Hannibal: 10 Things We Won't Get To See

But let’s not forget that the OG pairing in this franchise isn’t Will/Hannibal, but Clarice/Lecter. After all, Lecter is fascinated by her, for many reasons. The films make it clear that Clarice respects Lecter’s mind and even understands him to a degree… but is focused purely on his remaining in captivity. She may get him, but she doesn’t want to get with him.

Most of you reading this will probably be aware that Thomas Harris’ book Hannibal has a fairly controversial ending: where the film adaptation has Lecter’s advances rebuffed and Clarice intent on recapturing him, the book has Lecter attempting to brainwash Starling (using a cocktail of psychotropic drugs and some fairly unethical behavioural modification therapy) into believing that she is his sister Mischa, somehow come back to life. When Clarice proves too strong willed for this spot of weirdness to take, the pair become an item – sealing the deal with a spot of light cannibalism together.

The major objection to this pointless nonsense has always been that this was wholly out of character for Clarice, a highly ambitious but thoroughly moral woman whose main attraction for Lecter was her straightforward instincts and unselfconscious strength of character: one would imagine that’s why the film deviated from the book so abruptly at this point. However, in a hypothetical Hannibal season five where Bryan Fuller’s interpretation of Clarice Starling met his interpretation of Hannibal Lecter, who’s to say what could happen?

Mads Mikkelsen’s Lecter is far more lugubriously charming than the reptilian, high camp Lecter essayed by Anthony Hopkins, after all. He’s also younger, sexier, a dandy with a vicious physicality to him, and a past master at the art of psychological seduction: part of the USP of the Hannibal television show is presenting us with a Hannibal The Cannibal who manipulates people into doing things they would never have dreamed they would, and thinking that it was their idea all along.

Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter is a theatrical monster, a murderous ham. Mikkelsen’s Hannibal is the very Devil himself. A Clarice/Hannibal (Clannibal?) pairing doesn’t make any sense in the film version of Hannibal, and they were wise not to take that path with the story’s climax. In Hannibal the television series… it could actually have worked.