(S P O I L E R S)
In
which in the few jerky seconds of sleep I do get, all I see is dark, swarming
behind my eyelids.
I dream darkness comes into me.
I dream darkness comes into me.
“But
this is your hour, when darkness reigns.” (Luke 22:53)
“What
you did to me is in my head. And I will
find it. I’m going to remember, Dr.
Lecter, and when I do, there will be a reckoning.” –Will/“Kaiseki”
And what a reckoning it is. After 25 episodes of epic cat and mouse
machinations and psychological subterfuge, the slow burn construction of an
intricately constructed house of lies, “Mizumono” brings everything crashing
down in an apocalypse of blood and carnage seldom seen on network
television. Throughout these past few
months, I’ve written quite a bit about Bryan Fuller’s willingness to gleefully
manipulate the classic Lecterverse canon, often to genuinely subversive
effect. This manipulation also subtly
establishes a tone of creeping unease; if our preconceived notions of the
linear plot mechanics of Will and Hannibal’s story are being rearranged or
changed completely, then what remains at the end that we previously knew?
This creeping unease blossoms
into full-blown hysteria in “Mizumono”.
And the effect is absolutely thrilling.
If, as Hannibal noted in “Tome-Wan”, the characters were maintaining
their position on the event horizon of
chaos, it’s here where they finally plunge into the void. Despite the relative security that foreign
financing has bestowed on it, Hannibal’s
real life ratings struggles have always called its long term survival into
question. So a plunge into the void on a
show like this promises the potential of no return for any of the
characters. Or for the show.
And so the final showdown between
Jack, Will, Hannibal, and Alana takes on the feel of their lives going completely
off the tracks. Or perhaps reality going
off the tracks. The season-long buildup
to the Lecter House slaughter has gradually allowed strict definitions of reality
to disintegrate. In “Mizumono” this
disintegration eats away at everything we see, often in the most gorgeous
manner. There are so many moments of
aching beauty throughout. The slo-mo close
up of Alana’s tear descending to the table and mingling with a scintilla of
blood as she begs Will not to go through with his and Jack’s plan (a scene that
parallels their same tearful conversation in the Season 1 finale.) Hannibal’s papers floating through the air as
he and Will burn his records in preparation for their potential escape (a sort
of amazing scene for a man who takes such pride in the formal signifiers of his
life.) Alana’s mental image of her
drowning in a pool of darkness, a reversal of Will’s dream image of her as
black liquid succubus in “Kaiseki.” All
of these combine to form not the building blocks of a television show’s plot,
but a psychotropic fugue state. By this
point, we the audience have joined these characters, plunging into our own void
of experiential armageddon.
That plunge began, and ends, with
Will Graham himself, the audience surrogate and wronged man in search of
redemption. His voyage into Hannibal’s
underworld during Season 2 has often been a disturbing one, as Bryan Fuller has
left so much of his true motivation and intent mostly ambiguous. That gambit carries through the entirety of
this episode, as it’s never clear where Will’s loyalties lie (see the memorable
split screen shot that headlines this essay.)
Classic dramatic structure would dictate that he finally reveal himself
as the undercover presence he was all along, but that expectation is exploded
in heart-rending fashion. And we’ve seen
it all before.
Because in a show that has traded
so heavily in the cycles of violence, and of a dread-filled sense of déjà vu (see
my essay for Season 1’s “Releves”), it’s only fitting that this finale circles
back to where it all began. Early on,
Will seems to be entering his home in Wolf Trap, VA, but once he sees the
ghostly image of Garret Jacob Hobbs, it’s obvious that he’s still trying to
exorcise the primal trauma of the Hobbs House massacre. Later, when Kade Purnell eviscerates the FBI sanctioning
of Jack’s plan to capture Hannibal, Will (who’s staring down an arrest warrant
and the impending arrival of the feds) calls to warn Hannibal. His simple words (“They know”) are a direct
echo and reversal of the doctor’s phone warning to Garret Hobbs in the pilot
episode, the two words that set in motion so much of the burgeoning chaos that
explodes here.
It’s the final realization of
Will’s greatest fear, that the world of his visions will invade the waking
world. And in that realization, he’s
forced to relive the greatest trauma of his life onc again. Back in a kitchen. Wounded.
Forced to witness Hannibal slashing Abigail’s throat, in a perfect
reenactment of what her father attempted to do so long before. Absolutely paralyzed once again. His long-promised reckoning has come. But that reckoning is as much with himself as
it is with Hannibal. For as Lecter slashes
her throat, it’s as the co-dependent organism that he and Will have formed is
doing it. Will is left to be both
witness and perpetrator, the awful power of his empathic visions ruling his
life once again.
Even Abigail’s seeming death is
trumped, though, by what passes between Will and Hannibal in the episode’s
final moments. Because as Will makes
clear, he’s shocked that Hannibal didn’t leave when he called to warn him. The obsessive FBI agent, who’s devoted so
much of his time to stopping his nemesis, has in many ways truly aligned
himself with the only person who really understands him. And it’s in the moments after Hannibal guts
him with a knife that the most emotionally wrenching bits take place. Mads Mikkelsen really excels here, selling
the genuine hurt that this empathy vacuum feels at his betrayal by the only
person who seems to understand him. As
he bitterly says to Will “I gave you a rare gift. But you didn’t want it.” Even to the end, Bryan Fuller refuses to give
the audience easy resolutions to what’s been building. These two lost souls have both shared something
deeper than most humans do and engaged in a diabolical game of Catch Me if You
Can.
And now it’s all irrevocably
shattered. As are the lives of Alana and
Jack. And the fabric of reality that the
show has tentatively clung to all along.
Hence that most evocative image of the rain outside Hannibal’s house
turning into blood (which crossfades into Jack’s blood.) As Hannibal walks away from the slaughter he
has wrought, baptized anew in the rain as his victims drown in gore, headed
toward boarding a plane to Europe with Bedelia (in a great stinger at episode’s
end), the world has been turned upside down.
In the episode’s final shots, a bloodied Will sees the nightmare stag
that’s been chasing him for two seasons on the floor beside him, dying. But whether that death is what he really
wants or not…………
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