Hannibal: Digestivo Recap

Synopsis for 3×07: Mason has Hannibal and Will right where he wants them. Alana and Margot are scheming. Jack is barely alive, and everything in the European story line finally comes to its completion.

Rating: ★★★★★

This week brought with it the end to the European arc. Between this week and next week, there will be a three year time jump as we finally explore the Red Dragon storyline. If you’ll recall, last week Will Graham was about to get his head cut open by Hannibal who was intent on eating his brain. At the last minute, the Italian Police showed up, but unfortunately for everyone involved they happened to be working for Mason. After taking Hannibal and Will away, to end up at Muskrat Farm as revealed at the end of the last episode, Jack was left for dead until Chiyo took out his would-be murderers with her trusty sniper.

Back at Muskrat Farm, we met back up with Alana and Margot. The two hatch a plan, because while they both are not fond of Hannibal, Will is in the picture. While they planned, Mason gloated over his recently caught prey and decided to give Hannibal the “pig treatment,” knife in the back and all.

After being cleaned up and invited to dinner, Mason explained exactly what he planned to do to the good doctor and Will. As viewers already knew, Mason planned to slowly cut Hannibal up and eating him over time at Cordell’s skillful hands. However, what had been up in the air was Will’s fate, until now. Not only did Mason want to eat Hannibal, but he wanted to do it with Will Graham’s face. That’s right folks, he wanted to cut off Will’s face and graft it onto his own. Wonderful.

Thankfully, Will Graham definitely didn’t plan to go down without a fight. As Cordell leaned in to moisturize Will’s face, presumably to make it nice and supple for transplant, Will bit off part of the man’s face and spit it out on the table. Hannibal looked proud. Will lost his pajama party privileges.

Tied up like a pig, Hannibal was eventually branded like one too. Mason hadn’t been joking about giving the man the full pig treatment. He and Cordell lightly discussed just how Hannibal would be cut up and cooked.

Being the classy man he is, Mason decided to bring up children again with Margot. He revealed to them that even though he’d removed her uterus and ovaries, he’d kept the eggs. On top of that, he’d also found a surrogate to bear their child. A Verger baby, like he’d always promised her. Margot looked both stricken and desperate at the proposal, though he immediately refused her request to see the surrogate.

Will and Alana had a little chat. She revealed to him that she’d been working with Verger all along, though she’d never intended for him to be captured. After taking shots at her ethics, he told her she’d have to “spill blood,” either by her own hand or someone else’s.

She and Margot decided to visit Hannibal where he was bound in a pig pen, looking deliciously dangerous. They discussed her plan. It had always been her intention to kill Mason. From the moment she sat down across from Hannibal in his office way back in season two, until the moment she stood before him this week. He encouraged her to kill him, telling her that “Mason will always deny you,” and then followed up the command with an offer: he’d take the fall. After all, what would be one more murder conviction on top of all the others?

The catch? She and Alana had to free him. Of course they agreed, because everyone’s morals in this show are compromised except maybe Winston’s.

Everything toppled forward then, in that moment. Alana, before she freed Hannibal, made him promise that he’d save Will. He agreed. Freed, he began to reign hell down upon Muskrat Farm. For a moment it seemed that he was going to be too late to save Will, though, as the next scene showed. Cordell had Will hooked up and ready to have his face sliced off of him. Like something out of a Stephen King novel, he injected Will with a paralytic agent that would keep him immobile but awake.

Will would feel every single slice of the blade.

After they freed Hannibal, the ladies sought out Mason’s surrogate only to find the most disturbing scene. The surrogate was a pig. A huge pig, impregnated with Margot’s egg and Mason’s sperm. Of course if it weren’t disturbing enough, Margot’s only reaction to it was to have Alana ‘take it out,’ because the baby was no longer alive. Mason, in his disturbed manner, had not only created a child but ultimately left it for dead inside of a pig.

For the first time this season I had to actually look away because I had no clue what was happening. The next sequence showed skin being sliced into and a face being pulled off like the skin of an orange. Funny enough, the only scene in the movie Hannibal that I couldn’t endure was the one that involved cutting off another man’s face. As that happened, Margot met her no-longer-living child in a scene that was equal parts heartbreaking and disturbing.

As the scenes faded away, Mason’s new face was revealed. Except it wasn’t what he’d expected. Cordell’s face had been sliced right off and set gently atop a very disturbed Mason. All the while, under the watchful eye of Chiyo, Hannibal carried a conscious but immobile Will away to safety. He kept his promise to Alana, and Alana and Mason made the final move of their plan. They grabbed Mason’s head and shoved him into his own eel tank where he met an untimely death as it swam into his mouth.

That was, naturally, after the girls admitted they shocked his prostate with a cattle prod and stole his sperm.

Hannibal was able to get Will safely back to Wolf Trap, and had a nice little conversation with Chiyo. She left him, after she claimed she was a beast that did not deserve to be caged. Hannibal let her leave and went back to check on Will who was finally waking up after the whole ordeal. For Hannibal, it led to a conversation he’d probably rather not have had, as Will essentially broke up with him. He claimed he didn’t want to see Hannibal again, that he would not look for him, not miss him, but in those statements he also revealed that he did not plan to cage him.

Instead of picking up a knife and gutting Will, like the last time the other man pushed him away, Hannibal left quietly. The FBI, of course, arrived too late to catch him as Will tried to explain to Jack that Hannibal was gone. Except, he wasn’t. Out from the darkness, from who-knows-where but maybe a hole in the snow or something, came Hannibal Lecter. As he turned himself in and surrendered to the FBI, he dropped to his knees and looked at Will.

He wanted to be caught, because he wanted Will to always know where he was and where he could find him. Again, Hannibal foiled another break-up attempt by being the clingy ex that hangs around just to annoy the other party involved.

And that ended the European arc. As mentioned before, the next time we see Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, it will be three years in the future as Will has to try and enlist Hannibal’s help to catch the Red Dragon. What will be in store for these two in the back half of what could very well be the final season of Hannibal? Who knows, but it should be good.