In Italian cuisine the digestivo is had last, and its purpose is right there in the name: essentially a nightcap. It’s a small drink used to aid digestion of the meal. “Digestivo” is more a binge than a nightcap, but it does such a beautiful job of synthesizing not just the preceding season, but the entire series, that one would like nothing more than to become intoxicated by it again and again. It is a grand finale, reaching even further operatic heights than “Masumono,” ratcheting up not just the violence and gore, but the psychologically terrifying ways in which that violence is carried out. That the episode after all that should then end on a comparatively quiet flourish is fitting. The meal is done; now, we digest.
For all intents and purposes, “Digestivo” is the final episode of Hannibal proper. The best proof of this is in the title of the next episode, “The Great Red Dragon,” which abandons the culinary titling scheme the series has used thus far. Moreover, the final episodes of the show are effectively a Red Dragon miniseries, and while they will certainly call back to and develop on what we’ve seen so far, expect these episodes to function more as a sequel than as a part of what, with “Digestivo,” has become a pretty tremendous whole.
“Digestivo” operates on two levels. There’s the surface level: the operatic, Grand, Guignol-esque, terrific violence that punctuates the conclusions of the characters’ journeys to date (except, strangely, for Jack, who mainly sits this one out, perhaps having already had his big moment two episodes ago). Then there is the interpersonal level: the emotional stuff that underlies all the bloodspray. Both levels work independently of the other (spectacularly so), but they also intertwine so effectively that neither feels egregious or out of place.
This is a feat because there is plenty here that could be considered, on a lesser show, to be egregious. For instance, Mason Verger stole Margot’s uterus, implanted into it a baby born of his sperm and her eggs, and further implanted the uterus into a surrogate mother he keeps at his farm. That surrogate? Is a pig. And Alana and Margot, upon discovering this, cut the stillborn baby from the very pregnant pig’s womb, in excruciating detail. (And NBC couldn’t market this show!) This is the most horrifying thing that happens in the episode, but not without some tough competition.
After all, “Digestivo” also features their revenge-by-eel upon Mason. And a Face/Off style surgery in which Mason plans to cut off Will’s face and wear it as his own, while he eats Hannibal Lecter. (That Will voices his realization of this in what is basically a joke line is an indication of how twisted these people’s lives have become by this point.)
As I say, this is basically a series finale, and so it’s hard not to view the episode as a laundry list of loose end tying. In a lot of ways, it is just so. But the tying is done so satisfactorily. The knots are just tight enough to provide resolution but are loose enough to give the audience a thirst for more. Fortunately, a taste more is exactly what we get. But with “Digestivo,” I am more at peace than I have yet been with Hannibal’s impending end. In point of fact the show might as well already be over.
After all, what more need be said than what is so artfully depicted in that final scene between Hannibal and Will? Will saves him from Cordell and Mason, and he takes him to his home. Will wakes up, and teacup shatters again, never to come back together. He has what is more or less a literal break-up scene with Hannibal, and Hannibal takes the goodbye just as hard. This is the worst defeat Will can inflict upon Hannibal: to let him go. To not chase him, not find him, not think about him or care about him at all. Not to worry about forgiveness or blame. To let the teacup stay where it is in fragments on the floor.
This is the only way that whatever this thing is between them can end, and it removes, even if for a moment, all of Hannibal’s desire to keep playing the game. Mads Mikkelsen is at his best in this scene, playing a muted, vulnerable Hannibal for perhaps the first time in the series. No longer is there any need, any desire even, to eat Will. The fascination with Will, the love for him, morphs in an instant into a desire to strike back at the one who hurt him. “We are a zero-sum game,” Hannibal puts it so simply. And so he turns himself in to Jack, so that Will may always know where he is and exactly how to find him. Chiyoh has him in her sniper rifle’s sights, but she doesn’t take her shot. For her, Hannibal belongs in a cage, and a cage is where he will stay.
This could be the end. It would be a tremendous end. Even with the Red Dragon arc to come, I have a hard time treating this as anything but a finale to the series. That it is a nearly perfect one is all the better.
Stray Observations:
- Joe Anderson is more than fine as Mason, but he really is missing some of the spark that ignited Michael Pitt’s performance, even as some of his lines are truly delightful: “No. I drink martinis made with tears.”
- Will bites off Cordell’s cheek at Mason’s unbelievably creepy dinner party, and Hannibal looks so very proud of him.
- There’s lots of talk about literal dick eating this week, in terms of subtext becoming text.
- Alana’s arc is still one of the few weak points of the season for me. She releases Hannibal from Verger’s trap with the following explanation: “I was trying to save Will from you, but right now, you’re the only one that can save him.” This, along with her conversation with Will, is the best explanation we can get for her various actions, but they never felt tethered to a theme the way that Hannibal’s, Will’s, or even Bedelia’s similarly nebulous decision-making processes were.
- Is it wrong that Cordell’s recipe for Hannibal’s tongue sounds delicious?
Michael Wampler is a graduate of The College of New Jersey, where he completed both B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature. He currently lives and works in Princeton, NJ while he shops around his debut novel and slowly picks away at his second. Favorite shows include Weeds, Lost, Hannibal and Mad Men (among many more). When not watching or writing about television, he enjoys reading, going for runs, and building his record collection.