This is an analysis of Primavera, the second episode in the third season of Hannibal. If you’d like to read about the first episode, I’ve got you covered. If you haven’t finished the show, go do that first, because I’ll be referencing later events.

Primavera is very much the yin to Antipasto’s yang. The first episode shows Hannibal working alone through the repercussions of Mizumono, and the second shows Will doing the same.

But while Hannibal tries to surround himself with external influences, Will’s action is almost completely internal. Apart from very minor exchanges with a doctor and a police officer, the only people Will speaks to are Pazzi and Abigail, and I’ve got bad news about Abigail…

He does also speak to Hannibal, both in his one-sided conversation in the crypt and in a couple of flashbacks, which is very indicative of what constitutes “internal” for Will, now. Even when he’s alone, Hannibal is with him. Hannibal’s Mizumono aftermath is a loss of control — Will’s is coming to terms with a new kind of existence.

This is evident in the name of the episode. Chronologically, this season’s titles follow the traditional order of courses in an Italian meal. In the second slot, between “antipasto” and “secondo,” there ought to be a course called “primo.” Instead, this episode is called Primavera. Why the slight change?

It’s because of the painting.

La Primavera

Botticelli’s La Primavera is the painting Pazzi reveals to be the source of Hannibal’s twenty year old obsession. The painting as a whole has a few interpretations, but it’s not the painting as a whole that Hannibal’s interested in. The figures he recreates in his murder tableau and in pencil are always the two farthest to the right.

These figures are more or less agreed to be Chloris the nymph and Zephyrus, the god of the west wind. According to a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Chloris attracted Zephyrus, who kidnapped and married her. As he ravished her, flowers spilled out of her mouth and she became Flora, the goddess of flowers. La Primavera depicts this story with flowers streaming out of Chloris’ mouth, signalling the coming of spring (“primavera” in Italian) and her transformation into a god.

According to Pazzi, this is a story that transfixed young Hannibal. But why? To understand that, let’s take a look at what’s over the fireplace in his dining room in Baltimore.

Leda and the Swan is another Classical myth that can also be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In it, Zeus takes the form of a swan and rapes (or possibly seduces) the mortal woman Leda, leading to the birth of the demigods Helen and Pollux.

Hannibal has a particular taste when it comes to Classical myths, though to be fair they’re easy to come by. In his favorite stories a mortal is possibly seduced by a god, possibly forced against their will, and the results are divine.

This is how he sees his relationship with Will in the first two seasons — through an unclear mix of force and seduction, he brings out the divine true self he sees inside him.

We may not even have noticed the Leda and the Swan painting if Abel Gideon hadn’t called it to our attention:

To tell Jack Crawford that I sat in Hannibal Lecter’s cobalt blue dining room — an ostentatious herb garden with Leda and the Swan over the fireplace and you having a fit in the corner — that’s where I asked him if he was the Chesapeake Ripper and he avoided the question and suggested I go kill Alana Bloom.

Gideon has a good memory. We’ve seen Hannibal misdirect Will with his clock drawings and MRI, but this is the first time we see him openly manipulate and lie to him, and it takes place directly in front of the painting. When Will is suffering the worst of his fit, it looms just behind his head.

The painting is always present during the dinner scenes, but it’s usually not visible. Gideon is the only one to mention it outright, and it’s through his mention that Jack and Chilton begin to suspect Hannibal.

Another very clear nod occurs in the season 2 premier, when Hannibal hosts Chilton for a meatless meal.

Will has just entered Chilton’s hospital, and for the first time his mind is open to outside examination. Hannibal is justifiably nervous that the truth will come out — he almost loses his cool when he hears that Alana is helping Will recover lost memories. This anxiety is made manifest when he walks in on Chilton studying his painting. The painting is a symbol of his manipulation of Will, and Chilton’s examination of it is the danger of new scrutiny.

This isn’t just a metaphor for the audience — it’s a philosophy that Hannibal holds dear, and the implications of Chilton’s sudden interest aren’t lost on him. While Chilton’s back is still turned, Hannibal’s face is murderous.

Although Will is a special case, Hannibal has long held the habit of manipulating his psychiatric patients into becoming killers. This is why these stories speak so strongly to him — he sees himself as a god elevating mortals. Florence is where he presumably became obsessed with the concept and where, he later tells Bedelia, he “became a man.”

Twenty years later he’s still transfixed by the idea, and he thinks he may finally have met someone who can be elevated to his own status. It’s not by mistake that Hannibal is equated with God a few times in this episode. Will insists that he isn’t God with a capital G, but it’s easy to think of him as a god. In the next episode, Pazzi will even insinuate that he is Will’s god:

People come here to be closer to their god. Isn’t that what Will Graham was doing?

And this may very well be true. Until now Hannibal has been in a position of great power and influence, bringing out the divine killer in Will. Zephyrus saw Chloris’ potential to be Flora, and he came upon her unwillingly at first. But he also transformed her, and she became something beautiful.

In Dolce, the final Italian episode, we’ll see Hannibal in the Uffizi gallery drawing Will as Zephyrus — the one who influences, the one who is divine.

Since Will is almost entirely by himself during Primavera, we can attribute his actions to him alone. He’s no longer being influenced in his becoming. Primavera marks the beginning of that ascent to the divine — the beginning of his spring, his primavera.

But what are Will’s actions? And how do they show his divinity? Let’s take a look.

The Mizumono Repeat

Primavera opens with a long replay of the end of Mizumono. A lot like with Antipasto, this is a strange decision for the opening of an episode — we don’t actually see anything new for about six minutes.

Except that’s not entirely true. There are a few subtle differences — we don’t see Jack’s blood dripping through the floor, and the focalization changes from Will’s line of sight to just behind his head as he walks down the hall.

The moments before Abigail’s death are off, too. Hannibal doesn’t say “Abigail, come to me,” but instead we see his hand reach out to her. She approaches him much more quickly, and we see an extra reaction shot of Will’s face as she does. This time she seems to take less coaxing, and Will is given more opportunity to observe her.

This change is important to consider in the upcoming scenes with Abigail, as we examine her willingness to join Hannibal transposed onto Will’s own mind.

But two minor changes are especially important, and they help set the tone for the entire season. The first is a brief addition to Will’s perspective.

In Mizumono, Will’s eyeline shows Jack’s blood seeping out from under the pantry door, and then it cuts away. In Primavera, however, it doesn’t cut. It pans across the kitchen to reveal a teakettle on the floor in a pile of shattered glass.

This is no wide shot of the room that happens to contain a teakettle — it is the focus. So much talk is devoted to teacups — they’re used to represent both Will and Abigail and the fragile duality of destruction and recovery. In the very next scene Will’s teacup will shatter and come back together.

But what good is a teacup if it’s empty? Hannibal is the source of the tea — through his manipulations he fills the teacup and helps it achieve its full potential, just like Zephyrus helped Chloris achieve hers.

This teakettle is on the ground, though, in a pile of glass. How did it get there? In the long Mizumono fight between Jack and Hannibal, Jack lands his first real blow by picking Hannibal up and slamming him into a cabinet, shattering the glass.

The fight isn’t going well for Hannibal to begin with — he takes a swing at Jack and misses, while Jack lands two hits to his stomach and throws him against the counter. Hannibal then grabs the teakettle and bashes Jack in the face with it, and the fight continues more or less evenly matched.

This is the source of the little tableau Will sees. A metal teakettle isn’t going to shatter, but it sure can lie symbolically in the broken remains of Hannibal’s pain.

With Will’s betrayal comes the shattering of Hannibal’s own teacup that he didn’t even know he had. He loses his trust in and his love of Will and, just as importantly, he loses control of the situation.

When the glass shatters, Hannibal’s losing the fight. By surrendering the teakettle (and his source of control), he re-levels the playing field. This is repeated at the end of the fight, when Jack very nearly strangles him. By losing a little more control and letting his body go limp, he lures Jack into letting down his guard and stabs him in the neck with the very glass his body shattered. He embraces his loss of control, and it wins him the fight, but the change is irrevocable.

And in case we missed the teakettle, this change is driven home by the final difference from Mizumono, when Will is bleeding on the kitchen floor.

Do you believe you could change me, the way I’ve changed you?

I already did.

In Mizumono, Will’s response is immediate. This time, however, it’s more drawn out. While the rest of the dialogue is copied and pasted from the original, this one line is a completely different take.

Will’s delivery in the Mizumono take is quick. Fighting through the pain, he’s defiant and he almost laughs. In Primavera, the defiance is gone. He raises his head slowly to meet Hannibal’s eyes and breaks the news to him softly. The idea that he’s changed him isn’t a jab anymore — it’s a fact.

There’s a balance in those two lines that plays out in the first two episodes. Antipasto shows us how Hannibal’s been changed by Will. Primavera will show us how Will has been changed by Hannibal.

The Hospital

Once Hannibal leaves the kitchen, we get into some new material.

Will lies on the kitchen floor. The stag, which seemed to die at the end of Mizumono, lets loose a wave of blood that submerges Will and Abigail. Will sinks through it, and a teacup shatters. It immediately comes back together, though, and reforms into Will, who wakes up in a hospital bed with a doctor standing over him.

How do you feel?

Thirsty.

Water has always been an image of Will’s fraying mental state and his becoming. In the finale it will represent his final becoming in the roiling Atlantic. It also represents Hannibal’s influence— in the previous episode we saw it nearly overtake Bedelia.

And now it’s the first thing Will wants when he wakes up.

Will ends Mizumono soaked through with rain. He goes outside in it to warn Hannibal, and then he’s inundated with it when he finds Alana on the ground and is confronted with the full force of Hannibal’s influence. Yet despite everything it’s done to him, it’s the first thing he asks for. His want for Hannibal’s influence and his own becoming has soaked through and been internalized.

And then that internalized want walks through the door.

They told me he knew exactly how to cut me. They said it was surgical. He wanted us to live.

He left us to die.

We didn’t. He was supposed to take me with him. We were all supposed to leave together. He made a place for us.

Abigail.

Why did you lie to him?

The wrong thing being the right thing to do was… was too ugly a thought.

He gave you chance to take it all back and you just… kept lying. No one had to die.

It’s important to remember that every conversation Will has with Abigail is really a conversation with himself. He may project some of what he thinks Abigail would say, but to a large degree he uses her as a sounding board for his own internal struggle. And as we’ve seen in the Mizumono repeat, his perception has shifted to see her as even more willing to go to Hannibal.

With that in mind, we can learn something surprising from this discussion: Will blames himself for Abigail’s death. Or at least the part of himself that’s still drawn to Hannibal does. As far as that part of him is concerned, Abigail didn’t die because Hannibal cut her throat — she died because Will lied. It’s as if Hannibal’s retribution were a given, a natural consequence of Will’s failing.

It’s hard to grasp what would have happened. What could have happened… In some other world did happen.

I’m having a hard enough time dealing with this world. Hope some of the other worlds are easier on me.

Everything that can happen happens. It has to end well and it has to end badly. It has to end every way it can. And this is the way it ended for us.

We don’t have an ending. He didn’t give us one yet. He wants us to find him.

After everything he’s done, you’d still go to him?

If everything that can happen happens, then you can never really do the wrong thing. You’re just doing what you’re supposed to.

Will introduces the multiverse idea, probably to convince himself that Abigail is still alive somewhere. His own Abigail uses it against him, though, insisting that his theory means he’s beyond morality. Will gave up on morality last season, and he really liked it.

Every response that Abigail gives is a rebuttal to Will’s rationalizations, a fight against the idea that he’s unchanged.

You can see the pain and the resignation on his face as Abigail says she wants to join Hannibal. This is his realization that, despite everything, a part of him can’t help but go to him.

The Memory Palace

Next we see the stag horns come out of Will’s stomach. Importantly, the very first shot is seen from inside. This is Will’s perspective as he’s asleep — he’s dreaming that he is the stag, working his way out into the open through the wound that Hannibal created.

He wakes up in Hannibal’s office, proof that his memory palace is expanding beyond the stream to share rooms with Hannibal’s. The sky is raining with Will’s old clock drawings — emblems of Hannibal’s manipulations in season 1. But when he picks one up it catches fire, just like the notes that Hannibal is burning in the fireplace. By destroying the evidence of his manipulation, Hannibal disavows the fact that he’s coerced Will — he accepts him as divine, an equal who no longer needs to be driven.

Will is dressed the same as his past self, the self who hasn’t yet decided if he’s going to betray Hannibal or not. This self looks straight at him as Hannibal mentions the Norman Chapel in Palermo — his past, ambiguous self is colluding with the ambiguous part of his present self to seek Hannibal out.

In the Cappella

And seek him out he does. In Aperitivo we’ll see more of Will’s thought process in the eight months leading up to his decision, but for the time being all we need to know is that he goes.

He and Abigail arrive at the chapel and Abigail makes eye contact with a priest, who looks straight at her and seems concerned. It’s a strange choice for an episode that’s leaving subtle hints toward the final reveal that Abigail isn’t real.

(Truth be told, it threw me off the first time, and I genuinely thought Abigail was alive. I took it, of all things, to be a stylistic choice made to play it safe with the ensuing romantic language. With all that talk about valentines and broken hearts, I thought NBC might have demanded a second, female protagonist to dull the homoerotic undertones. Boy, was I wrong).

So why does the priest lock eyes with Abigail? Because she represents the dark part of Will, the part of him that still wants to be with Hannibal. The part of him that, just like Hannibal, wants to defy God.

God can’t save any of us because it’s inelegant. Elegance is more important than suffering. That’s his design.

You talking about God or Hannibal?

Hannibal’s not God. Wouldn’t have any fun being God. Defying God — that’s his idea of a good time. Nothing would thrill Hannibal more than to see this roof collapse mid-Mass — packed pews, choir singing. He would just love it. And he thinks God would love it too.

This is a reference to a conversation between Will and Hannibal in Shiizakana, when Will tries to confront Hannibal with the fact that he makes a habit of influencing his patients to kill, to become divine just like Zephyrus did Chloris.

You believe he’s innocent?

I believe your therapy was successful. You can be persuasive. How many have there been? Like Randall Tier? Like me?

Every patient is unique.

Your psychiatrist came to visit me at the hospital before my trial.

Dr. Du Maurier?

She told me she believed me. She knew there were others like me.

Fascinating.

Did you kill her?

No.

What do you think about when you think about killing?

I think about God.

Good and evil?

Good and evil has nothing to do with God. I collect church collapses. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? The facade fell on 65 grandmothers during a special Mass. Was that evil? Was that God? If He’s up there, He just loves it. Typhoid and swans — it all comes from the same place.

It’s no mistake that these musings on God and divinity are tied up with Will’s realization that Hannibal encourages his patients to kill. It’s even less of a mistake that Hannibal brings up swans (Zeus’ guise when he raped Leda) as his example of something beautiful that God has made.

As Will explains Hannibal’s way of thinking to Abigail, the ceiling starts to crumble. He’s already said that he came here to feel closer to Hannibal, and this is the beginning of that closeness manifest.

And if that’s not close enough for Will, the very next scene ought to do the trick, as the sun rises on the heart Hannibal has left for him. After eight whole months, Hannibal and Will converge in the same spot on almost the same day. They can’t survive separation, and they’re already beginning to blur.

Pazzi

Will can’t visit the chapel because it’s become a crime scene, and the priest who spotted Abigail — or Will’s dark tendencies — points him out to the police. He meets Rinaldo Pazzi, who seems to think he’s a suspect, and then he’s questioned by the police. Importantly, we don’t see this questioning. All of Will’s interactions in Palermo are with Pazzi, who frightens away a smiling Abigail when Will emerges from the station.

Is Will Graham here because of the body in the cappella, or is the body here because of Will Graham?

Why are you here?

I’m like you. I do what you do. We share the gift of imagination.

I’ve got the scars of a man who grabbed his gift by the blade.

Pazzi asserts that he and Will are the same. As the only real person Will talks to, he holds a key position. He is the outside world’s attempt to drag Will back into the light, to prove that he’s not the same as Hannibal. Pazzi starts off strong, forcing Will to pause and listen to him with some insider knowledge:

You grabbed the wrong end. Those moments when the connection is made, that is my keenest pleasure.

Knowing.

Knowing. Not feeling, not thinking.

Will certainly seems to identify with this — it’s enough to keep him from walking away. He understands what it’s like to know, but is it his keenest pleasure? Will hates knowing during the first season, because of what it opens up inside him. During the second season he moves from knowing to doing, and that seems more to his taste. Will’s keenest pleasure is probably not knowing.

But it might be killing.

You know who murdered that man and left him in the Capella Palatina.

Don’t you know?

I met him. Twenty years ago. Il Mostro. The Monster of Florence. It was his custom to arrange his victims like a beautiful painting. Il Mostro created images that stayed in my mind. Twenty years ago I was dwelling on a couple found slain in the bed of a pickup truck in Impruneta. Bodies placed, garlanded with flowers.

Like a Botticelli.

Exactly like a Botticelli. His painting, Primavera, still hangs in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, just as it did twenty years ago. The garlanded nymph on the right, flowers streaming from her mouth. Match: match.

Will remains silent for most of this encounter, allowing Pazzi to fill in all the gaps. It’s very reminiscent of the way Hannibal remains silent through his first encounter with Dimmond. When Dimmond first approaches Hannibal, he does almost all the talking, assuming that he and Hannibal are on the same page. Pazzi is behaving in much the same way, telling Will “I’m like you” and divulging all kinds of details with very little prompting. In the end, Hannibal decides that he and Dimmond aren’t equals. Does Will?

The Uffizi Gallery. That’s where you met il Mostro?

That’s where I met this man. The Monster of Florence. Success comes as a result of inspiration. Revelation is the development of an image first blurred, then coming clear. To find the inspiration il Mostro used was a triumph. I went to the Uffizi and stood before the original Primavera day after day. And most days I’d see a young Lithuanian man as transfixed by the Botticelli as I was. As transfixed as I imagined il Mostro would be. And every day I saw him he would recreate the Primavera in pencil, just as he did in flesh. I knew it was the best moment of my life. A moment of epiphany. That made me famous and then ruined me. In haste and heat of ambition, the Questura nearly destroyed the young man’s home trying to find evidence.

Just like Dimmond, Pazzi believes that he’s found an equal and a sympathetic ear, but just like Hannibal, Will is not so sure. As he enters into Pazzi’s story, he’s more drawn to young Hannibal than to Pazzi — when Pazzi reappears, it takes him a moment to drag his eyes back. You might even say he’s transfixed.

It’s during this scene that Will begins to distance himself from Pazzi, who believes himself to be like him, to move toward Hannibal, who knows himself to be like him.

During the course of Pazzi’s story, it also becomes clear that there’s a better surrogate for him than Will. Who else do we know whose career was ruined trying to catch Hannibal? In the next episode, when Jack is revealed with grayer hair and a beard, the physical similarities are impossible to miss.

Just like Jack, Pazzi is bent on catching Hannibal, not understanding him. And for as much joy as his epiphany brought him, it was lacking in one important fact: Hannibal didn’t recreate La Primavera — he recreated the portion of it that meant something to him. The portion that now especially means something to him in terms of Will.

The Crime Scene

He doesn’t leave evidence.

No, he doesn’t

He eats it.

Back in the chapel, Will moves under the police tape and sits inside it. He physically distances himself from Pazzi, claiming the space of Hannibal’s crime as his own. Pazzi stands on the outside, looking in.

Another man, not an innocent man, but innocent of those crimes, was a dream suspect. He was convicted on no evidence except his character.

Blame has a habit of not sticking to Hannibal Lecter.

It has a habit of sticking to you.

With this last line Pazzi does cross the tape to hand Will the file on the murder, but he immediately leaves. Will has a hard time making himself look at it. He knows that Hannibal is responsible, and he’s pretty sure he’s the intended audience. He was certain Hannibal was the killer when he analyzed Beverly’s death in season 2, but this is a new level of knowing, and a new level of intimacy. He doesn’t even need his magical light swipe this time — he just closes his eyes and fades into Hannibal’s mind.

I splintered every bone. Fractured them. Dynamically. Made you malleable. I skinned you, bent you, twisted you and trimmed you — head, hands, arms, and legs. A topiary. This is my design. A valentine written on a broken man.

As soon as Will touches the heart, it starts beating. It unbends, revealing its human shape that until now was impossible to trace. Its humanity is immediately lost again, however, as it sprouts hooves and antlers. This is the reminder of what Hannibal brings out in Will. The mild concern he felt when the ceiling started to crack gives way here to terror. Is Will sure he wants to get back into this? Let’s see what Abigail thinks:

Will!

I do feel closer to Hannibal here. God only knows where I’d be without him.

Abigail snaps Will out of his reverie and looks genuinely worried. Even the part of Will’s mind that wants to go with Hannibal is alarmed.

Will takes off his glasses to rub his eyes, and he never puts them back on during the Italian chapter. Will’s glasses are a major device of the show — he wears them when he’s dealing with strangers, and when he’s uncomfortable. They’re another manifestation of his avoidance of eye contact, and he’s had them on during his entire stay in Palermo.

There are two times he consistently never wears them: during his murder recreations and during his therapy with Hannibal. They’re even missing during his very first session. In other words, Will takes off his glasses when he’s being his truer self, when he doesn’t feel the need to hide. After confronting Hannibal’s valentine and admitting that he feels closer to him, he takes them off for good.

He left us his… his broken heart.

How did he know we were here?

He didn’t. But he knew we would come.

He misses us.

Hannibal follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any. One of the trains is always for his own amusement.

As always, it’s important to remember that both sides of this discussion are in Will’s head. When Will clarifies that Hannibal doesn’t miss him and is just playing with him, he isn’t setting the record straight — he’s arguing with himself. The darker part of him, the part that wants to join Hannibal, suggests that Hannibal is vulnerable, that he’s reaching out. He seems surprised by this explanation and gropes for another one that better fits his understanding. (To be fair, both are probably right).

He’s playing with us.

Always. You still wanna go with him?

Will is challenging himself — even with the terror of the stag man, and even with this (slightly lame) explanation that Hannibal is still playing with him, could he still really want to join him? As she answers, Abigail sits down next to him, a physical manifestation of her mindset getting closer to Will’s.

Yes.

He gave you back to me. Then he took you away. It’s Lucy and the football — he just keeps pulling you away. What if no one died. What if… what if we all left together, like we were supposed to. After he served the lamb… where would we have gone?

In some other world?

In some other world.

He said he made a place for us.

A place was made for you, Abigail. In this world. The only place I could make for you.

This, of course, is the real reason Will might not go with Hannibal. A supposedly living Abigail can’t very well talk to Will about her murder. Now the cat’s out of the bag, though, and the audience is finally on the same page.

Even in dying, however, Abigail is adamant about her trust in Hannibal. Will asks (quite rightly) where they could possibly have gone to live as a murder family, and she insists that he’d made a place for them.

In accepting Abigail’s death, Will also accepts the fact that all of her thoughts and arguments have been his own. A part of him does still want to join Hannibal, in spite of everything. And, as we learned in his first conversation with her in the hospital, a part of him blames himself for her death instead of Hannibal. This is the part that could forgive.

The Crypt

We see that Hannibal is watching Will, and we see a beautiful montage of the duality of Will and Abigail’s treatment in life and death. When we come back to Will, lying in the same position as Abigail, he looks determined and dark in a way he hasn’t since last season.

Are you praying?

Hannibal doesn’t pray. But he believes in God… intimately.

I wasn’t asking Hannibal Lecter.

Pazzi walks in on him, and Will confirms that he’s definitely taken on a darker tone — he’s begun seeing himself as Hannibal. This time Pazzi joins him inside the police tape.

I think my prayers would feel constricted by the saints, apostles, and Jesus Pantokrator. How do your prayers feel?

I hope my prayers escaped, flown from here to the open sky and God.

Now Will leaves the police tape, leaving Pazzi alone. Pazzi’s made an attempt to join him, to come to his side, but Will knows for sure now that they’re not the same.

Praying you catch him? You should be praying he doesn’t capture you.

I didn’t head the Questura di Firenze for nothing.

You didn’t catch him when he was just a kid. What makes you think you’re gonna catch him now?

You.

What makes you think I want to catch him?

This is the first time Will states his ambivalence out loud. Since he’s absorbed Abigail’s way of thinking, he can’t project his attraction to Hannibal on anyone else. He has to own it.

It’s with this admission that Will notices the lights flickering in the crypt and the dark liquid oozing out from under the door. By distancing himself from Pazzi and admitting that he feels drawn to Hannibal, Will opens himself up to Hannibal’s mind. His realization that Hannibal is in the crypt goes beyond his usual evidence extrapolation — it’s indicative of a deep connection that Will can’t necessarily turn off. He’s surprised by something, but is it the realization that Hannibal’s close, or the realization that he inherently knows?

Signor Graham? Sei ancora qui, Signor Graham, con me? Dove sei? (Are you still here, Mr. Graham, with me? Where are you?)

If you could possibly be content, I would suggest you let il Mostro go.

I can’t do that any more than you can.

He’s gonna kill you, you know. I’m usually right about these things.

He let you know him. He sent you his heart. Where has he gone now?

Say what you will about Pazzi, he’s still good at his job. He knows that Will and Hannibal are connected — he understands the heart symbolism and even echoes Hannibal’s “I let you know me” Mizumono line. But at the same time, he’s a little bit off. He’s still insisting that he and Will are equals, that his own obsession with Hannibal is just as pervasive. Just like he found La Primavera but didn’t understand its significance, he’s found Will and doesn’t see the darkness in him. He can’t make the extra leap of connection, and it’s going to be his downfall.

He hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still here.

Will, meanwhile, is making all kinds of connections. By following Hannibal to the crypt, he leaves the foyer of his mind and literally goes underneath it — he’s crawling inside Hannibal’s mind, seeking him out. This will be expanded upon in the next episode as Will seeks out the deepest parts of Hannibal’s memory palace in his ancestral home.

Once Will opens the door to the crypt, Pazzi can enter too. By following Will, he’s able to go beneath Hannibal’s mind, but only physically. Hannibal stays close but hidden while Will and Pazzi wander — even we can’t see him until Pazzi leaves. While the entrance to Hannibal’s mind is severe and beautiful, just below the surface it’s dark and winding and easy to get lost in.

Will doesn’t get lost, though. He sneaks up on a disoriented Pazzi, filling Hannibal’s role of the silent threat that appears out of the dark.

You shouldn’t be down here alone.

I’m not alone. I’m with you.

You don’t know whose side I’m on.

What are you going to do when you find him? Your il Mostro.

I’m curious about that myself.

This is the final struggle between Will and Pazzi’s viewpoints — Pazzi insists that he and Will are the same, while Will drifts further and further away. Finally the truth starts to get through to Pazzi, and he asks Will what he plans to do. Now it’s Will’s turn to be uncertain — when pressed for specifics, he has to admit that he’s still ambivalent.

You and I carry the dead with us, Signor Graham. We both need to unburden.

Why don’t you carry your dead back to the chapel before you count yourself among them.

You are already dead, aren’t you?

Buona notte, commendatore.

Pazzi tries one more time to convince Will. He suggests that the dead he and Will carry are dead because of Hannibal, and that by capturing him they’ll be able to unburden. The dead that Will carries, however, is Abigail — the manifestation of his attraction to Hannibal. And by now he doesn’t carry her — he’s absorbed her and accepted that attraction as his own.

Pazzi finally realizes that Will isn’t who he thought he was. By saying that Will is already dead, he implies that he’s already lost to Hannibal — he certainly seems to know his way around the crypt full of bodies that is the basement of Hannibal’s mind. In a way, Will died when he took on the mindset of the dead he carries — the mindset that can’t help but go with Hannibal.

As soon as Pazzi leaves, we’re allowed to see Hannibal. Now that he and Will are alone, the focus is on the two of them. They dance around each other — Hannibal knows where Will is, but Will can only sense that Hannibal is nearby. Will finally gives up on trying to find him and speaks into the darkness:

Hannibal. I forgive you.

This is the answer to Hannibal’s question in Mizumono, just before he killed Abigail:

I forgive you, Will. Will you forgive me?

Of course the big question is: Does he mean it? The events of Dolce suggest that he might not, but that’s for another analysis. As far as this episode is concerned, I think the answer is a resounding yes.

He’s distanced himself from Pazzi and he’s accepted Abigail’s death, embracing the part of himself that’s drawn to Hannibal and blames himself for the events of Mizumono. He’s taken off his glasses.

Maybe more importantly than all that, he’s quiet. “I forgive you” is only a whisper. But that’s all it needs to be — Will is inside Hannibal’s mind, both symbolically in the crypt and in a more real sense as he feels the two of them begin to blur. He can move into Hannibal’s way of thinking without the usual fanfare — it’s a part of who he is now.

What this means, perhaps, is that Will and Hannibal are no longer able to lie to each other. By telling Hannibal that he forgives him, Will is equally telling himself.

By making the slight change of name from Primo to Primavera, the episode highlights the change that Will has undergone. He’s beyond being influenced by Hannibal the way he was in the first two seasons — by choosing to follow Hannibal, he displays his own agency and his own desires. By absorbing Abigail’s point of view, he acknowledges his need to join him as an equal.

This episode is the beginning of Will’s spring, the beginning of his elevation to the divine and equality with Hannibal.

It’s a striking juxtaposition to Hannibal’s loss of control in Antipasto. As Will will eventually say, he and Hannibal “have begun to blur.” Together these two episodes show the distinct changes the two have undergone after Mizumono, and they lay the groundwork for the next episode, in which their new states are explored side by side.

Primavera isn’t just about the spring of Will’s becoming — it’s also about the spring of his and Hannibal’s new identities as they circle closer to each other.

It’s both of their becomings.

Next episode: Secondo