@k-s-morgan 100% agree with you.
I encourage people who believe that Will is an innocent, helpless victim to Hannibal’s influence to rewatch the show again. I’ve always said that despite everything that he is, Hannibal is actually an amazing psychiatrist. He effectively unveils a person’s inner demons (he doesn’t create them) and forces them to come to terms with them.
And oh boy, does Will Graham have some demons.
In his years-long journey to catch Hannibal, Will is forced to go on grueling pilgrimage of self-rediscovery. The things he ended up finding within himself were terrible and dark, but most importantly, they were things that were always there but had consciously and knowingly repressed throughout his life. Hannibal called him out on this in S1E01, which of course Will didn’t appreciate.
Will: “I build forts.” (admittance)
Hannibal: “Associations come quickly.”
Will: “So do forts.”
Hannibal: “I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decendy are present, yet shocked at your associations.”
…Translation?: “You know you should be a good dude, but you’re not and you know it.” No wonder Will storms off.
Before Will ever discovers that Hannibal is a murderer, he openly admits during therapy that he liked killing Hobbs and is ashamed of himself for it. In fact, that’s kind of his shtick in this series; the shame he feels is so profound that he has isolated himself from society as much as he can to avoid potential scenarios where he may feel that shame again. Will lives alone, in the middle of nowhere, with only his animals for company - far away from people, who can make him feel things he doesn’t want to feel, when he doesn’t want to feel it. Sometimes those feelings are dark and violent.
Apart from all that, Will is also just as manipulative as Hannibal (if not more so) and thrice the liar, too. He lies to everyone in Season 2 about whose side he’s on, then lies again in Season 3 when he hatches the plan to break Hannibal out of jail.
So why does Will do that? Lie about his loyalties to Hannibal? Well, Hannibal’s therapy had effectively stirred up long-neglected concepts of self-acceptance, and also in that process he found someone else who accepted him for who he was. Where he and all others would have seen ugliness within him, Hannibal only see beauty.
For someone like Will, who had essentially given up on ever belonging to normal society or finding that sort of acceptance… it is a gift that is so, so hard to forsake. Even if it is from a murderer cannibal.
“A mutually unspoken pact to ignore the worst in each other to continue enjoying the best.”
“I’ve never known myself as well as I know myself when I’m with him.”
So he lies. For 3-4 years, he he lies to everyone, but most importantly, to himself. He tries to walk the line between who he truly is and who he knows he should be. When he turns Hannibal away a second time after the escape from Verger Estate, it isn’t coming from a place of vengeance. It’s coming from a place of self-rejection. Because if he runs away with Hannibal - if he accepts Hannibal - then in doing so it means that he accepts himself. And in that moment, he still isn’t ready.
It isn’t until the very end, after Will effectively orchestrates Hannibal’s escape and Dollarhyde’s murder, after he crosses the line of which there is no return, he finally admits to Hannibal and to himself with a smile…
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