It's scary times for us Hannibal fans, as the show has been cancelled by NBC and its future is uncertain, as producers look to find a new home for the acclaimed series. But NBC’s decision has come very early in the airing of Season 3, with ten additional episodes still left to air this summer – and yes, the network will air them all.

At the beginning of the season (before NBC’s decision was made), I spoke to executive producer Bryan Fuller about what was in store for this season . Having seen the first three episodes before our conversation, some of that interview included content I've been saving until now. Obviously, the cancellation news now colors this conversation, though Fuller clearly wasn’t taking the future for granted – as even then, he used the term “if” when discussing Season 4 possibilities.Check out what Fuller told me about Alana’s role this season, the death of Abigail, Chilton’s continued survival, Zachary Quinto’s cameo as Bedelia’s dead patient, Miriam Lass and more… including, yes, some hints at places Season 4 could go, should the show continue.

Caroline Dhavernas as Dr. Alana Bloom in Hannibal.

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Raúl Esparza as Dr. Frederick Chilton in Hannibal.

Episode four is a big fill in the blank episode. It essentially takes place after the finale of Season 2 and leads up into the first episode of Season 3 and re-contextualizes everything we’ve seen in the first three episodes with an understanding of why. What’s fun for us as storytellers is that those first three episodes, you’re jumping on the train, the story is mid-transit and you see why the characters are doing what they’re doing in the context of the story, but you don’t see what happened to them before the story started. That’s where episode four comes in and what I enjoy about it is that there are certain things that happen in that episode where you’re like “Oh, that’s where Will’s head was” or “that’s where Jack’s head was.” I think it’s allowing the world to get bigger and clearer as opposed to continuing to be muddy and bound by grief and feelings and philosophies. Three and four really starts to focus on the story of the first chapter and sets up the next three episodes into the conclusion of that chapter. What’s exciting about four is that’s when we see what has happened to Alana and how she’s navigated that night. One of the things sitting down with the writers, the very first day of meeting for Season 3, was an edict that we must make Alana one of the most interesting characters on the show. Because in Season 2 she was essentially girlfriend fodder and the triangulations between Will and Hannibal and she wasn’t driving her own story and her own purpose. I felt a duty to the actress and the character to rectify that in the third season.For me, we brought her back in the finale of Season 2 to have Hannibal cut her throat again, which was such a horrible thing for Will and Abigail to experience and so that second episode was really an exploration. With Abigail it was really about the grieving process in that second episode. Will never got to grieve Abigail. It was such a horrific violation of what Hannibal did in that moment to punish Will for his betrayal. I wanted to make sure that WIll Graham had a sense of closure with that relationship and him ‘Fight Clubbing’, in a way, Abigail Hobbs as a method of dealing with his grief out of losing her, felt like it was a way for those characters to say goodbye. Also, I read a lot about the multiverses and the science fictionalization of grief where you’re rationalizing that there’s another world out there where this didn’t happen and “I got to keep my loved one in some way and I can dream about that world and I can reach for that world but the sadness is that I will never make contact with it.” I was fascinated with exploring grief, writing a calm to grief, and then almost science fictionalizing grief because there’s a moment where a priest, in the chapel, looks at Abigail and she looks back and she’s real in that moment. That, in a way, suggests that there was a presence that that priest sensed. Is Abigail a ghost? Is she a figment of Will’s imagination? I kind of don’t want to answer because I want both things to be true. I want her to go on and I miss that character and I love that actress. We do bring her back, later in the season. In episode nine we flashback to what it was like for her to live with Hannibal in that period when she was supposed to be dead. I would love to continue telling stories with Abigail as the ghost of bad decisions past.We bring Zach back in episode ten and we get to see exactly what the nature of his relationship was with Bedelia and Hannibal. We were going to bring him back for a couple of episodes and schedule didn’t permit. If there is a fourth season, I would love to flashback to what it was like for him to be Hannibal’s patient and to slowly figure out who his doctor is.Yes, we wanted to keep subverting that notion of -- she said he swallowed his tongue which suggests the fate that befell Multiple Miggs in Silence of the Lambs. We wanted to set that up as a thing that Hannibal could do so we see much more of Bedelia and her patients in episode ten and the fun of that was I was trying to cast Zach in a different role and I know Zach from Heroes and I emailed him and said “Would you be game? We’d love to have you on the show, and he wasn’t available. I told him what the character was and he was like “I am obsessed with Gillian Anderson. I would love to work with her on something. I think she’s incredible.” And I said why don’t we write something for you and we’ll create -- I didn’t intend to see that aspect of the story fleshed out but when Zach expressed such interest about working with Gillian, I was like let me write something for you guys so you can work together.We do see them in the back half, when we get back into the FBI; the crime procedural, Red Dragon investigation. It was a bummer because I love Aaron [Abrams] and Scott [Thompson] so f**king much. They’re such joys to work with, but they’re part of the crime procedural story. I’m constantly apologizing to Aaron and Scott about not using them more on the show and saying “I’m sorry that you’re in the FBI offices and I’m just not interested in you guys!” We do get a little bit more of them in the second half but we don’t really see them in the first half. Same for Freddie. Well, we understand Freddie has a big role to play in the Red Dragon storyline...We’ve done a lot of fun things with Chilton. He plays a major role in the Red Dragon arc and we also see just how much... I love Raúl [Esparza] and I love what he does with the character and with everything we give him - the second he’s in and making him smart and integral and figuring things out and being punished for figuring things out. We continue to have a lot of fun with Dr. Chilton this season. Every season something horrible happens to Chilton. We continue that trend in Season 3.I love Anna Chlumsky as well and we had this great breakfast and she had great ideas about what Miriam would be doing now. We talked a lot about how we could bring her back into the season and then when we got to those episodes, she wasn’t available because she was doing a play so we had to back burner Miriam this season. I love what she did with the role and I love that episode from last year. I was very much looking forward to getting Miriam and Dr. Chilton in the room together. Alas, schedules did not permit it this season but if there’s a fourth season, I’ve got a lot of ideas in terms of how we would see Miriam, both present day and when she was under Hannibal’s thrawl for all those years.Hannibal is very honest with his relationships so when he comes from Will, he won’t be coming from behind. He’ll be coming right at him.

Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman