Episode 3 really rams up the tension and lets Hannibal’s true colours show fully for the first time. So, this episode heavily links to the first as Abigail wakes up from her coma and Jack is eager to see if she was involved in the murders or knows something about them, but both Will and Alana don’t agree, saying that she needs time to heal before she is confronted by what her father has done and Hannibal says surprisingly silent during the debate but ultimately says that there might be opportunity for her to heal by going home for Jack instantly jumps at the point of view that serves his own agenda.
In the background, there is a lot more going on as they are still looking for the copycat who we know to be Hannibal now but the F.B.I. and everyone else is still unaware. The first time we see Hannibal making his move is him manipulating Will and Jack into trusting him which he does perfectly. Freddie also turns up three times in the episode, the first is talking to Abigail trying to convince her to talk about the murders and also mentions Will’s unstable mental state, the second is talking to the brother of the copycat victim although she seems to be unaware it is a copycat even telling Nicholas that Abigail is out of her coma which obviously leads him to track her down, and the final time is in the Hobbs’ home near the end of the episode. Each one of these scenes in which Freddie appears is significant as her actions directly influence the actions of others, mainly Nicholas’.
When she returns home despite Alana’s protests she begins going through the house, reliving the events of the day, seeing the place where her mother died and where her father tried to kill her before being killed by Will and she remembers all of this. However, through the whole episode, Hannibal is manipulating her emotions, getting her to trust him more than anyone else. When Nicholas turns up at the house shortly after Abigail’s friend Marissa appears he tells Abigail details about his sister’s death which causes Marissa to throw a rock at him cutting his head. He quickly leaves and Marissa is taken away by her mother, Abigail then mentions that her father wasted nothing from the deer and couldn’t imagine her father wasting his victims coming to the realisation that he had been feeding the girl to her and her mother.
When the small group make the trip to the cabin, there is blood dripping from the upper level where Abigail sees Marissa’s body impaled on the antlers, exactly like the copycat killing and everyone thinks that Nicholas is to blame even the viewer. However, when he reappears in the house that evening wanting to talk to Abigail immediately after she discovers that her father uses the hair of his victims to stuff the cushions she stabs him but unconsciously begins gutting him. When she walks upstairs to find the others, Hannibal is the first to see her and quickly knocks Alana out. Abigail shows him what she has done and he manipulates her by telling her that everyone will believe she is her father’s accomplice rather than acting in self-defense and gives her two options; tell the truth or hide the body and she takes the second options.
We learn shortly after that the blood under Abigail’s fingernails which she said she got scratching Nicholas matches the blood and skin in Marissa’s mouth which we know to come from the rock Marissa threw at Nicholas, which Hannibal subtly hid, cementing the evidence that Hannibal is the copycat killer while expertly misguiding the police and the F.B.I. When Alana comes around she can’t remember anything except a blur on the edge of her vision and Hannibal claims to have also been hit over the head. We don’t know what they did with the body, but the episode ends with Jack putting resources into tracking Nicholas down and Abigail seeking out Hannibal. In this brief conversation, Hannibal lets slip that he has also killed someone else but claims it was an accident much like Abigail’s situation and she agrees to keep his secret if he keeps her, thus building a solid rapport between the pair.
This episode was surprisingly lacking in music and the eerie silence really adds to the atmosphere and tension that is felt throughout this novel. The viewer also questions Hannibal’s ability to cover up his crimes as he is committing them in close quarters to other murders and in very close time frames but anything that points to him is removed. I also want to draw attention to the opening of this series which is eerie and dark while only using a two-color palette which is beautiful and haunting to watch but really sets the tone of the series. We also see in the opening credits that all the characters are based on characters from Red Dragon, so Clarice isn’t going to appear as she doesn’t appear in the book series until Silence of the Lambs. While the first two episodes could be considered individual stories despite some character overlap, episode 3 really cements this as a series with an overarching plot and character storylines.
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