Jamie Harsip
Content Editor

The penultimate episode of NBC’s Hannibal was certainly a revelation. We see some characters that have been absent of late  – Abigail, Georgia Madchen, and Dr. DuMaurier. Will continues being crazy, Jack continues to be a bad friend to Will, and Hannibal continues to be an even worse friend to Will than Jack is. Yes, it’s more of the same, but the final third of the episode is not to be missed.

The episode opens in the hospital, where Will is visiting Georgia (who is still in her hyperbaric chamber). Evidently the doctors still don’t know what’s wrong with Will, aside from his fever. Okay, I know our country’s medical system is a little bit messed up, but come on! Doctors don’t shy away from giving tests! Any medical professional who knows what Will’s symptoms are would give him another head CT. I feel like we need to start a petition entitled “SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP WILL GRAHAM”. Although it does say something about the quality of the show that this is the least realistic aspect of a show about the FBI, serial killers, and cannibals. But I digress, as I so often do when I recap this show. Georgia is doing much better, which is pleasant. She looks fantastic. But this is just the beginning of her recovery. Georgia tells Will that she has to undergo shock treatment, which will hopefully restore her memory, the doctors say. She doesn’t want to remember what she did, though. She knows she killed her friend, but who wants to remember doing that? She also says she remembers Will killing Dr. Sutcliffe, although she couldn’t see his face. As we all know, what she’s remembering is seeing Hannibal kill the doctor. And Hannibal is not one to leave his footsteps uncovered…

Later, Will wakes up in his hospital bed to Hannibal uncovering two bowls of…soup? Yes, silky chicken (whatever the hell that is) in a broth, with some other crap I’ve never heard of. But dude, the point is Hannibal made Will some chicken soup. They get to talking about Georgia Madchen, and how she and Will are each other’s support system. And then Hannibal tells Will that he suspects the fever is a side effect of dementia, which is indicative of something else entirely (yeah, like ENCEPHELITIS), but that he hasn’t told Jack. Nor will he, until they know for sure.

Georgia wakes up in her hyperbaric chamber and sees a comb there. Huh, well that’s new. She decides to, well, use it. Not a good plan, in a glass tube full of oxygen and without an easy exit. Almost instantly the static electricity caused by her combing her hair sets the chamber ablaze.

No, she is not magically okay. Jack and Will are in her hospital room, where Georgia’s charred body is wheeled out. Nobody knows quite what happened, but signs indicate suicide. She hadn’t been wearing the bracelet that prevents static electricity…and she was facing two murder charges, after all. But no, Will doesn’t believe for a second that she was suicidal. Jack tries to get all up on

Freddie seems to be helping Abigail compile her book. God, that woman exudes sliminess. They talk about potential book titles, but apparently “The Last Victim” has already been taken. No matter, though, says Abigail. She wasn’t her father’s last victim, anyway. Her friend Marissa was. She may have been killed by the copycat, but Abigail still blames her father (and, you know, I kind of agree – no murderous cannibal father would mean no copycat). Freddie, never one to miss out on an opportunity, asks Abigail who she thinks killed Nick Boyle – an innocent victim. Evidently Freddie, with all her totally legitimate experience, knows how to tell when someone is a killer, and Nick Boyle wasn’t. Abigail asks how Freddie knows when someone is a killer, and apparently it’s a very specific kind of hostility. Which she sees in Will Graham. Oh, give it up, woman.

Will dreams that the sick and diseased Georgia Madchen visits him in his home late at night. She lures him outside and says, “See? See?” And she’s gouged by antlers, before spontaneously erupting in flame. Then she turns into that ubiquitous stag. Will wakes up in his hospital bed with a strange look on his face.

Will is crazy, and not in the usual way this time. He decided to check himself out of the hospital so he could go down to Jack’s office and tell him what he thinks about Georgia’s death: it wasn’t suicide; she was murdered by whoever killed Dr. Sutcliffe. Jack ain’t having it, though. Will says that Georgia told him she saw someone else there, but she couldn’t see his face. Jack replies b saying yeah, there was someone else there – Dr. Sutcliffe. And the reason she couldn’t see his face was that she cut it in half. Will is unshakable, though. He tells Jack that he knows there’s nothing he could have done to make things better for Georgia; she had been misunderstood all her life. But what he could do would be to make sure her death wasn’t misunderstood. For all Will’s craziness and illness Jack knows that he still knows what he’s doing when it comes to reading a death scene.

Will is down in the lab with Jack and Z, who is explaining what they’ve found. At first things are blurry and their voices distorted – yeah, Will, we respect what you’re doing but clearly you are still not well. Anyway, no one had tampered with the wiring of the hyperbaric chamber, but they had found something interesting that may have been the cause of the fire. It’s a small piece of plastic, which is something that is never allowed into one of those chambers. And Georgia’s hair is melted right into it. Will, being who he is, suggests it may be a plastic comb, and tells the lab guys that they are holding the murder weapon. Jack tries to brush it off again, but Will is really and truly not having it. He pulls open one of the morgue drawers and starts explaining himself. Whoever killed Dr. Sutcliffe wanted it to look like what Georgia had done to Beth Lebeau, but not exactly. He explains that it’s like the way Hobbes’ copycat killed Marissa Schuur and Cassie Boyle similarly to the way Hobbes killed his victims, but not exactly. And I think we’re onto something here, kids. Will says that the Hobbes copycat killed Sutcliffe, and also Georgia Madchen. He killed her because he thought she saw his face. Oh, boy. Will, I think encephalitis is starting to look good on you.

And then, of course, Jack decides he should talk to freaking Hannibal about it. Why does everyone go to Hannibal to talk about his or her theories and whatnot? It gets people killed! Yeah, I get that he’s Will’s therapist, but come on! He’s not an FBI agent! Quit telling him secret shit! Ugh! Anyway, he asks Hannibal if maybe there’s more to Will’s ravings than the fever. Jack tells Hannibal that Will is connecting murders that previously had no connection, and he wants to know if it’s just the lines blurring in Will’s head or if he’s onto something.

Jack decides to pay a visit to Dr. DuMaurier. She answers her door and he says that he would like to talk to her about one of her patients. It’s not an official inquiry, so Jack doesn’t have a court order, but he sounds like he means to get it there if need be. He tells Dr. DuMaurier that he suspects Hannibal of withholding pertinent information regarding a murder investigation. When she basically refuses to violate her confidentiality agreement with Hannibal Jack changes the subject to the patient who attacked Dr. DuMaurier. Apparently Hannibal gave a statement. Dr. Lecter had referred that patient to her. Jack brings up the two men killed in Dr. Lecter’s office, but DuMaurier all but brushes it off. They get to discussing Hannibal’s relationship with Will. DuMaurier says that Hannibal considers Will to be a friend, that he worries about Will and wants to help him. Jack says that Will is his friend too, and DuMaurier counters with “It seems like Will could use more friends like Dr. Lecter.” Cue gloomy laughter, because oh hell no.

Jack seems to be starting to take Will seriously, even if no one else is. He gets the reluctant lab techs (minus Bev, who I really miss this episode) to hunt down some information about Garrett Jacob Hobbes’ activities prior to his death, as he is theorizing that Hobbes and the copycat knew each other.

Will is visiting Abigail (where is she? A mental hospital? Juvie? I have no idea) and they are discussing the ugliness of killing a person. Abigail says she finally gets what Will meant when he said it was the ugliest thing in the world. Apparently Abigail didn’t feel bad about killing Nick Boyle, which is why it was so easy to lie about it. By the way, they’re in a more or less public area, so I really don’t think this is the best possible conversation topic, but whatever. She says she wishes she could have killed her father, for killing her mother and for making her be a part of his killing all the girls. Will tells Abgail that he thinks he can catch the copycat killer, but he needs her help.

Meanwhile in Dr. DuMaurier’s (massive and gorgeous) house, Hannibal is there. Dr. DuMaurier tells him that an FBI agent came to see her. She advises that Hannibal stop whatever he is doing with Will Graham, but he really doesn’t seem interested in that suggestion. She also tells Hannibal that Jack had asked about her attack. This stops Hannibal, who had been pacing the room, in his tracks. He wants to know what she told Jack, and she tells him it was half-truths. Yes, the patient swallowed his tongue, but she didn’t mention how or why, or even who was responsible. Hannibal responds with, “You protect your patient from Jack Crawford, but I can’t protect mine?” He assures Dr. DuMaurier that when he does find the pressures of being both Will’s friend and psychiatrist to be too much, he will find a way to relieve them. I’m pretty sure that means he’s going to kill someone, because that seems to be Hannibal’s way of dealing with his problems.

Will’s meeting with Hannibal now, and he says the fever may have had him down and out for a while, but he’s finally thinking clearly. Hannibal points out that both suspects at the scenes of the so-called copycat murders left DNA there. So what? Will says he’s choosing to factor that into the psychological profile of his killer. Hannibal asks why the copycat didn’t kill Georgia when she saw him in Dr. Sutcliffe’s office, and Will says because he didn’t have to at the time. She was an unreliable witness, batshit crazy as she was. So he was planning on framing her? No, Will says; he was planning on framing him. If it wasn’t personal at first, it is now. It must be someone from the bureau who has access to all the information on the two murder investigations. Come on, Will! Get it together! Everyone keeps telling Hannibal about their secret suspicions and whatnot! Put it together! But of course he doesn’t. Instead he says he’ll be reconstructing the murderer’s thinking by taking Abigail back to Minnesota to start back when the copycat called Hobbes. Hannibal stops him, saying that Will is verging on paranoid and that he can’t allow him to drag Abigail in with him.  Will leaves, and Hannibal looks rather put out. Oh no, he’s probably thinking about how he has to kill someone else, what a pain.

Back at FBI headquarters the information about Hobbes has come back. The Shrike did, in fact, cross paths with all of the girls he killed. And train manifestos and hotel records say that Abigail was always with him. Jack is sure beyond a doubt that Abigail was the bait; she helped her father pick the girls he would kill. He theorizes that she killed Cassie and Marissa to impress her dad, and Nick to cover up her tracks. He theorizes that she killed Dr. Sutcliffe and Georgia Madchen because she had a taste for it…or she was trying to impress someone else.

Jack goes to see Abigail, but she isn’t there. Freddie, however, is; and she’s more than happy to tell Jack about how one of the girls there told her that Will Graham had snuck Abigail out. Jack asks how the book is going, and apparently there are some plot holes. Like who killed Nick Boyle. Apparently Freddie also suspects Abigail. What she wants to know is what Will is hiding.

Jack barges into Hannibal’s office demanding to know what is going on between Will and Abigail. Hannibal suggests that Will is totally losing it, basically. Jack has seen Will acting confused and disoriented at crime scenes, but Hannibal suggests that it’s the result of dissociative personality disorder. Oh, Hannibal, no. I see what you’re doing. To make a long story short, Hannibal suggests that Will takes on the personality of Hobbes when he dissociates. And is with the daughter who Hobbes wanted to kill. So he’s gently having Jack put two and two together and man, things do not look good for Will Graham. And so, yet again, Hannibal Lecter is the worst best friend ever.

Will and Abigail are on a plane

They get to Abigail’s father’s hunting lodge, and things to terribly wrong. Will starts to have one of his sweating spells, which always lead to his dissociation, just as he realizes that Abigail lured her father’s victims. So yeah, he’s looking like a sweaty, crazy, hot mess and getting up in Abigail’s (terrified) face. He slams her against the wall, has some sort of fit, and then she’s on the other side of him suddenly, saying that there’s something wrong with him. He says that Jack was right about her, she did help he father kill all those girls, and whom else did she kill? He all but accuses her of being the copycat killer, but she jumps on that one quickly. When he says that if it weren’t her it had to be someone she knew, she asks if he’s ever thought that “someone” could be him. Apparently he hadn’t. He grabs his head and starts panting, sweating, and suddenly we cut to a flight attendant vacuuming the cabin of a plane. He’s the only one who hasn’t disembarked the plane. Abigail is gone, and Will has no idea how he even got there.

Abigail has gone back to her old house. Who should she find in the kitchen but Dr. Lecter. She immediately goes up to him and hugs him, immeasurably glad to see him. Evidently Abigail left Will at her father’s cabin, because she didn’t feel safe with him. Hannibal tells her that along with Will, Jack knows everything. This completely freaks Abigail out, and she asks if Will actually killed Marissa. Hannibal doesn’t directly reply, but says that they will believe he did. They will believe Will killed other people to. At this, Abigail lets go of Hannibal’s hands and takes a step back. She tells Hannibal that she remembers the time Will said that whoever called her father that morning was the copycat killer. And we know that she knows it was Hannibal. She asks him why he really called, and he says to warn her father…because he wanted to see what would happen. He was also curious to see what would happen when he killed Marissa. He was curious to see what Abigail would do. She is able to deduce that he had wanted her to kill Nick Boyle, and he did – he wanted to see how much like her father she was. A terrified Abigail asks Hannibal how many people he’s killed, and he tells her it’s many more than her father did. When she asks if he’s going to kill her, too, Hannibal says “I’m so sorry, Abigail. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you in this life. All the while he’s stroking her cheek, face impassive. What. The. FUCK.

Coming up next week is the season finale, and I for one can’t wait to see it. I have no idea what the hell is even going to happen, but I am excited! Be sure to tune in next Thursday at 10 PM/EST!

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