Work Text:
I begin this essay with a disclaimer that it is not about bashing the trope of a jealous Will or Will and Bedelia fighting over Hannibal. Not at all! It's just because it seems to me that the animosity goes deeper than that, and sometimes we overlook that depth to reduce it all to "Will is very jealous."
-
-
The relationship that Will has with Bedelia is interesting: both are victims of Hannibal and both are aware of it. That awareness extends to the fact that two of them know the nature of the doctor, and that reality sets them apart from other victims. It also makes them the first ones to abandon the role of victim in order to regain their agency.
In that context, we can see the evolution of the emotions that Bedelia elicits in Will. In their first interaction, in "Sakizuke" (2x2), Will is in prison and at one of his lowest points: still doubting his sanity, knowing he was betrayed, completely alone in his truth. Until Bedelia du Maurier arrives, visiting him on the verge of escaping from the beast. Let's see what the script says:
She studies him, somehow identifies with him .
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I've heard so much about you, I almost feel as though I know you.
WILL GRAHAM: You don't.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: No, I don't, but I understand you better than I thought. I wanted to meet you before I withdraw.
WILL GRAHAM: What are you withdrawing from?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Social ties.
WILL GRAHAM: You're a psychiatrist. Isn't our sense of self a consequence of social ties?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: It certainly is in your case. It may be small comfort, but I am convinced Hannibal has done what he believes is best for you.
WILL GRAHAM: That's not small comfort, that would be no comfort.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You can transform this experience. The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive. You can survive this happening to you.
WILL GRAHAM: Happening to me.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: (almost inaudible) I believe you.
Will stares at her, a wave of emotion washing over him as Bedelia steps away, gathered by the nurse and a guard and escorted back down the corridor (...) he begins to tremble. A great relief having heard three simple words he's needed to hear .
It is a crucial dialogue to understand Will and why, later on, he will feel so much resentment towards Bedelia.
Will is more isolated than ever and has completely lost his credibility. Hannibal has brought him down to the ground. Not even his closest allies like Alana believe him. But he is visited by a stranger who, in mere minutes, not only agrees that Hannibal is behind what is happening to him but also believes him. A wave of emotion floods him; he feels relieved to hear those words he needed. Someone believes in him.
Moreover, this person, who knows Hannibal, tells him that he can survive the trauma. In fact, she admits that she was able to survive, and it can be inferred that her trauma is also related to Hannibal.
This is how the image of Bedelia takes shape in Will's mind: someone who believed in him and gave him strength in his toughest moment (up until that minute). It's something he appreciates in "Tome-Wan" (2x12):
WILL GRAHAM: Thank you. For visiting me in the hospital. And for what you said.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I didn't say enough.
WILL GRAHAM: Now's your chance to say it all. You've been granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for District 36, and by local authorities in a memorandum attached, sworn and attested. Let's talk about Hannibal Lecter.
(...)
WILL GRAHAM: You were Dr. Lecter's psychiatrist, he wasn't yours.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I told myself that, but I was under Hannibal's influence . What he did to you made that abundantly clear.
WILL GRAHAM: You were attacked by a patient who was formerly in Dr. Lecter's care.
That patient died during the attack. Report said he swallowed his tongue (...) How exactly did your patient die?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I killed him. I believed I was defending myself. And to a point, I was, but beyond that point, it was murder. Hannibal... influenced me to kill my patient, our patient.
From here, three details are important: that gratitude, but also the immunity granted to Bedelia, and how she explains the patient's death: “it was murder, and Hannibal influenced me”.
We enter "Dolce" (2x6), where we see the biggest change in Will's attitude towards Bedelia. Why not? Her actions betray the image he has of the woman who visited him and believed him, who told him he could survive the trauma and what was happening to him. She has become a charlatan.
We know the powerful curiosity that Bedelia feels towards Hannibal, towards his type of pathology, towards the beast that hides behind his human facade. We also know that this curiosity is just that and not a desire to join him behind the veil. Bedelia is greedy, and her downfall will be closely related to her own ego and overestimating her manipulative abilities.
Furthermore, it's important to remember that in his game with Hannibal, Will lost everything: Abigail, his chance to bring the monster to justice –after his decision to give him a warning– and he was marked for life. He survived, yes, but at a very high cost that has only haunted him with a wounded conscience for months.
There he encounters Bedelia, the same woman who is as aware as he is of what Hannibal hides. The one who knew the truth from the beginning, who believed him when no one else did... but now she pretends to be a mere victim, confused and bewildered.
Will eyes Bedelia somewhat cynically:
WILL GRAHAM: Mrs. Fell, I presume?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: My husband's a doctor. He's treating my condition.
(...)
WILL GRAHAM: Please. You need to get over yourself, whatever self this is... Bedelia.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: My name is Lydia Fell.
(...)
Will leans in close to Bedelia and, in a distorted reprise of her words to him in Ep. #202, he mockingly whispers:
WILL GRAHAM: I don't believe you.
I love this parallel! In Will's eyes, his cynicism towards Bedelia is valid because he has just confirmed that he lost the only person he could identify with. Worse yet, perhaps the one who provided him with light in the darkness never existed. At this point, the image of Bedelia in his eyes has started to sink, and the resentment that arises will only continue to grow. While he lost everything and with an even deeper trauma, she will come out unscathed, clean. Bedelia merely followed her curiosity without risk, unable to enter behind the veil and accept Hannibal's monstrous nature.
Even worse, she will emerge as a recognized victim who can even benefit financially from her adventure, something very similar to what Will despised as "tasteless" in the first episode.
And let's remember, while Will doesn't have a dislike for rudeness like Hannibal, he is guided by what is fair, his self-righteous nature. For him, this situation is severely unjust.
Furthermore, we know the plan that Bedelia has been executing. She knows that to ensure her survival, her ultimate goal, she needs to undermine Will's value to Hannibal. She wants to make him revert back to how he was before he met Will, devoid of that emotional development. She plays with the same dynamics, and urges the monster to consume his beloved, just as he once did with his sister. To Bedelia, Will is a piece that must be eliminated.
Will's newfound understanding of who Bedelia is does not change; it is something he will not forget, and will throw in her face. He doesn't hesitate to make it clear to her three years later in "...And the Woman Clothed in Sun" (3x10). He finds her at a seminar where Bedelia is selling her narrative, lying and exaggerating her victimhood, playing the role that she fulfilled so well and that freed her from the straw and dust.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: (...) He never called me my name. It was strange at first, and then it wasn't strange. And then my name was Lydia Fell. Deeply-felt truths of who I am as Bedelia Du Maurier were smoke and mirrors of the highest order.
The lecture now over, people are filing toward the exit, past Bedelia who humbly accepts their congratulations , offers her thanks, shakes their hands. She closes the doors and turns. Will, who has patiently been waiting his turn, finally confronts Bedelia who puts on a friendly face .
WILL GRAHAM: Poor Dr. Du Maurier, swallowed whole. Suffering inside Hannibal Lecter's bowels for what must have felt like an eternity. You didn't lose yourself, Bedelia, you just crawled so far up his ass you couldn't be bothered.
Will takes in the impressive space of Bedelia's lecture.
WILL GRAHAM: You hitched your star to a man commonly known as a monster. You're the Bride of Frankenstein.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: We've both been his bride.
WILL GRAHAM: How did you manage to walk away unscarred? I'm covered with scars .
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I wasn't myself. You were. Even when you weren't, you were.
WILL GRAHAM: I wasn't wearing adequate armor.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: No. You were naked.
Will filled with resentment! The focus is not just that she took his place in Hannibal's escape, no, it's deeper than that and it's linked to how, in his mind, she failed him: “we were supposed to be similar, survivors, you believed in me, you believed I could survive and overcome my trauma. Why did I lose everything, and there you are, not only without scars but also benefiting from what happened?” So tasteless.
However, Bedelia knows the answers, just like we do. Will was always Will, even when he pretended. Even in the depths of his hatred for his monster, he never ceased to be who he is, with Hannibal he becomes real. He was always exposed, unlike Bedelia, who constructed a false narrative and never truly risked her own being.
This episode contains another equally defining conversation as the first one because, for the first time, we witness Bedelia's vulnerability. At least we, the audience, do, not Will. He is fed another narrative:
WILL GRAHAM: If he does end up eating you, Bedelia, you'd have it coming.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I can't blame him for doing what evolution has equipped him to do.
(...)
WILL GRAHAM: You lied, Bedelia. You do that a lot. Why do you do that a lot?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I obfuscate. Hannibal was never not my patient. Covert treatment suffers secrecy and disapproval.
(...)
WILL GRAHAM: How is one patient worthy of compassion and not another?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I'm under no illusions how morally consistent my compassion has been. How is one murderer worthy of compassion and not another?
WILL GRAHAM: We're morally schizophrenic when it comes to Hannibal. And we both seem to keep getting away with it .
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: One of us is more scarred than the other. I was granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. Attorney. Not a good way to learn a lesson.
WILL GRAHAM: All that time you were with Hannibal behind the veil, you'd already killed one patient, ever occur to you to kill another?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: My relationship with Hannibal isn't as passionate as yours. You are
here visiting an old flame. Is your wife aware how intimately you and Hannibal know each other?
(...)
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Your experience of Hannibal's attention is so profoundly harmful, yet so irresistible, it undermines your ability to think rationally.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You're walking down the street and you see a wounded bird in the grass. What's your first thought?
WILL GRAHAM: It's vulnerable, I want to help it .
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: My first thought is also that it's vulnerable. Yet I want to crush it. A primal rejection of weakness which is every bit as natural as the nurturing instinct. Of course, I wouldn't crush it, but my first thought would be to do just that.
(Bedelia before, with his patent)
Bedelia looks down at him, her hand still lodged in his mouth. TIME SLOWS DOWN as she contemplates him with a mixture of pity and disgust.
Her face takes on an expression of serious resolve as --
BAM! Back to NORMAL TIME as Bedelia suddenly THRUSTS HER ARM DOWN NEIL'S THROAT -- a mercy killing .
(..)
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You're not a killer. You're capable of righteous violence because you are compassionate.
WILL GRAHAM: How are you capable?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy. The next time your instinct is to help someone, you should really consider crushing them instead. You might save yourself some trouble.
Even with everything that has happened, Will continues to seek that connection with Bedelia, something he doesn't do with Alana, for example, and certainly not with Jack. Only Bedelia can almost understand him, only with her can he identify. But it is Bedelia who now reminds him: “one of us is covered in scars while the other, look at her, has immunity. Wasn't my strategy better, right?” Bedelia also acknowledges him: “my bond with Hannibal is not personal like yours, your compassion for him is what sinks you and what will never let you escape”.
The patient, Neal, whom Bedelia murdered, also matters. She affirms to Will that if she were to see a defenseless creature, her first instinct would be to step on it. We know that within her, despite that, the idea of saving prevails, as she attempted with Neal. That death had its origin in her cold pity and mercy... However, Hannibal played his influence, his power over her. Bedelia is, after all, a victim.
The coldness with which she tells Will that he is naive is a shield she needs to survive. Wasn't Will that bird, and her own visit to the prison, that "I believe you," a salvation and not a stomp? Could Will have remained resilient without that affirmation, without knowing that there was someone believing in him?
And her own analogy comes true: if we take that "I believe you" as an instinct to save Will, the wounded bird, her second action will be crushing him as she attempts by manipulating Hannibal to kill and eat him (or eat and kill him, it doesn't matter). Bedelia knows that with that, as she says, a lot of trouble for her can be avoided.
It is a painful arc closure because the initial image of Bedelia in Will's eyes, even with stains, did exist at some point. But curiosity, trauma, Hannibal's influence, and her own survival instinct will always make her a liar; it is her main strategy. And Will will always think that she only played without getting burned, seeking her own advantage and stepping on birds.
We reach the conversation we love and know by heart, the one in "The Number of the Beast is 666" (3x12). Before analyzing it, it's worth reviewing how Bedelia sees Hannibal and her feelings towards Will.
In her first conversation with Jack in "Kaiseki" (2x1), with Will already in prison, she says:
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Hannibal made mistakes, too. Mistakes I believe he will continue to make . Will Graham is an unfinished crossword puzzle.
And to Chiyoh in "Dolce" (2x6), she says this:
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I thought Will Graham was Hannibal's biggest mistake .
Bedelia may not understand Hannibal in the same way that Will does, for obvious reasons, but she does understand something that he doesn't: Will humanizes him, makes him make mistakes and act irrationally (does that sound familiar?). Will doesn't know this, and a significant part of his conflict towards his monster, especially in the Dragon arc and the parallels between the killer's relationship and Reba, is that he believes Hannibal is incapable of feeling. Worse, he thinks Hannibal couldn't possibly feel anything towards him (and how could after the abuse in the first season? after the mutual betrayal in the second? He called him! And still, he lost everything and almost his own brain).
This parenthesis is important because of the penultimate conversation they have, where Will no longer beats around the bush and his accusations are direct:
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: It's hard to predict when brittle materials will break. Hannibal gave you three years to build a family and a life, confident he'd find a way to take them from you.
WILL GRAHAM: And he has… What's he going to take from you?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Is it important to you that he take something from me?
WILL GRAHAM: Hannibal has agency in the world.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Hannibal has no intention of seeing me dead by any other hand than his own, and only then if he can eat me. He's in no position to eat me now.
WILL GRAHAM: If you play, you pay.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You've paid dearly. That knowledge will lie against your skin forever. (then) It excites him to see you marked in this particular way.
WILL GRAHAM: Why?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Why do you think?
WILL GRAHAM: Bluebeard's wife. Secrets you're not to know, yet sworn to keep.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: If I'm to be Bluebeard's wife, I would've preferred to be the last.
WILL GRAHAM: Is Hannibal in love with me?
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment in the very sight of you? Yes… But do you ache for him?
Will's reasons for resentment couldn't be more direct: “I played and paid, you didn't. Of course, it's important to me that this be fair.”
Bedelia, with a tremor on her face, responds to his question in a way that serves as a proxy for Hannibal. Just as Bedelia once gave him that "I believe you," she now offers Will a new lifeline: she could have lied to him, manipulated the axioms that Will believes to be true (Hannibal doesn't feel and Will always be a puppet on strings), but she doesn't. She already suspects that she has lost in the game; neither her armor, manipulations, nor plans can protect her from the severity of that bond and Will's sensitivity, which makes it impossible for him not to be himself when it comes to Hannibal.
Her lies and her own game will come back to haunt her.
At this point, Will doesn't empathize with Bedelia; he doesn't want to. For him, it's a matter of justice: Bedelia must pay for her lies, for deceiving him and making him believe he wasn't alone in his pain. She must pay because she joined the game and didn't sacrifice anything. She must pay because, of the two of them, she cheated.
And so, we arrive at their final dialogue in 3x13:
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: "Who holds the Devil, let him hold him well. He will hardly be caught a second time."
WILL GRAHAM: I don't intend Hannibal to be caught a second time.
Bedelia studies Will. Sensing where he might be going. Hoping she is wrong. A flicker of alarm plays in her eyes.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Can't live with him. Can't live without him. Is that what this is?
WILL GRAHAM: I guess this is my Becoming.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: What you're "becoming" is pathological.
WILL GRAHAM: Extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy.
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You found religion. Nothing more dangerous than that.
WILL GRAHAM: I'd pack my bags if I were you, Bedelia. Meat's back on the menu.
Bedelia is enraged in a way we’ve never seen .
BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You righteous, reckless, twitchy little man. Might as well cut all our throats and be done with it.
WILL GRAHAM: Ready or not. Here he comes.
I know I've said it several times, but I love this relationship! Will and Bedelia are deeply damaged, and their survival strategies differ so much. More importantly, their connections to Hannibal are distinct.
This Will no longer feels compassion for Bedelia, not even the disappointment he felt in "Dolce" or the anger in "The Number of the Beast is 666". He is apathetic towards her; his desires for her to pay, for her not to get away with it, are stronger. He needs the sacrifice, the justice. It's a Will who is also unaware of the internal turmoil she has gone through.
Bedelia realizes the same: the lamb is furious and in her game of lies and subterfuge, she has lost. We see her desperate and angrier than ever before. The obsession and love that Will feels for Hannibal are unstoppable and the logical sense of danger is not an obstacle. Finally, she will have to pay.
In the end, I believe that Will's disgust towards Bedelia, evident in the second half of the third season, all those hints and direct comments that seek to undermine her, have less to do with mere jealousy of a deceived lover and more with what Bedelia represented to him: she was the image of a victim of Hannibal and a survivor of trauma who validated his truth… but that image was destroyed but her own hand. Will observed that Bedelia joined the game without risking anything, protected by armor and manipulations, and not only did she come out unscathed, but she profited from her experience. It is unforgivable to him.
He never respected Frederick Chilton, for example, he was always an idiot to Will, and it was obvious to him that at some point, Chilton would seek to gain money and fame from what happened to him. But Bedelia… he respected her, she was important for him to regain control of his autonomy.
Bedelia, on the other hand, understands Will quite well, more than many other characters, even Hannibal. She understands that Will's violence is not like Hannibal's, that in him there will always be a moral conflict between his desire for justice and empathy, his self-righteous nature. Bedelia probably could have guessed that on the cliff, Will would decide to stop Hannibal and himself by throwing them off the edge.
However, she underestimated Will and how that vulnerability that caused his wounds and traumas ultimately became an even stronger armor than her own. Now she is the wounded bird, but Will doesn't want to save her.