On Hannigram, bonds, and the sharing of scars.
So I was watching the deleted epilogue just now when something caught my eye (and I’m sure this has been discussed already, but bear with me. Also forgive my low quality screenshots, I did my best).
As the scene unfolds, we see that Hannibal has a scar across his right cheek. He definitely didn’t get it during the fight with Dolarhyde (I checked - the only blood on his face is from Dolarhyde's throat, and it's all around his mouth). It is entirely possible that he got cut when he and Will were falling off the cliff, but then the camera shifts focus from Hannibal to Will, and…
(The original is on the left, I jacked up the lighting on the right to make it clearer.) The right side of Will’s face is completely fine. Which is weird, considering he did get stabbed there pretty brutally by Dolarhyde. You’d expect at least something, right? Yet there isn’t a trace of the fight on him.
And okay yeah, it could also just be a super long flash forward with Hannibal being scratched up from a more recent fight. But this is a scene already so steeped in visual symbolism, and as the epilogue, it would have followed a very memorable fight, with very memorable injuries. Which makes me think there's more to it.
There are several ways this could be interpreted, and my favourite is that it's showing the extent to which Will and Hannibal shared that moment at the cliff house, and the connection that they share now. They are two halves of a whole and the entire series has been building up to them coming together. In killing Dolarhyde, that process is complete, and it is conveyed with Will's scar on Hannibal's face. Everything that one of them has experienced is being reflected in the other. It's a great way to tie up the overarching theme of the season that the lines between them are steadily blurring. Since this was an epilogue, the culmination of the story would be that any separation between them is now gone. Like Hannibal said, all of this really was for the both of them.
This also makes for an interesting foil to Will's empathy. Whereas Will is able to connect with someone on an emotional level, a scar is physical in nature. It just further emphasizes that their bond goes beyond simple understanding of one another. They are connected mentally, physically, in every way imaginable. Even in ways that should not make any sense whatsoever to anyone who isn't them. Hell, especially in these ways - so much of Hannibal's affection for Will is rooted in Will being the first person Hannibal could recognize a part of himself in, and vice versa. So why not throw in something as crazy as scar-sharing into the mix.
That said, even in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal universe people don't bear the scars of another person's injuries. It's physically impossible. So I do think that the entire scene is happening in a mind palace. Will's? Hannibal's? I have no idea. Knowing them, they've figured out how to do the Vulcan mind meld and it's both of theirs. More sharing of themselves with each other, it's all very on-theme, I swear.
(I think another way you could potentially see this moment is that it's symbolic of Hannibal bearing the weight of what he's done to Will. Without Hannibal, who knows if Will would have ever truly embraced the darkest parts of himself, and he most definitely would not have acknowledged that he finds this darkness beautiful. But Will resisted and fought against Hannibal's influence for so long, and the process was not without its losses and hardships for him. While Hannibal was always very much aware of what he was doing and the consequences, he is the master of keeping a cool facade, and I think that coolness was something Will struggled with for some time. So the scar could be mind palace!Hannibal's way of acknowledging what Will has gone through more openly? And maybe even taking on some of it himself? This interpretation is definitely a bit more of a stretch, but I do think there is room for it.)
Or it could all be a whole lot of nothing, and I'm just reading way too much into a scene that ultimately didn't make the cut ¯\_(ツ)_/¯