People really need to stop eating things that Hannibal gives them. I know that it’s all some sort of sick foreshadowing or something on the writers’ parts but c’mon. I can handle the gross ass shit that the serial killers do to their victims in this series but the idea of everyone eating food he’s made just… I get the wiggins. Last episode it was Will and this episode it was Jack while dining alone with Hannibal after work…
I just want to tell you all what’s in store for you later on.
Anyway.
Will is having a hard time dealing with the fact that he killed Hobbs last episode. He’s having nightmares about it, visualizing Hobbs in stray hallucinations. Part of it is because he killed someone, part of it seems to be this crippling sense of obligation towards Abigail Hobbs. Which weighs even more heavily on him when Jack suggests that perhaps Garrett Jacob Hobbs wasn’t the only one killing those girls and eating them. As long as she remains in a coma and unable to be asked, it’s another unknown that hangs there.
So realizing that Will is having problems, he tells Will it’s time for a psych evaluation. Which is actually pretty standard in a case where an agent kills someone. And Will isn’t even an agent. Of course he’s predictably resistant to the idea even though Alana comes to try and calm him down. We get a little more of Will’s past, too. He used to work as a homicide detective – he was even stabbed in the line of duty – but he didn’t really make it because he couldn’t pull the trigger. Will’s just not that kind of man. He’s not violent. And yet he just shot Hobbs a ridiculous amount of times. I mean, he had to shoot him that many times because he wouldn’t go down. But still. They send him off to Hannibal who doesn’t really push his psych stuff on Hannibal at all. In fact, he ‘rubber stamps’ him and writes him a latter allowing him to go back into the field and the two of them talk unhindered about their feelings. Sort of. As much as Will is going to talk about his feelings anyway.
We get a nice introduction to Freddie Loundes in this episode and she’s actually featured quite prominently. I like that they made Freddie a female this time around. It adds a different dynamic to the story and who doesn’t love bitchy journalists with no regard for authority? Anyway, she gets on our radar when Will finds a strand her of hair left behind in Hobbs’s hunting cabin where he had been mounting the girls after she broke in after it was declared a crime scene. Granted, the fact that she posted a ton of pictures of it they were going to figure that one out anyway.
Naughty Freddie.
Back in the field, Will gets called to a scene where three boys have found the creepiest little hidden far in the middle of the woods. Someone is abducting people, putting them into a coma, and then planting them in the ground where he’s growing mushrooms on them. Yeah. It’s creepy. It’s even creepier when one of them grabs Will’s foot before dying because holy shit this person was buried alive and decaying alive while fungus grew over him.
Yeah.
It freaks Will out, too. Not really the set up but the fact that he started hallucinating Garrett Jacob Hobbs on the crime scene. Not good, bro. At least he realizes that. He goes back to Hannibal and talks with him. Of course, the best Hannibal can do is calm him down and get him thinking. Will is basically like Hannibal’s pet project and he likes to try and figure out what’s going on in his uniquely disturbed mind. They figure out that the mushrooms’ symbolism is that they absorb the nutrients in the human body and reach out as they grow upward. They are literally growing toward the man who cultivated them and in a warped way are his way of connecting with people and having them reach out, too.
Sounds like a great session, right? Freddie sure thought so. She follows Will to Hannibal’s office and records the session. Then she goes in and pretends to be a patient which Hannibal figures out within two seconds. We get to see a bit of creepy Hannibal where he sorta kinda threatens her and then has her destroy the recordings. And then for a split second you’re left to wonder if he kills and eats her. (Spoiler: he doesn’t.)
Armed with his new understanding of why the killer was using mushrooms, Will goes back to talk with the lab geeks about the bodies recovered from the farm. The killer was feeding them a mix of sugar water and through that Will realizes that they are all dying of diabetic comas or some shit. All of the victims were diabetic – the killer was able to do something to change their medicine and cause them to go into a coma so that he could plant them and grow his farm on them. Oh, snap. They figure out he’s a pharmacist and even figure how who he is and where he works.
They turn out to be just in time to save his latest victim but not to catch him.
Dun dun dun…
Of course, things get worse. For Will, anyway. Freddie Loundes – using information she got from a local cop working with the FBI and from listening to the conversation Will had with Hannibal – publishes a story online about Will and his crazy. Jack is pretty pissed off about it. Not just because of the whole tresspass and what not or the fact that she wrote the article about Will but because the killer saw the story about Will and took off. Jack threatens to sue her for trespassing and obstruction of justice in the Hobbs case (and potentially this one) if she doesn’t lay off Will.
Meanwhile, Will can’t really deny that what she wrote was right. He’s hallucinating Hobbs. While in the hospital watching over Abigail he hallucinates a phantom stag with feathers growing all over its body and darkness overcoming him. When he wakes up, Alana is there reading to Abigail and looking over Will. (As a child she shares that she tried to raise peacocks once because a girl in the book she’s reading did but they were terribly stupid birds.) It’s a cute scene. Alana is there to look over Will, really. And he mentions that she’s pretty sure that they have never been alone in a room before. He also tells her that he really just enjoyed listening to her read. They talk a bit about his feelings and how he feels and it’s clear that there could be something there. Maybe. At some point. They’d be adorable. That’s all I’m saying.
Unfortunately, any happiness Will may have found with Abigail and Alana is soon to be lost. The killer tracks down Freddie and kills the cop she used to get the scoop on Will right in front of her while they argued. To Freddie’s credit she tells Jack immediately about the killer coming to find out about Will and that she told him about Abigail. The killer thinks that Will is like him – that he can’t connect with people ants that he wants to desperately. He’s going after Abigail.
Considering he was a pharmacist, he knows his way around hospitals. And when Will steps out of her bedroom for a moment he manages to get her on a gurney and almost gets away. Will follows him and pulls a gun on him but when he does he shoots him in the shoulder this time. Not ten times like he did Garrett Jacob Hobbs.
Afterward, Will goes back to Hannibal. They talk about how he felt when he shot this killer and what he felt when he killed Hobbs. Will admits that he thought about killing the man. He also admits that it felt good to kill Hobbs – that he was so bad that it could feel bad bothers him. But he did like it. Or he’s afraid that he liked it. Will also mentions fixing boat motors in Louisiana. Which makes me wonder where exactly this all happens in the timeline and whether or not Will had another minor psychotic break or something after leaving the police force and went to do that for a while.
Which seems entirely possible. Poor Will.
Things seem to get worse for the poor boy, too, if this trailer for next week is anything to go by. Turns out Jack’s suspicions about Abigail might be true. And it looks like Hannibal might find himself a protege… That’d be an interesting re-imagining of this story for sure.
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