Followers of psychological horror-thriller sequence and movies aren’t going through any shortages on what to look at, however only a few exhibits have captivated audiences just like the sickeningly candy splatterfest and kaleidoscope of the weird that’s Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. Impressed by Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels, the present follows troubled FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who varieties an unlikely bond with forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen). Sadly for Will and his slipping sanity, Hannibal additionally occurs to be a cannibalistic serial killer.
The sequence was a important darling and main awards-magnet, however viewership dropped off after three seasons and NBC canceled it. It was an upsetting finish for Hannibal’s devoted fanbase, however that hasn’t prevented the group, the creator, and the sequence’ stars from vocally hoping Will and Hannibal may seem on silver screens once more. With the tenth anniversary of season 3’s finale arising on the finish of August, although, is it already too late for Hannibal season 4?
Shortly after the finale concluded, Fuller summed as much as TVLine what it might take to cease him from combating for a Hannibal revival: “It’s not over till I’m useless, so far as I’m involved.” With that in thoughts, I’m not giving up both — regardless of the seemingly endless boundaries the sequence faces. Given the gut-churning ending of season 3, it’s onerous to not need to know what occurs subsequent.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the finale of Hannibal season 3.]
Ever since Hannibal’s 2015 finale, “The Wrath of the Lamb,” concluded with Will and Hannibal falling off a cliff into the darkish ocean beneath, followers have been asking “What now?” For some viewers, Hannibal ended proper then and there. Will had lastly embraced each his pleasure for killing, within the homicide of Francis Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage), and his undeniably romantic emotions for Hannibal. Sadly for Will and Hannibal each, Will got here to a stunning conclusion: “Can’t dwell with him, can’t dwell with out him.” So throwing himself into the ocean with Hannibal in his arms, successfully ending a lifetime of killing and discovering enjoyment in it earlier than it even started, appeared like one of the simplest ways to go.
I’m an enormous Hannibal fan myself, and I discovered that conclusion extra than simply satisfying — it fully match the connection Fuller and his writers constructed up between Will and Hannibal throughout three seasons. Metaphorically talking, whereas Hannibal would typically attain out to embrace Will with one hand, he additionally had a knife within the different. Will leaning into this dynamic and adapting it for himself meant the 2 have been by no means going to have a secure relationship, though they acknowledge they’ve by no means been so effectively “recognized” or “seen” by anybody else.
And whereas a life with Hannibal would have been emotionally fulfilling for Will, who typically struggled to suit into the position society anticipated of him as a person, husband, and father, it might come at the price of everybody else in his orbit, together with previous pals like psychiatrist-turned-murderer Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) and head of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). There was just one path left to tread: demise.
However, Hannibal’s finale consists of an after-credits scene with Dr. Bedelia du Maurier, Hannibal’s psychiatrist and on-again-off-again lover, portrayed by the fantastic and dynamic Gillian Anderson, sitting at a dinner desk. The digital camera pans to indicate two different chairs on the desk, and two place settings alongside her personal. The meal for the night? Bedelia’s personal severed leg. The sequence ends there, with Fuller explaining to Vulture that the scene was meant to symbolize certainly one of two readings: Both Girl Murasaki or Uncle Robertus (two of Hannibal’s pseudo-relatives in Harris’ e book Hannibal Rising) had gone down the checklist of Hannibal’s enemies and picked Bedelia to serve up as a deal with, or Hannibal himself may need survived the autumn. With a teaser like that, it’s no marvel some followers are desirous to see extra.
However is it too late? All through the years, the pendulum on whether or not we’ll ever see Hannibal season 4 has swung forwards and backwards. Bryan Fuller, Hannibal’s showrunner and creator, has by no means stopped expressing his love for the TV sequence, typically displaying off fan artwork and articles that includes the present’s characters by way of his Instagram account. He, Mads Mikkelsen, and Hugh Dancy have all expressed their want for Hannibal to return.
Mikkelsen is booked and busy in roles throughout TV, movie, and even video video games, however he spoke to Enterprise Insider in 2024 concerning the sequence returning someday. “[Hannibal has] received to occur ultimately, ahead of later, as a result of we’re not getting any youthful, proper? However the story itself can leap, it will probably have that hole, which is okay. So it is all about discovering a house for it, however that is nothing concrete on the market now.” Dancy, a sequence common on NBC’s 2022 revival of the unique Regulation & Order, can be all the way down to return. Talking to Collider in 2023, he stated, “We maintain saying, after we get requested, ‘Oh, we’d like to do it,’ which is true. Possibly it’ll take certainly one of us to say, ‘I’ll completely by no means do a fourth season of Hannibal,’ however that might be a lie.”
However whatever the solid’s adamant affection for the sequence, a TV reboot isn’t constituted of love alone. Dancy himself acknowledged to Collider that making a season of TV isn’t low cost. “I’m speaking about the price of making a season of tv. For some time, it appeared just like the streamers have been gonna be all people’s savior in that respect, however now there’s been a cutoff there. There are exhibits which can be watched by hundreds of thousands of people who don’t make it previous a second season. So I do not know what that calculation is.”
Then there’s the truth that the rights to numerous Hannibal characters from Harris’ novels are literally divided between three completely different homeowners. The De Laurentiis Firm owns the rights to Hannibal Lecter. This took place after Dino De Laurentiis snatched up the rights to Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Purple Dragon, and produced an adaptation: Michael Mann’s 1986 movie Manhunter. That film didn’t achieve this effectively, however De Laurentiis nonetheless retained the rights over Hannibal Lecter, in addition to a number of others who appeared within the movie, corresponding to Jack Crawford and Will Graham.
As Fuller himself defined in a 2020 interview with Collider, Gaumont Worldwide Tv owns the rights to the remainder of the characters within the varieties they’ve within the Hannibal tv present, corresponding to Alana Bloom, ragebait journalist Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki), and so forth. Whereas Alana Bloom and Freddie Lounds each appeared in Purple Dragon, they have been each males with wildly completely different tales and arcs than they’ve on the present, a lot in order that the Hannibal variations are legally thought-about completely different characters.
Then there’s Thomas Harris, who owns the rights to any character who originated in his 1999 and 2006 novels, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, corresponding to Margot and Mason Verger. For Hannibal to return, all these entities, plus no matter new community or streaming platform the present appeared on, it might must cooperate on the rights points. That isn’t unimaginable, nevertheless it’s a knotty drawback.
I personally hope it will probably all be labored out. One of many largest lacking items within the NBC seasons of Hannibal was the dearth of Clarice Starling, the important thing participant within the Hannibal Lecter novels, portrayed by Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Harris adaptation The Silence of the Lambs. As The Wrap defined in 2021, Clarice is lacking from Hannibal as a result of the rights to Harris’ books are cut up between the De Laurentiis Firm and MGM, which purchased out Orion, the unique manufacturing firm and distributor of The Silence of the Lambs, and thus has the rights to Clarice and several other different characters included in that movie.
Laurentiis, having seen Manhunter carry out badly, lent Orion the rights to make use of Hannibal without spending a dime. The corporate shortly modified its tune when Silence did so effectively. These rights points have severely affected not simply Fuller’s potential Hannibal season 4, which Fuller had hoped would come with Clarice, however Alex Kurtzman’s 2021 CBS sequence Clarice, which couldn’t point out Hannibal Lecter in any respect due to Hannibal first showing in Purple Dragon, and was canceled by default, having nowhere to go after rights negotiations failed.
Talking to Collider in 2020, Fuller pointed to the rights situation and the necessity for community assist as the largest roadblocks to a Hannibal revival. “Martha De Laurentiis controls the rights for the Hannibal character. So if we need to proceed telling the tales we have been telling, Gaumont must be concerned, Martha De Laurentiis must be concerned. Then after all we want a community to platform us.”
Fuller has stated Martha De Laurentiis supported his plan for a fourth season of the present — he thought-about her an ally in his hunt to revive the sequence.
“I’ve knocked on each door and rang each bell,” he instructed Collider. “Martha and I, each couple of years, choose up our luggage and go door to door and see if anyone’s interested by revisiting. The largest hurdle is that we have been someone else’s present.” One other hurdle: Martha De Laurentiis’ 2021 demise left the rights points again in murky waters.
And but, even with the tenth anniversary of the present’s finale arriving quickly, hope hasn’t dimmed fully. The sequence’ cult following remains to be thriving. Its lively subreddit is on Reddit’s prime 2% communities checklist. Followers are nonetheless producing a ridiculously great amount of fanfiction across the present, with greater than 45,000 particular person works logged on Archive of Our Personal as of this writing. It even has its personal conference: Purple Dragon, named after Harris’ novel, launched in 2015. The 2025 version of the con introduced again essential solid members Hugh Dancy and Lara Jean Chorostecki; Mads Mikkelsen and Caroline Dhavernas attended in 2024.
The most recent replace on a potential season 4 got here this yr at Emerald Comedian-Con 2025, the place Mikkelsen and Dancy reunited to debate the sequence and its future, and the place season 4 may take up the story. “It’s only a query of how a lot we leap [forward] in time,” Mikkelsen stated. “As a result of if we do a leap of six or seven years — it may be very attention-grabbing, what these guys are doing now. So I don’t need to see an ending, I need to see a contemporary begin.”
A contemporary begin isn’t solely out of the query. Even when Fuller doesn’t get the chance to make use of Clarice, there’s a lot left to discover in Hannibal’s setting, significantly in understanding that Fuller’s plans for season 4 concerned an much more intimate look into Will and Hannibal’s relationship, in addition to fleshing out the connection between wives Margot Verger (Katharine Isabelle) and Alana Bloom. We’re additionally residing in an age of nostalgia, the place studios assume reboots and revivals are almost assured to have baked-in audiences from the get-go, and so will increase them heads and shoulders above new content material. (Simply take a look at Dexter: Resurrection, the most-streamed premiere in Showtime’s historical past.)
Dexter and different latest sequence revivals, like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return didn’t essentially face the sorts of rights points Hannibal is going through. However nonetheless, the considered a Hannibal season 4 stays scrumptious to ponder, regardless of the authorized roadblocks — and the sensible ones. As Hugh Dancy himself put it to Collider, the actors are getting older. “We might actually simply age out of it, and the folks on-line will begin to say, ‘Nicely, really, that is perhaps barely gross,” he stated.
I extremely doubt the devoted Hannibal viewers would care as a lot as he thinks they’d. An older Hannibal and Will would imply a time-skip, positive. However that comes with its personal attention-grabbing premise: What may a twisted love story like Hannibal and Will’s develop into in a world the place they survived and are older and wiser? One of many key themes I really like about this present is the concept of being seen by somebody in a means that outsiders are merely unable to understand. Will, going through psychological and bodily well being struggles as early as season 1, can’t assist however be drawn in by Hannibal’s manipulations, as a result of Hannibal sees the darkness inside him, acknowledges it as much like his personal, and calls out to it. Regardless of desirous to do good, to be good, Will can’t resist falling into Hannibal’s orbit. Now that the 2 males have dedicated homicide collectively, what does this imply for his or her relationship? Will they kill once more, or will Will push Hannibal to train restraint?
But Will and Hannibal’s gothic love story isn’t the one factor I’d adore to see developed. Margot Verger and Alana Bloom, fondly referred to as the “Homicide Wives” to Will and Hannibal’s “Homicide Husbands,” are simply as big part of the story to discover. Season 3 touched on their relationship, with Alana falling for Margot whereas serving to Margot’s sadistic brother seize Hannibal and convey him to justice. The 2 went on to marry and have a baby collectively — the kid’s life solely being potential on account of Hannibal masking up Margot and Alana’s homicide of Mason. Hannibal has promised to take that baby from Alana as quickly as he’s capable of.
Will beforehand had a friendship and romantic entanglement with Alana, so what would that imply for his or her dynamic in season 4? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to forestall Hannibal from murdering Alana? These unanswered questions will in all probability hang-out me for the remainder of my life — or till Hannibal season 4 lastly occurs, in no matter type it takes. If Fuller hasn’t given up on seeing it occur, then why ought to I?
