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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 29, 2015
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Hannibal, Season 3, Episode 13. [Stream on Amazon Prime]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Creator Bryan Fuller did the impossible with the Hannibal TV series. He took an iconic character from the movies — Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, played so brilliantly and memorably by Anthony Hopkins in three films including the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs — and re-contextualized him and re-told his story on a network TV series that was arguably bloodier, gorier, and more disturbing than any of the Hannibal films. How did that even happen? It sometimes feels like the Hannibal TV series was a dream. Or I suppose a nightmare would be more accurate. A surreal turn of events that keeps unfolding in strange and unpredictable ways, with familiar characters showing up in different bodies, telling familiar stories but they’re all mashed up and out of order, and most of all presenting a nightmare vision of the dark capabilities of Hannibal Lecter.
When it came time to wrap things up at the end of season 3, viewers had already been through the wringer. Season 3 started off with a re-telling of the Hannibal sequel film, with Lecter on the run in Italy, though with the sumptuous added element of Gillian Anderson as Dr. Du Maurier. Once that story got wrapped up, the season pivoted to the story of the Red Dragon, from the book (and later film) of the same name. And with the end of the Red Dragon story, the show had a very short window to end the series, with a final confrontation between Hannibal and Will Graham. As played by Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, respectively, the relationship between Hannibal and Graham was light years away from what we saw in either Manhunter (between Brian Cox and William Peterson) or Red Dragon (between Hopkins and Edward Norton). The Mikkelsen/Graham relationship was a sinister, seductive pairing that kept the audience constantly on edge and unsure of where things were going to go. Up until those final moments of the third and final season, the audience still had no idea how things would end.
This clip is one big SPOILER so beware.
With new rumors that Hannibal could be returning, we’re sure Bryan Fuller will have no end of fun figuring out how to bring Hannibal and Will Graham back from the brink of this utterly ballsy finale.
