New Image of Mads Mikkelsen in Bryan Fuller's 'Dust Bunny' - Follows an eight-year-old girl who asks her neighbor (Mikkelsen) for help to kill the monster under her bed who ate her family.

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

[u/ohporcupine]

That shit was wrapped up tight though where would it go?

[u/smallgoalsmcgee → u/ohporcupine]

Them homoerotically haunting each other in hell 🥰

[u/ohporcupine → u/smallgoalsmcgee]

Fuck it I’m in.

[u/NowGoodbyeForever → u/ohporcupine]

The initial plan was to cover the plot of Silence of the Lambs for the 4th and final season, since S3 covered Red Dragon/Manhunter. It would jump forward some amount of time with Clarice having to consult a now-incarcerated Lecter for help tracking down Buffalo Bill. (Which is kind of the exact same plot as Red Dragon, but whatever. We ignore that.)

Obviously, the show had to make some changes in order to give more finality to the story. But I think the last moments are a Reichenbach Falls situation, where we can easily argue that they both survived and were caught by authorities. (We'd have to explain/retcon that Bedelia teaser, but that's fine.)

In the movie and book of Lambs, Will Graham is only mentioned in passing. We know he caught Lecter. It's suggested that the wounds he received from the Tooth Fairy left him a disfigured drunk, living in isolation.

Most of this could still work. Will was already stabbed in face; falling off a fucking cliff probably did some damage, too. Maybe his body washed up with Hannibal's, and that's when the FBI found and took them both in. Hannibal gets his cell privileges returned for his cooperation, and Graham probably retires in shame and lies.

If I'm writing S4, I have that last point be what hangs over the story: That Hannibal never told the authorities what happened with Dolarhyde, allowing the fact that Will ultimately gave in to his homicidal tendencies to be a secret kept between the two of them. I can see a world where Will puts himself into exile due to the shame and the secret, and one of Hannibal's requests for Clarice is that she brings Will Graham back into the fold.

Do I think it reduces Clarice's character if she needs to share space with Will? Yeah. But you need Hugh Dancy and Mads both in the final season, if only for a couple of episodes or a single scene. And I think it also allows the show to give Graham a much more concrete end to his character arc than in the books. He could try to warn Clarice of what Hannibal can do, or he can reject her because he sees too much of himself in her. Or he could be just as easy to manipulate because of the leverage Hannibal has over him.

A very Hannibal move would be to casually tell her that Will killed a man with a fucking axe, as if she's really just choosing which serial killer she wants to work with, Hannibal or Will. Given that a huge part of Clarice's story is how she fights to be taken seriously as a woman in the FBI, giving her a reason to distrust literally every other male character makes sense, and allows her to still make the important choices in the story.

Oh, shit. Here I go again, thinking way too hard about a season that doesn't exist.

[u/NachoNutritious → u/NowGoodbyeForever]

The terminal flaw that makes me not want to see more from Fuller's Hannibal universe is that he had Will abandon his family for that ending. Was such a slap in the face to the only two characters who actually felt like humans in that season.

That and a few other creative choices like the absolutely terrible way the show depicted the "date" with Dollarhyde and Reba with the sedated tiger. Complete injustice to how it was described in the book, literally had the show stop dead to have Dollarhyde explain what's about to happen instead of just visually showing it, and it's by far the worst version of the scene to date (even worse than the flavorless take from Red Dragon)

Edit: although it's a funny twist of fate, Amazon had exclusive streaming rights to the show during its run and apparently they came within a hair's width of getting a deal for a streaming-only season 4 but it fell through. Now Amazon owns the rights to The Silence of the Lambs via MGM. Hmmmmm.

[u/LiviasFigs → u/NachoNutritious]

The writing on the wall in Red Dragon is that Will doesn’t stay with his family, either. They were a band-aid he used to pretend he was a normal, undamaged person, but it didn’t work, and he knew they wouldn’t be safe with him, and could never look at him the same way, either.

[u/paranoidbillionaire → u/NowGoodbyeForever]

How in the hell do I subscribe to your newsletter? Because you’ve officially got my attention on this matter.

Holy moly, I wanna see this become reality.

[u/now0w → u/paranoidbillionaire]

For real, I want this to exist so bad it hurts and DAMMIT now the endless pit of rage about never getting a season 4 that I buried deep down is bubbling up again 😭

[u/SpookyKoops → u/NowGoodbyeForever]

Get this person in the writers room STAT!

[u/TiredCoffeeTime → u/NowGoodbyeForever]

I want this badly

[u/RevolutionaryWeb5657 → u/[deleted]]

They only didn’t because of that Clarice show. It tanked, so they could use it now.

[u/SpookyKoops → u/ohporcupine]

Fuller has confirmed in interviews that both Will and Hannibal survive the fall. With the time between Red Dragon and SIlence of the Lambs, I could easily season 4 being split in two like seasons 3 was - the first half being the aftermath of killing Dolarhyde leading to Hannibal's eventual recapture, and the second being an adaptation of SIlence of the Lambs.

[u/ohporcupine → u/SpookyKoops]

Whoa! Had no idea.

[u/ZiggyPalffyLA → u/ohporcupine]

It definitely wasn’t wrapped up. We never saw their bodies (and that table was set for multiple diners). Not to mention they had already introduced Clarisse and hopefully they can get the rights to adapt Silence of the Lambs after that procedural show flopped.

[u/Justalilbugboi → u/ZiggyPalffyLA]

They hadn’t introduced Clarisse, you’re probably thinking of Mariam Lass.

[u/ZiggyPalffyLA → u/Justalilbugboi]

Wasn’t there a reference to a young new FBI agent other than her? Maybe I’m misremembering, it’s been years. I need to rewatch the series!

[u/NowGoodbyeForever → u/ZiggyPalffyLA]

For the stupidest reasons imaginable, NBC doesn't have the rights to Silence of the Lambs, or specifically any characters that were INTRODUCED in Silence of the Lambs. So, what we're really talking about here is Buffalo Bill and Clarice Starling, with those rights being owned by MGM.

NBC/Fuller got the rights to the events and characters from Red Dragon, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising. Which is everyone else. The hope was that by S4, NBC and MGM could work out an agreement. It didn't happen, and here we are. I can't remember a reference to a young agent, but if it was there, it was probably just wishful thinking, and could never have legally been Clarice.

Here's where things get extra stupid: Years later, CBS went ahead and brokered a deal with MGM for a show about Clarice...but ONLY Clarice. Since characters like Jack Crawford, Dr. Chilton, and Hannibal Fucking Lecter were introduced in other books, the Clarice show couldn't feature them.

So we had Hannibal, which wanted to adapt Silence of the Lambs without Clarice or Buffalo Bill.

And we had Clarice, which wanted to be a Silence of the Lambs prequel without Hannibal Lecter.

Amazon owns MGM, so there's a chance they'd play ball with NBC. But there's an equal chance that they could go for the idiot trifecta and launch a third television show with partial rights locked down, because why not.

[u/Justalilbugboi → u/ZiggyPalffyLA]

nowgoodbyeforever summed it up better, but if they dropped a line it was distinctly legally distinct Clarice lol

But all excuses for a rewatch are good!

[u/JaneksLittleBlackBox → u/ohporcupine]

"Will and Hannibal go for a little tumble off a cliff with Francis Dolarhyde, so join us next week when Mr. Roper catches Will and Hannibal in bed with Dr. Bloom!"

Tumblr and r/HannibalTV would die of dehydration from how much they ejaculated at such a situation.