UPDATE (Spoiler Alert)

https://www.tvguide.com/news/hannibal-season2-finale-postmortem-bryan-fuller-1082245/

It looks like some of my predictions were right.

Graham survives and we’ll be seeing Dolarhyde.

But, we’ll also be treated to a mix of Hannibal’s origin story as well and Fuller has confirmed (not that it was really necessary at this point) that sequentially and story point wise, things can go anywhere counter to the original layout of the books/films.

Very exciting.

I’m with you, if absolutely everyone really is dead, that would be fucking amazing, period. As much as I enjoy the Graham character, I love when writers take those kinds of risks.

Because Dolarhyde is so important however, there’s absolutely 0% chance that he won’t come into the story at some point, it would be pretty fascinating actually to see a different agent, possibly even a completely original agent written just for the show, take him on.

On your Hannibal Lector binge, I strongly recommend watching Manhunter first or last, keeping it separate from the Anthony Hopkins films because while they’re all quite good, they’re worlds apart in tone.

It’s very possible that I’m wrong about Will Graham being dead, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think he probably is still alive. So you’re probably right about that, thought I would be very surprised if both he and Jack Crawford make it to Season 3. Can’t help but feel like it would take something away from the awesome Season 2 finale, if they both end up surviving.

Definitely going to be using the downtime between seasons to re-watch all the movies and read all the books, which I’m looking forward to. Perhaps I’ll have much more of a clue as to where things are headed, once I revisit all that stuff.

That said, part of the fun is not knowing where things are headed, since they’re always free to stray from the source material, so for now it’s just fun to speculate and come up with different possible scenarios. No matter how ya slice it, Season 3 will be very interesting, and I already cannot wait!

I was just about to write up a piece on this, but you’ve done a great job here.

I too, was very surprised by the finale, but I’m more surprised by your interpretation of its events.

We can agree, that all bets are off, while staying loyal to the most important part of the novels and films, the specifics and chronology are totally up for re-imagination.

What really surprises me, is that you believe Graham is dead however. Of course, you may be right (which would in fact be a season 3 premiere shocker for me), but in all previous incantations of the story of “Red Dragon”, Will was brutally attacked by Hannibal… and survived.

What came next was that Hannibal really was captured and after years of physical and mostly mental rehabilitation, Crawford called Graham (who’s now retired and has raised a family) back one more time to help catch Dolarhyde, who’s actually the most quintessential villain of this universe in my opinion, what The Joker is to Batman.

The most fascinating and dynamic part of the story is Will Graham’s need to consult Hannibal one last time to help catch Francis Dolarhyde (“The Red Dragon”).

But, since Hannibal wasn’t captured, here are my predictions:

– Part of season 3 may in fact be about the inevitable capture of Hannibal

– Graham and Crawford survive
– Bloom is dead
– Dolarhyde will be introduced and have a much larger presence throughout the season than them simply going from one killer to the other, it’ll shape up more like a season of Dexter where we spend more time with just the one serial killer
– Graham and Crawford will try, desperately, to track Dolarhyde down, but being unable to do so, Graham will (somehow – and possible behind Crawford’s back in this new storyline [he originally pushed Will to Hannibal]) seek the advice of Hannibal (I feel this dynamic is too good to lose completely regardless of free reign)

I think the show will survive the long-run and Clarice won’t be introduced until season 4 or 5, where she’ll team up with Graham (who now has taken Crawford’s position to be placed more in the mentor role) to track down Buffalo Bill.

My secondary prediction, considering that all original chronology may be totally out the window, is that Clarice comes early to track down Buffalo Bill (with Graham – who I think survives no matter what) because in the arc of a TV series, Dolarhyde could very well be the series finale, so everything else would be fleshed out before that time.