This is an analysis of Antipasto, the first episode in the third season of Hannibal. I’m going to be playing fast and loose with references to later episodes, so run away if you’re worried about spoilers.

Hannibal was cancelled not long after its third season started to air. Despite wild critical acclaim, each season received worse ratings than the last. Antipasto probably did nothing to help the situation because frankly, as a season opener, it’s a little baffling.

Season 2 ends with four major characters near death, and not a single one makes an appearance here. Leaving loose ends in your season opener is a bold move. Making no mention of those ends at all is downright fearless, and it shows a confidence in acceptance that the show’s ratings really didn’t warrant at the time.

But Antipasto is a fantastic episode… as long as you know where it’s going. Most likely Bryan Fuller knew the end was nigh, and he chose to use the time he had to make the show he wanted. Would this episode have had wider appeal had it ended with a single flash of Will opening his eyes in a hospital bed? Definitely. But it would have needed much more than that to save itself, and I’m infinitely grateful that it didn’t try.

As it stands, Antipasto is an excellent bridge between seasons. Focused almost entirely on Hannibal, it shows him grappling with himself in an unprecedented but extremely stylized way, marking the beginning of a new emotional and artistic era for the show.

The grappling is so stylized, in fact, that it’s sometimes easy to miss. How do we know Hannibal’s upset? He looks like he’s having a blast.

Hannibal’s Self Care

It’s easy to forget, when you see him zipping around Paris in a leather jacket, the kind of state Hannibal was in at the end of season 2. He thought his life was changing for the better, but he was betrayed. He lost the promise of love and happiness, and he realized the love he’d felt from Will was based on a lie. He killed Abigail, and he lost control of his carefully crafted life.

In short, he was devastated.

So here we are in Europe, where he’s surrounded himself with things that make him happy and distracted. The champagne and Dante are flowing, and who needs Will Graham when you’ve got an apartment like that? Basically, Hannibal is trying to convince himself that he can have a life here.

And just in case we’ve missed the point, he tells us explicitly… albeit in Medieval Italian.

La Vita Nuova

Dante’s first sonnet that Hannibal quotes is from La Vita Nuova, or The New Life. This is the sonnet Hannibal recites:

Allegro mi sembrava Amor, tenendo

Meo core in mano, e nelle braccia avea

Madonna, involta in un drappo dormendo.

Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo

Lei paventosa umilmente pascea:

Appreso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.

And this is my translation, cobbled together from Google translate, several professional translations, and my own two years of university Italian:

Cheerful Love seemed to me, taking

My heart in hand, and in his arms he had

My lady, wrapped sleeping in a cloth.

Then he woke her, and of that burning heart

Timid, she humbly ate:

Then he turned that he would not be seen crying.

It’s not by mistake that Hannibal chooses this sonnet. It has an irresistible cannibalism element, of course, but beyond that it represents the beginning of love that he felt with Will.

Will is the sleeping lady, wrapped up in Love’s arms. It’s an image that calls to mind Will and Hannibal’s relationship in the first season, when Will spent so much time unconscious, unknowingly being carried by Hannibal’s love.

The lady’s waking is mirrored in Will’s realization of Hannibal’s true nature in season 2. He was woken by Love, and he timidly ate Hannibal’s burning heart as he slowly descended into his becoming.

Hannibal, more than anyone, would appreciate the romance of his heart being eaten by his beloved. Because as he said to Abel Gideon in the scene just prior, “It’s only cannibalism if we’re equals.” The eating of the heart in Dante’s sonnet is more than just “everybody gets et” — it’s a sharing of something vital, something he could do only with Will.

But in the end, Love turns away so as not to be seen crying. Why is this? Because, presumably, Love knows the pain that it can inflict. Hannibal knows that pain all too well, now. Love seemed cheerful to him, but once his heart had been eaten, it turned to grief.

I’ll admit that I haven’t read all of La Vita Nuova, but from what I’ve gathered, the poem as a whole is about Dante falling in love with a woman, her untimely death, and the profound effect it has on him. While Hannibal must know that Will survived, he’s likely treating his betrayal as a death. This is his new life, post-love.

At least for the most part.

A New Companion

Hannibal has everything in his new life. He spends his days teaching Dante and dusting torture artifacts. He spends his nights between a lush apartment and extravagant galas. He has a beautiful woman by his side.

And it’s because of this that his new life is doomed to fail.

Hannibal has lived alone, as far as we know, forever. He seemed perfectly content, before he met Will, with his life of high culture and brutal murder, and he was happy doing it alone.

Here, though, Hannibal suddenly has a wife. Bedelia is a useful prop if he’s posing as the married Dr. Fell, but she’s not essential. No one in Florence even seems to know what Roman Fell looks like — there’s no reason they should know that he’s married.

Hannibal was on his own for so long — it would have made sense for him to remain alone to delve fully into the illusion that he can carry on without Will. But instead he has a wife, a constant companion and witness to his crimes. Why?

Because he can’t stand to be alone anymore.

Hannibal has finally gotten a taste for companionship, for sharing in his lifestyle. Bedelia is a stand-in for Will — her presence proves that he’s been changed irrevocably, that he needs a friend. But there’s a serious problem with Bedelia: She’s not Will.

Antipasto has two main focuses: the establishment of Hannibal’s new life and his disillusionment with would-be companions who are not Will. It’s the latter that leads, inevitably, to the downfall of the former.

We see three would-be companions — Anthony Dimmond, Abel Gideon, and Bedelia Du Maurier — and the episode shows us how each of them proves to be unworthy.

Anthony Dimmond

Dimmond is the first person to speak in the episode. As Hannibal sizes up Roman Fell, Dimmond catches his eye. This show feeds on strong physical likenesses between characters — it was the basis of its very first murder case, and just in case we missed that, poor little Peter Bernadone in season 2 looked and acted so much like Will that it hurt.

So when an attractive man with light skin, stubble, and dark, swept up hair shows an immediate interest in Hannibal, there’s only one connection our minds can make.

Hannibal makes the connection, too. Notwithstanding the physical similarities, Dimmond practically throws himself at him. He also makes it clear that he’s morally dubious, not balking at the inference that Hannibal has murdered the real Roman Fell. He’s a made-to-order Will replacement. But he doesn’t make the cut. Why not?

Though Dimmond does die in the end, he lives for the entire length of the episode, which is longer than expected. Our introduction to him comes with our introduction to Hannibal’s new life and the assumption of his new identity. He keeps popping up uninvited, throwing a wrench in the works of Hannibal’s attempts to move on. He is the memory of Will that threatens Hannibal’s ability to forget.

So why does Hannibal let him live for so long? Possibly because he can’t bring himself to let go of Will a second time. Killing Dimmond would be the smart thing to do, and keeping him around because he reminds Hannibal of Will is a sign that this new life isn’t going to last.

It’s also likely that Hannibal spares Dimmond in order to court his betrayal. Just like Will, Dimmond comes with a ready-made secret knowledge of Hannibal’s true nature that could ruin him. By giving Dimmond time to follow through on that betrayal, Hannibal is replaying his final days with Will.

But Dimmond doesn’t betray him in the end. So why does Hannibal kill him?

To better understand his reasoning, let’s examine his other two failed relationships with Gideon and Bedelia, whose stories play out in flashback throughout the course of Dimmond’s courtship.

Abel Gideon

Gideon allows himself to be kidnapped because, presumably, he still wants to know the Chesapeake Ripper. And Hannibal lets Gideon know him intimately, taking him apart piece by piece. It’s the physical manifestation, you might say, of the way in which he takes Will apart mentally. The big difference, of course, is that Will has the possibility of coming back together. Hannibal’s relationship with Will isn’t necessarily doomed the way it is with Gideon.

In a way, Gideon is practice.

In Gideon Hannibal has a very willing (at first) participant who considers himself his equal, but whom Hannibal doesn’t actually care about. With Gideon, Hannibal can see how far he can push, what he can get away with. Gideon is also, very simply, much needed company. Even this early, Hannibal has gotten used to companionship. With Will in prison, he has to fill the void.

If we place Gideon on a timeline, he’s kidnapped while Will is still in prison but Hannibal is preparing his way to freedom. Once Will is released, Hannibal kills Gideon. This is, on the surface, so he can frame Chilton and move the blame off himself. But he’s also clearing the way for Will. Hannibal doesn’t need a practice companion anymore — he has the real thing.

We see Hannibal and Gideon speak together three times. The first two conversations assure us that Hannibal doesn’t see Gideon as an equal, but he does enjoy his company.

The Snail Meal

By their final conversation, things have changed.

This meal must be very near Hannibal and Will’s reunion. Gideon has only one arm left, and Hannibal seats himself at the far end of the table — he’s already distancing himself from this relationship.

But Gideon fights back. He bangs his fork on the table, willing Hannibal to acknowledge him. Of course this is the height of rudeness. Throughout his stay with Hannibal, Gideon gets more and more antagonistic, and we can see Hannibal’s patience fray. Gideon is someone to talk to, but not worth keeping around. It’s a good thing Will’s coming back soon.

Would you rather I extended you the same kindness as the escargot?

Eating me without my knowledge? No, I find knowing to be far more powerful.

This is another reference to Hannibal and Will’s changing relationship. If we equate Gideon’s physical dismantling with Will’s mental one, we can read Hannibal’s question as the difference between his treatment of Will in seasons 1 and 2. In season 1, he “eats” Will without his knowledge. In season 2 (from this conversation forward) he goes on to be much more open with Will about his treatment of and ambitions for him. It’s an echo of the lady in La Vita Nuova, who slept until Love woke her. This is the main thing Hannibal has to learn from Gideon — that Will would prefer to know about his manipulations.

Why do you think I’m allowing this?

Why do you think I’m allowing this?

Hannibal does miss a key piece of information, though. He doesn’t seem interested in knowing why Gideon would so calmly let himself be eaten, and it’s a question he should probably have asked himself about Will. Had he examined Will’s motives more closely, he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. Instead he allows the question to be turned back on him.

Cuz snails aren’t the only creatures who prefer eating with company. If only that company could be Will Graham.

Gideon sees Hannibal’s loneliness and his love for Will. He knows that he’s just a stand-in, and that his time is almost up. But he takes one last stab at Hannibal with this foreshadowing:

I’m just fascinated to know how you will feel when all this happens to you.

Just as Hannibal allows Gideon to stick around and antagonize him, he allows Will to stick around and betray him. The difference, of course, is that he’s aware of what Gideon’s doing. He doesn’t ask why Gideon stays because he assumes he knows, just as he assumes he knows why Will stays.

That being said, Will is extremely shaky on why he stays, himself — his entire struggle in the second half of season 2 is between betraying Hannibal and joining him. The way things play out in Mizumono, he does a little bit of both. Now that he’s had some time to cool off, Hannibal might realize that Will’s betrayal wasn’t as clear-cut as he thought.

Gideon’s companionship was doomed by design, but Hannibal got some worthwhile information out of it. He mulls over this information during his very short relationship with Dimmond and, importantly, as he decides to reach out to Will.

Bedelia Du Maurier

Bedelia is the predominant companion in Antipasto, and we get to see the long-term breakdown of her relationship with Hannibal.

We first see her at the ball, part of the fairy tale. She’s uncomfortable, though — refusing champagne, working to keep her dress up and the attention off Hannibal. Back at home she’s more explicit — she’s afraid they can’t remain hidden like this.

Their conversation is a back-and-forth of sexual advances and frank talk about murder. Bedelia invites him to unzip her dress, then lures him to a bathtub.

The Bathtub

This bathtub is central to their relationship in the episodes to come — it’s a place of vulnerability, and it will come to represent Hannibal’s loss of control over his life and his emotions. Eventually it’ll be where Bedelia unravels the mystery of his sister and cleans his wounds after he’s almost beaten to death by Jack.

With each scene Hannibal will be more ensconced in this bathtub, but this first time he stays by the door.

How do you feel today?

I still believe I am in conscious control of my actions. Given your history, that’s a good day.

The history Bedelia is referring to is, of course, the one with Will. Even the line bears resemblance to one Will used on Hannibal last season in Tome-Wan: “Please. Every moment of cogent thought under your psychiatric care is a personal victory.”

This is the closest either of them comes to mentioning Will in the present timeline, and it doesn’t go over well. Despite Bedelia’s advances, Hannibal leaves her alone in the bathtub.

Although the bathtub will come to be important for Hannibal, it’s far from a safe place for Bedelia. Throughout season 1, water is a frequent image used to represent the crumbling of Will’s mental state at Hannibal’s hands.

But where Will’s water imagery is violent, Bedelia’s is much closer to Alana’s in season 2. Both of them find themselves sinking into black water when they thought they were at peace (Alana sleeping, Bedelia soaking in a bath). Their water is insidious — Bedelia watches it drip slowly into the tub one drop at a time. They’re being overtaken by the slow creep of Hannibal’s influence.

Both are naked, hinting at a conversation Bedelia has with Will three years later, when she explains why he came out of his relationship with Hannibal so damaged:

How’d you manage to walk away unscarred? I’m covered in scars.

I wasn’t myself. You were. Even when you weren’t, you were.

I wasn’t wearing adequate armor?

No. You were naked.

Just as Alana saved herself from drowning, Bedelia surges to the surface, looking stricken. This is her moment of realization of what she’s gotten herself into, and the beginning of her attempt to get out of it. She won’t be naked again.

The Beginning

What exactly led Bedelia to join Hannibal in the first place? It’s probably a question Bedelia’s asking herself, and we get the answer in a flashback to just after the end of Mizumono. Bedelia trains a gun on a naked Hannibal who has literally just washed Will and Abigail from his body. She asks him what it’s like being seen as he’s at his most vulnerable.

How does it feel? Being seen.

You are in no position to ask, Dr. Du Maurier. You ended our patient-psychiatrist relationship.

I lacked the appropriate skills to continue your therapy.

I never found you to be lacking.

I’m sorry I didn’t provide you with a suitable substitute for therapy… Is Will Graham still alive?

Will Graham was not a suitable substitute for therapy.

What was he?

Is this professional curiosity?

Almost entirely.

Bedelia never gets an answer to what Will Graham actually was, though that look should tell her not to push the issue. What she does get is a serious boost in confidence. All along she’s known at least something of what Hannibal is. She’s seen him before and she sees him more now, and she’s still alive and has the upper hand. Will is (presumably) dead, and as far as Hannibal has let on it’s because he wasn’t a suitable substitute for her.

Do you trust me?

Not entirely.

You’ve taken into consideration my beliefs about your intentions.

My intentions?

Human motivation can be little more than lucid greed.

Greed, and blind optimism.

You’re optimistic I won’t kill you.

And with that Bedelia uncocks her gun. Why does she run away with Hannibal? It can’t be for the same reasons Will wanted to. She’s killed once, but it’s not in her nature. She’s drawn to Hannibal, but they’re hardly inseparable. Hannibal implies that she’s motivated by greed. What could she be greedy for?

My best guess is that she’s greedy for the challenge. While Will is drawn to Hannibal because he makes him feel like himself, Bedelia is drawn to him because he makes her feel capable.

Bedelia is brilliant and knows how to play her cards right. Being with Hannibal pushes her to play them all. Later in the season she shows real contempt for and envy of Will — presumably because she got so close to Hannibal and survived based purely on her wits. All Will had to do was be his pretty little self, and Hannibal preferred that.

In other words, Hannibal makes Bedelia feel worthy of his friendship, a concept she brings up during his therapy in the first season. She runs away with him because she can handle it, and she’s intoxicated by the knowledge that she can handle it.

Hannibal takes her because he likes her and he’s just maimed every other friend he has. She’s no Will, but she’s killed before and she could possibly be considered an equal.

Maybe this could work.

Dinner with Dimmond

Or maybe not.

The present Bedelia isn’t sure she can handle it after all. After wrenching herself out of the bathtub, she starts buying wine and truffles, the clue that eventually leads Alana to her. Is Hannibal aware of this beginning of a betrayal? Probably not, but he does see her enthusiasm waning, and the mood takes a distinct shift.

He invites Dimmond for dinner and seems to be having the time of his life. While Bedelia is shaking so much she can hardly get the fork to her mouth, he’s in the highest spirits we’ve ever seen. He even laughs.

The most telling line here is Hannibal’s: “Dante wrote that fear is almost as bitter as death.” He then taunts Bedelia with Dimmond’s precariousness, asking if he’s travelling alone and inviting him to Roman’s lecture. He makes a show of feeding her a meal meant to improve her flavor. This dinner isn’t centered around Dimmond’s death — it’s centered around Bedelia’s fear.

To her infinite credit, Bedelia manages to rally and deliver a fantastic line:

My husband has a very sophisticated palette. He’s very particular about how I taste.

As she’s overcoming her fear to say this, the music notably changes. The usual fear-striking discordant strings are overtaken by an upbeat little medley of female voices — Bedelia’s got some fight in her, still. As her fear for Dimmond’s life becomes fear for her own, she changes pace to make herself more interesting and less killable. Where Gideon chose petulance, she chooses charm — a strategy much more likely to play well with Hannibal.

This is an early nod to the later concept of Bluebeard’s Wife that Bedelia understands so well — Hannibal has only one companion at a time, and with each new one he murders the old one. With the appearance of Dimmond and the acorn and oyster dinner (a direct reference to Gideon’s food as he was being cleared away for Will), Bedelia is a marked woman.

And yet everybody survives the meal.

Betrayal

You let him go.

What would you have me do, Bedelia?

By not killing Dimmond, Hannibal sets a few possible outcomes into motion. He’s courting betrayal, giving Bedelia the chance to go to the police and Dimmond to expose him at his upcoming lecture.

Hannibal was devastated by Will’s betrayal, and the subject is weighing heavily on his mind. If even Will would do it, what’s stopping everyone else? Bedelia considers it, smiling at a policeman the next morning. But instead she takes the subtler approach, buying more truffles and sitting in front of security cameras.

How do we know Hannibal has betrayal on the brain? Because it’s the subject of his lecture. Ostensibly it’s about Pietro della Vigna, “whose treachery earned him a place in Dante’s Hell. He was disgraced and blinded for betraying his emperor’s trust. Dante’s pilgrim finds him in the seventh level of Hell reserved for suicides.”

Bedelia believes the lecture is directed at her, and with good reason — Hannibal appears as the Devil himself and delivers his next lines looking straight at her, prompting her to flee:

I won’t belabor the parallels with Judas Iscariot. Betrayal, hanging, self-destruction. Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case — I make my own home be my gallows.

But of course the main betrayal in his mind is Will’s, and through the very delivery of this lecture he’s attempting to repeat it. By inviting Dimmond, Hannibal is allowing him to see him, just as he allowed Will, and he’s deliberately giving him the opportunity to betray him.

But he doesn’t.

The moment after the lecture with Hannibal, Dimmond, and Sogliato is absolutely ripe for betrayal, but Dimmond plays right along:

Dr. Fell is a friend of yours?

I was his TA at Cambridge. The tales I could tell.

Please do.

What kind of friend would I be?

What kind of friend, indeed.

Not only does Dimmond not expose Hannibal, he implies that a true friend would never reveal his friend’s secrets. This is, of course, precisely where Will failed.

Dimmond has presumably passed some kind of test, but Hannibal doesn’t look particularly happy, and he walks behind Dimmond with what is probably a very sharp fountain pen. He still suspects a betrayal.

An exposition of atrocious torture instruments appeals to connoisseurs of the very worst in mankind.

Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us into the lewd and vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us.

What still claps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?

What wickedness has your attention, Mr. Dimmond?

Yours, Dr. Fell. I have no delusions about morality. If I did, I would’ve gone to la polizia. I’m curious as to what fate befell Dr. Fell to see you here in his stead.

This is yet another repetition of Will’s personality. Just like Will who has “given up good and evil for behaviorism,” Dimmond’s actions here are driven more by circumstance than morality. He hearkens to Will’s behaviorism, discussing the extent to which mankind has been desensitized to wickedness. He senses a new kind of wickedness in Hannibal, and he’s drawn to it.

You may have to strap me to the breaking wheel to loosen my tongue.

You overestimate my affection for the genuine, Dr. Fell. Clearly you found him as distasteful as I did.

On the contrary.

Dimmond doesn’t know what to make of this last line, and rightly so. He seems to suspect that Hannibal’s murdered the Fells, and he’s not especially turned off by it. This is a very good start. But morally dubious as Dimmond is, he has a long way to go until he can appreciate cannibalism jokes the way Will could. Surely that’s not what gets him killed, though.

We can twist ourselves into all manner of uncomfortable positions just to maintain appearances, with or without a breaking wheel.

Are you here to twist me into an uncomfortable position?

I’m here to help you untwist… to our mutual benefit.

Despite Hannibal’s doubts, Dimmond behaves admirably. Not only does he not betray him, he’s fine with Hannibal’s murderous tendencies and he’s interested in a mutually beneficial partnership. If anything, he behaves too admirably — he does exactly what Hannibal wishes Will would have done.

Hannibal smiles and invites him home. The real question is: is he planning on killing him or keeping him? Was the betrayal setup a test for a new companion or a nostalgic rehashing of lost love?

As they enter the house, Hannibal comes through the door first. This is a marked change from his fountain pen stalking in the torture exhibit, and it suggests he’s no longer on guard.

But once he’s inside, he murders Dimmond immediately. Does this mean he’s been planning on killing him all along?

Maybe.

Loss of Control

As he’s killing Dimmond, Hannibal torments Bedelia.

Observe or Participate.

What?

Are you, in this very moment, observing or participating?

For all his faults, Will might’ve participated. He showed a genuine zest for violence. Bedelia, on the other hand, is not taking this well. She might talk a big game, but she has no taste for murder and is certainly no Will.

…Observing.

You say you’re observing but this, this is participation, Bedelia. Did you know what he would do? I would prefer you answer honestly.

I was curious.

You were curious what would happen. You were curious what Mr. Dimmond would do. What I would do. Did you anticipate our thoughts? Counter-thoughts? Rationalizations?

Yes.

This is what you expected?

Yes.

That’s participation. What have you gotten yourself into, Bedelia? Shall I hang up your coat?

Bedelia’s done what we’ve just done — she’s examined all the evidence and come to the conclusion that Hannibal was going to kill Dimmond. She has good reason to — it’s a repeat of Hannibal’s implication of her in poor Zachary Quinto’s death years ago. But is it really what Hannibal had in mind?

In an earlier flashback with Jack, Bedelia warns him about Hannibal’s manipulation:

If you think you’re about to catch Hannibal, it’s because he wants you to think that. Don’t fool yourself into thinking he’s not in control of what’s happening.

And this was always the case, until Will entered into the equation. In season 2 Hannibal genuinely doesn’t expect Will to turn on him, and because of that he loses control. He kills Abigail out of rage and retribution.

Hannibal has set this evening up as a repetition of Will’s betrayal. When Dimmond doesn’t fulfill his role, it leaves Hannibal in an interesting position. There’s nothing to punish him for, and he may genuinely make a good replacement for Will.

The key, I think, is in Bedelia. When he comes through the door first, Hannibal catches her in the act of running out on him. He’s been primed for a betrayal all day, and here he finally gets it.

Hannibal may genuinely have been planning on keeping Dimmond around, but with this sudden treachery, he has a change of plans. In order to complete the events of Mizumono, he has to punish his betrayer, but not kill her.

I believe that Dimmond’s faithfulness comes as a surprise, just like Will’s betrayal did. It throws Hannibal off course and makes him act rashly. He murders Dimmond in order to punish Bedelia and finish his rehashing of Mizumono. (It’s possible, too, that he kills him out of rage at the ease of his faithfulness. Hannibal hasn’t forgiven Will yet, and killing this ideal surrogate is a way of punishing him a second time).

With Dimmond’s death we see a coldness and an anger that we don’t usually see from Hannibal. He’s furious with Bedelia, and he drives home her implication in the murder deliberately and cruelly. To her it’s a demonstration that he’s in complete control, but really it’s the beginning of a loss of control. It’s a sudden and violent change of plans motivated by rage and loss — it’s a repetition of his murder of Abigail in Mizumono.

By keeping Bedelia around, Hannibal repeats Will’s survival in Mizumono. He also recreates the patient-psychiatrist relationship that helped him work through his feelings for Will once before. He sets the stage for his return.

And in forcing Bedelia to admit that she’s participating, Hannibal is at the same time proving to himself that she isn’t. Any participation on her part is passive, and he wants action. He doesn’t just want a witness to his crimes — he wants an accomplice. His new life lasted for eight whole months, but he can’t keep it up anymore.

In the end we see Hannibal on a train to Palermo, remembering his snail dinner with Gideon and realizing that Will’s feelings might have been more genuine than he realized. Out of Leonardo da Vinci’s ideal man, he folds a paper heart, a miniature of the oversized heart he will sculpt out of the body of the man who couldn’t replace Will. He’s going to leave it in a spot he knows Will will recognize — the foyer of his mind.

The imagery is less than subtle, but we can cut Hannibal some slack. He suffered a devastating heartbreak — he’s allowed a little theatricality. And considering the terms he and Will parted on, this is no time for ambiguity.

While it may have been a strange choice for a season opener, Antipasto is wonderful as a first chapter. Traveling with Hannibal, we’re forced to take part in his deliberate avoidance of Will. If the episode were to cut back and forth between the two convergent story lines, we’d lose the mood of Hannibal’s willful isolation and immersion.

Instead we get these more obtuse references through Dimmond’s likeness and Dante’s sonnet. We see Hannibal, in his surroundings and interactions, work through the events of the past two seasons. We see him struggle with and finally overcome Will’s betrayal. It’s an astonishing departure — up until now the struggle has been entirely Will’s, with Hannibal acting as his calm, all-knowing foil. With Will gone, Hannibal is suddenly the unstable one.

The climax of season 2 showed us Hannibal’s first loss of control. Antipasto embraces that loss of control and runs with it. It may not answer a single question, but it drives the season and the character into uncharted and fantastic territory.

Hannibal maybe have doomed itself with season 3, but if being cancelled is what it takes to get a show like this, I’ll take cancelled any day.

Next episode: Primavera