Before I move on to 2x07 in my Hannibal rewatch, I want to talk about Will Graham & Fear for a quick sec! I saw a big pile of discussion on this when I was on mobile in the airport whispering “I’ll be back” as I quick-scrolled through my dash, and sure that was well over a week ago now, but HEY.
As a good access point to this topic, there seems to be somewhat of a divide on whether or not Will is scared (openly or otherwise) when he’s negotiating with Matty B in the prison hall of shark cages in 2x05. Although Hugh Dancy is a terrific actor, doing some sort of Expression Analysis is always gonna be a bit shifty and subjective, so it’s probably best not to hinge too much on that. Besides, the important thing is surely that while none of us would ever doubt Will’s moments of wide-eyed trembling terror in S1 to be anything but that, here in S2 it is much murkier! So what we can say for certain is that there is a change in how Will is behaving in high-stress situations.
A long time ago, I made a somewhat offhand comment about how I thought Will’s transformation arc over the series might have most to do with how he learns to channel his fear. In early S1, Alana & Jack characterize Will as someone driven by huge amounts of fear, and soon after Will tells Hannibal about the ONLY TIME he feels safe in his horrorful life. Now, I’ve always been one of those Hannibal viewers who saw nerves in Will all the way through the series, but I also think that he goes through a pretty radical transformation in how he manages them. Fear at its sciencey/psychy core comes from “arousal”, or to put it another way before I surely get back to this pun-flexible version before too long, it starts with being keyed up by something. In S1, when Will gets keyed up by a frightening thing (pick yer fave example), he usual goes into a patented Panting Panic™. There are less & less of those moments of overwhelmed fright in S2 and onward, as everyone has noticed — including the other characters. Dr. Bloom’s lines trace this out very well for us, thank you Alana: in 2x01 she tells Jack “Will’s terrified but that’s not stopping him,” but by 2x06 she’s now telling Jack “he’s not scared, not anymore.”
Although I fully agree with Alana that there’s a shift happening, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Will no longer feels fear at all. Or more specifically, I would say that sensitive high-strung Will Graham still feels something blaze through his nerves when he’s in dangerous circumstances — something that can become fear, or can become something else. “Don’t get scared, get angry” might be the new motto of our incensed dewdrop. I get the idea that Will, pushed to the edge by so many aspects of his life, is learning how to use his fear as a form of energy. Maybe he can’t control how much he’s affected by his surroundings, but maybe he can control what he does with that wild rush in his veins. Maybe it can become something like courage. Something like power.
(Where this gets real fun is when you bring in the misattribution of arousal. If you missed psych 101, there was a gem of a study that managed to convince a whole bunch of undergrad bros that the arousal they felt from walking across a high suspension bridge was in fact that other kind of arousal, directed at the cute girl “distributing surveys.” To put it more generally, it’s possible to alter what we consider to be the source of our keyed up feelings. Actually, I used to take advantage of this when I was an undergrad myself: I’d run up the stairs to the classroom where I had a hard test, so that I could (mis)attribute my accelerated heart-rate to exertion, not nervousness. Anyhow, this is something I’ve definitely laughed/sighed about when considering what Will classifies as scary and what Will classifies as exhilarating, and how & why & in whose company those begin to twine. Especially given the whole “kneaded feelings” situation, my god.)
