Yesterday I finally finished watching the latest and likely final season of Hannibal. Sadly, Hannibal has been cancelled by NBC and by now it doesn’t look like the show will be picked up by another production company, as most people involved in it have already moved on to other projects.

Though I always did admire Hannibal for its writing and cinematography, I did not always necessarily enjoy watching it – it’s just a bit too disgusting for me, and way too sick. I think that’s pretty obvious if you read my profanity-laden post-season-one review of Hannibal. Therefore, I have to admit I’m almost glad it’s over. What a paradox – why do I even watch stuff that has such obvious downsides? Well, I guess despite its horror, it’s still a surprisingly good show, and those are harder and harder to find for someone like me who’s seen pretty much everything.

Personally, I think that the finale of the third season works very well as a series finale. It seems highly unlikely that Will would have survived that, and I don’t image the fans would have been happy about a new season without Will. His character arc was over anyway – actually, I think it was already over after the mid-season plot twist, which I also think would have made an even better series finale instead of going into the whole Red Dragon story. While the Dragon’s story was well written, it just felt completely different to what the show has established itself in its first two and a half seasons.

Some more random thoughts:

  • What happened to Dr. Chilton was just ew. Felt like they noticed “oh we haven’t had any disgustingly disfigured corpses in a while, let’s do this”
  • How on Earth is a psychopath like Hannibal not on 24/7 video and audio surveillance, even when he’s locked up?!
  • I’m still wondering whose meat they ate in Season 2 (the one that was supposed to be Freddie). Did I miss some reveal or something?
  • That post-credits scene? Ew. And a bit repetitive.

I am now definitely looking forward to the TV adaptation of American Gods, which will be Hannibal producer Bryan Fuller’s next big project. Since quite a few people from the Hannibal team have moved to that, I expect we’ll be seeing a few more familiar faces once it’s released. And let’s hope it will be less disgusting and perhaps even a bit funny, like most of Fuller’s previous shows were.