Please Please Please explain the teacup and what does it symbolize when it shatters and comes back together. Is the teacup will's transformation or will/hannibal relationship? 3 seasons in i'm still unsure what the teacup is all about. Does abigail have anything to do with the teacup? Thanks <33
Simply put, the shattered teacup coming back together represents the reversal of time.
It’s to do with Stephen Hawking’s theory (which even he dismisses as science-fiction) that the universe, which is currently expanding, will one day instead begin to contract, meaning time itself will reverse.
Hannibal wants time to reverse, because that would mean his sister Mischa can come back to life. That’s why he said he drops a teacup to watch it shatter on the floor, and is not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. This is because it means the universe isn’t contracting yet, time isn’t reversing, therefore Mischa isn’t coming back from the dead.
The first mention of teacups came in the Pilot where Hannibal compared Will to one - which, when I think about it, is astonishing. When you realise that, to him, the image of the teacup has enormous personal significance. He wasn’t even on first-name terms with Will yet he was already blurting out teacup analogies at him? Boy fell hard.
Anyway, the first time we saw a teacup was when a shroom-trippin’ Abigail dropped one on the floor of Hannibal’s kitchen, which I assume was a signal to book-canon savvy folks that Abigail was Hannibal’s latest Mischa-substitute.
That idea was cemented in season 2 when Hannibal actually told Will about his little teacup-dropping ritual, and mentioned Mischa and Abigail in the same breath.
“Occasionally I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor, on purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. Some day, perhaps, a cup will come together.”
Then he looks right at Will and we get this:
The teacup as a symbol for the reversal of time had been expanded to include Will.
Similarly, when Will looked to be in danger of becoming an actual biological father, Hannibal told him:
“Should the universe contract, should time reverse and teacups come together, a place could be made for Abigail in your world.”
Meaning?
Well, Hannibal was signalling to Will that time was going to reverse - Hannibal was going to surprise him by staging a time-reversal for him, bringing Abigail (his Mischa) back from the dead, the way he wishes he could revive his dead sister.
He explained that to Will just after he stabbed him:
“Time did reverse. The teacup that I shattered did come together. A place was made for Abigail in your world. Do you understand? A place was made for all of us, together. I wanted to surprise you. But you… you wanted to surprise me…”
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Then, in season 3, when Will is stuck in a trauma-loop and keeps reliving moments from Mizumono, deluding himself that Abigail is still alive, we see a broken teacup coming back together (because he is reversing and replaying time in his head; he’s indulging the fantasy he was living as a murder husband with Hannibal; the world in which it is physically possible for time to reverse.)
That re-gathered teacup stayed whole right up until Digestivo, when Will finally stopped living in the past, stopped romanticising his relationship with Hannibal and pretending that they can recapture what was lost.
This is signalled by the image of a teacup breaking, and staying broken, inside Will’s head, as he lies sleeping in his bed in Wolf Trap, Virginia.
Then, of course, he wakes up, and finds Hannibal’s notebook beside him, full of equations which Hannibal has written - as Bryan Fuller told us on Twitter:
And because these two are ridiculously attuned to each other, Hannibal sits down and immediately starts talking about teacups and time and the rules of disorder.
He’s newly in love with Will again, he wants the teacup to be whole (at this point time reversing is like a metaphor for them getting back together).
But Will doesn’t. Will sees that the teacup is shattered, and he thinks it - and they - should remain broken up.
( This is different to how it is in the books. In the books, my understanding is that Clarice helps Hannibal reconcile himself to the idea that Mischa is really gone, forever, but lives on inside him. Therefore, whenever he drops a teacup he is actually content to watch it not gather itself back together, because it doesn’t matter to him any more that time isn’t reversing. )
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If Will and Hannibal were to reunite, now, I imagine we’d see some re-gathering teacup imagery or have some teacup reference in the dialogue.
For a long time I’ve thought that kintsukuroi would be the perfect metaphor - for not only their scars, but for them getting back together:
For the shattered teacup to come back together not because time has reversed but because they made it. That would be a more realistic, healthy view of things.
As Leonard Cohen sang, ‘forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in.’
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Hope that clears up the confusion for you, Anon!
