Penultimate episodes. Sometimes, they are great predecessors to that fatal blow or cliffhanger episodes that makes you sit at the edge of your seat for months until the new series. Sometimes, however, they don’t sit that well. They shift too quickly between plot threads and points they left dangling in the wind, trying too hard to tie it up everything for a satisfying conclusion. Luckily, for everyone, Hannibal fans know exactly what is about to go down in next week’s episode. But with Tome-Wan, everything felt a little bit flat for it to work, muddling within itself. After last week’s performance, it is a little disappointed.
This week’s episode just didn’t work. It was full of these tiny moments of brilliance but on an overall level, it fell behind. There were factors included that felt mixed and confused, that the team behind the show have been drawing out events so slowly that they have actually forgotten what was going on. The announcement that Bedelia killed her own patient, manipulated by Hannibal, the fact that Will straight up killed someone (albeit in self-defence) and Jack knows all about who mutilated the corpse and Mason’s pursuit of Lecter just never gels together. Each arc is underwritten and it will leave you bemused. It’s a fatal flaw with Hannibal to never pick up dramatic events from the week before and run with it, brushing over the drama (in this case, Freddie’s resurrection and Alana realising the man she’s been riding, likes to eat people.) It feels flat.
Next week this series of Hannibal concludes. However, Fuller and his cannibalistic crew need to get their head around the plots they have written and land the finale with an almighty punch. Season One ended on such brilliance that if they don’t, they risk losing more readership. There are many questions and ways that it can go, could Hannibal be arrested and incarcerated? Are we going to spend season three in a twisted Red Dragon tale? Or is he going to run. Hannibal needs to raise another bar, make it more intriguing and heart thumping in order to keep it’s crown. It’s swiggity swaggy staggy crown.