Followers of psychological horror-thriller sequence and movies aren’t going through any shortages on what to observe, 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 types 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 essential 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 will take to cease him from preventing for a Hannibal revival: “It’s not over till I’m lifeless, so far as I’m involved.” With that in thoughts, I’m not giving up both — regardless of the seemingly unending limitations the sequence faces. Given the gut-churning ending of season 3, it’s arduous to not wish 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 under, 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 surprising conclusion: “Can’t stay with him, can’t stay 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 the easiest way to go.
I’m an enormous Hannibal fan myself, and I discovered that conclusion extra than simply gratifying — 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 had been by no means going to have a steady relationship, though they acknowledge they’ve by no means been so properly “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 function society anticipated of him as a person, husband, and father, it will come at the price of everybody else in his orbit, together with previous mates 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: loss of life.
Alternatively, 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 great 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 characterize one among two readings: Both Woman Murasaki or Uncle Robertus (two of Hannibal’s pseudo-relatives in Harris’ guide 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 surprise some followers are wanting 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 backwards and forwards. Bryan Fuller, Hannibal’s showrunner and creator, has by no means stopped expressing his love for the TV sequence, typically exhibiting off fan artwork and articles that includes the present’s characters through 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 in regards to the sequence returning in the future. “[Hannibal has] bought to occur finally, before later, as a result of we’re not getting any youthful, proper? However the story itself can bounce, it could possibly 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 right down to return. Talking to Collider in 2023, he mentioned, “We preserve saying, after we get requested, ‘Oh, we’d like to do it,’ which is true. Possibly it’ll take one among us to say, ‘I’ll completely by no means do a fourth season of Hannibal,’ however that might be a lie.”
However whatever the forged’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 had been gonna be everyone’s savior in that respect, however now there’s been a cutoff there. There are exhibits which might be watched by hundreds of thousands of those 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 varied Hannibal characters from Harris’ novels are literally divided between three completely different house owners. The De Laurentiis Firm owns the rights to Hannibal Lecter. This happened 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 properly, however De Laurentiis nonetheless retained the rights over Hannibal Lecter, in addition to a number of others who appeared within the movie, similar 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 types they’ve within the Hannibal tv present, similar 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 had 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 of 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, similar 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 will must cooperate on the rights points. That isn’t not possible, nevertheless it’s a knotty drawback.
I personally hope it could possibly 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 at no cost. The corporate shortly modified its tune when Silence did so properly. 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 challenge 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 wish to proceed telling the tales we had been telling, Gaumont must be concerned, Martha De Laurentiis must be concerned. Then after all we want a community to platform us.”
Fuller has mentioned Martha De Laurentiis supported his plan for a fourth season of the present — he thought of her an ally in his hunt to revive the sequence.
“I’ve knocked on each door and rang each bell,” he informed Collider. “Martha and I, each couple of years, decide up our baggage and go door to door and see if anyone’s fascinated by revisiting. The largest hurdle is that we had been anyone else’s present.” One other hurdle: Martha De Laurentiis’ 2021 loss of life 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 energetic subreddit is on Reddit’s high 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 major forged members Hugh Dancy and Lara Jean Chorostecki; Mads Mikkelsen and Caroline Dhavernas attended in 2024.
The newest replace on a potential season 4 got here this 12 months 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 bounce [forward] in time,” Mikkelsen mentioned. “As a result of if we do a bounce of six or seven years — it may be very fascinating, what these guys are doing now. So I don’t wish to see an ending, I wish to see a recent begin.”
A recent begin isn’t totally 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, notably 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 dwelling in an age of nostalgia, the place studios assume reboots and revivals are practically assured to have baked-in audiences from the get-go, and so will increase them heads and shoulders above new content material. (Simply have 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 individuals on-line will begin to say, ‘Properly, truly, that is likely to be barely gross,” he mentioned.
I extremely doubt the devoted Hannibal viewers would care as a lot as he thinks they might. An older Hannibal and Will would imply a time-skip, positive. However that comes with its personal fascinating 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 thought of being seen by somebody in a means that outsiders are merely unable to grasp. 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 just like his personal, and calls out to it. Regardless of eager 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 often called 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 resulting from Hannibal overlaying up Margot and Alana’s homicide of Mason. Hannibal has promised to take that youngster from Alana as quickly as he’s in a position to.
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 most likely 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?
