Season 3 was one big metaphor for a wedding - Meta
Or my original title: Season 3 tried to warn us for the world's most fucked-up failmarriage. Hear me out on this.
Through small details it becomes clear that s3 is an allegory for Will and Hannibal undergoing every step of marriage, except for the ceremony itself. At its core, a wedding is a moment where two people are tied together for a lifetime, where devotion is put entirely on one person, and where one is supposed to give their soul to their partner. A wedding is merely making all of that official and putting it on paper, so that being unfaithful/unloyal to that promise/the vows made can have consequences.
Here’s some s3 clues, small and big, that I have found that allude to Hannibal and Will undergoing every aspect of a wedding except for literally doing it:
In all of Will’s hallucinations of Hannibal in s3, Hannibal wears white suits. Which is kind of special, because Hannibal, the real Hannibal, never wears white. The lightest suit colour we’ve seen him wear is baby blue with a white tie in s1, but never a white three piece of itself. In Will’s fantasies of Hannibal in s1 and s2, H always wears a suit that he really owns, that Will has copied from reality and pasted into his dreams. That all changes in s3.
Will has two types of hallucinations about H in s3. One if moments in which he’s inspecting crime scenes/searching for clues (in Lithuania for example), and imagines Hannibal talking to him/giving council and advice, leading him to finding the right answers. The second is are a more personal, intimate kind of fantasies, where Hannibal is not a mentor/a voice in his head, but something entirely else. There are scenes, much like the kinky murder fantasies in s2, where Will fantasises about them, their relationship, the life they could have had and scenes/moments that happened. The killing Jack/best possible world fantasy in s3a, Will imagining Hannibal making dinner for him when he drugs him in Dolce, their meeting when Hannibal is in prison and the post-credit scene GIF above. In these fantasies, Hannibal ALWAYS wears white/cream/ivory suits. Will is always dressed in darker colours. It’s kind of literally starting to look like Will’s version of wedding attire…
Also! In WOTL, in real time where they arrive at the cliff together, Hannibal is dressed in his white prison jumpsuit and Will is wearing a white button down with a black jacket on top, his collar peaking out. It’s kind of a fucked up version of traditional bride/groom colours if you think about it. Put their figurines on top of a cake and nobody would notice.
Then there’s the way other characters refer to them through marital terms. Used by Will himself, as well. There’s Freddie Lounds and her famous ‘’Murder Husbands’’ things, literally calling them out on a honeymoon to Italy. And Will and Bedelia! Will is SO stuck up about Bedelia getting to pretend to be H’s wife in his stead, he literally bitchfights her for it in Florence, and then later in s3b, even though he’s married and has a WHOLE ASS WIFE, he cannot let go of his spite. What does Bedelia do? She backfires by calling Will Hannibal’s wife and bride. ‘’You’re the bride of Frankenstein.’’ Will says. ‘’We’ve both been his bride.’’ Bedelia answers, knowing that she was pretending, but perhaps Will never was. Later, when Will calls her ‘’Bluebeard’s wife’’ she replies ‘’If I am to be Bluebeard’s wife, I would have preferred to be the last.’’ In normal words, she’s calling Will Hannibal’s last wife/spouse.
Then there’s Will literally walking down the aisle MULTIPLE times. Hannibal is always standing there with his back towards Will, as Will walks up to him. THREE times this happens in a literal chapel (Both in the Norman chapel and in Hannibal and Will’s interpretation of it in the shared room of the mind palace). Will finds Hannibal’s heart at the altar in 3x02. In 3x08 and 3x13, their first and last meeting in prison, Will finds Hannibal himself at the altar, waiting for him. This same setup is also used in Dolce (3x06), where Hannibal is sitting in front of the Primavera at the Uffizi, his back facing Will, and Will coming in framed by the long hall behind him, sitting down next to H in front of the painting as if it’s actually an altar.
Speaking of that scene, their dialogue, to me, seems suspiciously much like wedding vows. Their own extravagant, metaphoric take on it, but definitely romantic enough.
‘’We’ve conjoined, I’m curious if either of us could survive separation.’’ ‘’You and I have begun to blur.’’ ‘’Mine? Before you and after you.’’ And obviously: ‘’If I saw you everyday forever, Will, I would remember this time.’’ Like WHO are you kidding? And lets not forget this famous scrapped piece of art:
There’s their conversations in 3B, too, where they’re almost bickering like a couple who just went through the world’s most terrific divorce. The whole deal about family and children. ‘’Is there a child in your life, Will? I gave you a child, if you recall.’’ Alright? Then H also says ‘’You are family, Will.’’ And, well, one usually becomes family after taking a surname and marrying, so…
Also Will referencing Romeo and Juliet when he says ‘’I’m not fortune’s fool, I’m yours.’’ He references Romeo’s line ‘O, I am fortune’s fool!’ (act 3, if I remember correctly? been I while since I last read Shakespeare, correct me if I'm wrong). Oooooh, Will, you knew what you were doing. The shortest explanation I can give is that Romeo shouts that after he kills Juliet’s cousin after having married her in secret. His rage at Tybalt (the cousin) for killing Mercutio (Romeo’s best friend) was so great that he had no choice but to avenge his friend and kill Tybalt, but it dooms his love for Juliet, because he finally found happiness with her, but then fate made him into a murderer and made sure they could never, politically and personally, be together. AKA, a marriage doomed by the narrative, blablabla. You get what I mean. Either way, Will turns the quote into ‘’I’m not fortune’s fool, I’m yours.’’ Indicating that it was not fate, but Hannibal himself and his own actions, who turned him into a murderer/criminal and doomed their love/marriage.
I’d advice looking it up on google, kind of complicated to explain Romeo and Juliet here HAHAH.
Anyway, Will sails the Atlantic to find Hannibal. What does that remind us of? Sailor husbands/marines who spend weeks or months on a boat waiting to be reunited with their wives.
Then in 3x07, Hannibal carries Will through the snow bridal style. Which is literally a romance TV trope, though Will looks like a wooden plank (my guy was STIFF in those core muscles, they told hugh to tense up to make it less heavy for Mads I think either way this has me dead every time).
And how about Will’s belly scar? What if, besides a C-section/abortion metaphor, it’s also an allegory for a wedding ring? Hannibal marked Will that way for a reason. Like this, Will is forever tied to Hannibal. It’s in his skin. He made Will his property with that scar, so that Will and everyone who will ever love him/see him naked, will see who he really belongs to. Much like a wedding ring. You wear it to show off who you belong to, and Will does just that when he meets Chiyoh and lifts his shirt to show her. Bedelia points it out later, as well, that Hannibal takes delight in having marked Will that way.
Bella and Jack also mirror Hannibal and Will. In 3x04 we see Bella’s funeral and a flashback of her walking down the aisle to Jack, then Jack walking towards her coffin. With Will and H it’s the other way around. In 3x02 we see Will walking down the aisle towards Hannibal’s ‘’broken’’ (dead) heart. When he touches it, it comes alive. It’s Jack’s flashback in reverse order.
And, though this may be far fetched, I think it’s worth mentioning that Will and Hannibal seem like two men who have never considered themselves (the right people) for marriage in s1 en s2, SUDDENLY after their ‘’breakup’’ in Mizumono, they each get themselves ‘’married’’. In S3A it’s H with that ring on his finger, though he’s playing pretend, he’s doing it with the only woman who could be a substitute for Will. She was filling Will’s place, since Will was supposed to run away with Hannibal after Mizumono. During his ‘’marriage’’ to Bedelia, H was also having… fun with Anthony Dimmond, AKA Mr. European second-hand Will Graham supreme. When Hannibal ‘’takes the ring of his finger’’ halfway through season 3 and they have their second breakup/divorce, Will is married in the next episode. To, mind you, a woman whose personality could not be further from Hannibal, but who does look like him/resemble him in appearance. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that together, Hannibal and Will have worn wedding rings throughout the entirety of s3, just not literally to each other, but metaphorically…
And I know that this is crack, but don’t tell me the cliff scene in WOTL isn’t a very brutal wedding night. It literally reminds me of this fucked up scene from Twilight every time AHAHAHA
That's all. Thank you for coming to my presentation.
