, I agree with what you said: Hannibal isn't willing to confess his love to Will directly. But he practically did it in S2.
Hannibal: Do you know what an imago is, Will? ... An imago is an image of a loved one buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives.
Hannibal: The concept of an ideal... I have a concept of you just as you have a concept of me.
He calls Will a loved one almost directly here. But the most interesting thing is ahead.
Will: Neither of us is ideal.
Hannibal considers that; there was a brief moment that he believed the ideal before he smelled betrayal.
This description line from the script says it all. Hannibal was prepared to go all in with Will before he realized Will has betrayed him. He's still being relatively open about his feelings now because he's trying to give Will a second chance. But we know how it goes. Miscommunication happens, and then it happens again in S3.
Hannibal giving himself up is the ultimate proof of his feelings. He's offered Will everything, every part of himself, and now he waits for Will to accept it. To accept him. This time, Hannibal is not ready to bare himself even more than he already has - he let Will know that his life and his freedom are in Will's hands, but he holds onto the words of love because he doesn't want them rejected again. Will has to make a choice now, it's up to him, so Hannibal skirts around the issue, observing and hoping. He knows that Will loves him, but he also knows that it doesn't mean Will accepts it, which makes all the difference.
In some ways, compassion is the biggest declaration of love Hannibal could offer to Will. The thing is, Hannibal cares about many people and many things. It doesn't stop him from hurting and killing them, though. Abigail is the biggest example: Hannibal himself admits that he cares for her, that she reminds him of his beloved sister. And yet he's merciless when he cuts her down to punish Will. Same with Alana: Hannibal has known her for years. He's fond of her, Mads said he loves her in his way, but when the push comes to the shove, Hannibal is willing to kill her - and in a pretty cold-blooded manner, too. He gives her a choice, she chooses wrong. He then calmly follows her up the stairs with the knife. Later he steps over her dying body and coldly lift Will's coat off her to take it for himself (there is actually an editing mistake there, so I'm not sure what the goal was initially, but this has been confirmed by either Bryan or Mads). Hannibal proceeds to hold onto his promise to kill her years later.
So, Hannibal might love the people he hurts in a way, but he feels no compassion to them. Admitting that he feels it for Will is huge in this context. It underlines once again just how exceptional Will is to him, and it doesn't just work on words: we know for a fact that Will is the only person Hannibal never managed to force himself to kill, the only person he gave up everything for.
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