Don’t get me wrong; I would commit probably some Lecter-esque acts myself in order to ensure a season four. The implicit set up is for Will and Hannibal to go on the run in a similar manner to how Clarice and Hannibal are left at the end of the final novel, a sort of ‘murder husbands’ story that most fans have probably been hoping for since the start. And the notion of Fuller’s take on The Silence Of The Lambs is probably the Holy Grail for Lecter fans. Just thinking about Clarice Starling and Will Graham interacting is enough to get my heart racing. And yet, I no longer feel the need for more.

Taken as they are, the three seasons of Hannibal to date tell a mostly complete, satisfying tale. At its heart this has always been a heterosexual love story, the tale of two men with opposing moralities, two men who have every reason to kill each other but are tragically doomed to be the only people who will ever understand each other. It’s a story that is genius in its simplicity and how that simplicity breeds complexity. It takes a couple of brief scenes from a thriller novel written in 1982 and expands them into an epic saga of tragic and broken characters drawn into the chess game between two destructive people who are fixated on each other, to the detriment of everyone else in their lives. The entire story is depicted in a visual style that reflects the way the protagonists see the world, showing us the beauty that Hannibal Lecter sees in death, the beauty he spends three seasons trying to show Will Graham. And in the final line of the final episode, Will finally recognises it. Covered in the blood of each other and their shared victim, Hannibal and Will embrace as Will simply says ‘It’s beautiful.’ Then he pulls them both over a cliff.

It’s an enormous moment. Earth shattering for the series. From the very first episode Hannibal wanted Will to embrace his own darkness, and while he came very close, those flirtations were always in service of bringing Hannibal down. They could always be excused to himself and to others as part of his long con, essential deviations in the service of the greater good.

Killing Dolarhyde was first and foremost an act of self-defence. But what is so crucial is that Will has no reason to lie to Hannibal at the end. There are no more games being played. Will knows who Hannibal is and Hannibal knows who Will is. As Hannibal says, “the bluff is eroding,” and by the time they fall, it has gone altogether. Will’s acknowledgement of the beauty he sees in murder is crossing a crucial line, a line that leaves him with one option; if he can’t be a good person, he simply can’t be. And if Will dies, Hannibal goes with him.

Obviously the intention here is that they survive. Fuller has been open about wanting a fourth season and there is no story without these two characters. If the show continues I would suggest that Will’s greatest torment will be the fact that he survived. He survived and now he has to live with the fact that he knows what he is and has crossed a line he can’t return from. And I won’t deny that that is a tantalising story that is begging to be told.