'Hannibal': Season 1, Episode 3, 'Potage' Recap

Abigail and her father are hunting. He helps guide her with the gun. She shoots once, twice, and the deer falls. Hobbs looks satisfied, but she seems a little breathless and concerned as he goes to it.

“She was so pretty,” she says as they unload her from the hood. She expounds the things she has learned about deer—how they are as smart as a four-year-old.

Her father agrees they are like people. He reassures his daughter they will honor her, and none of her will go to waste. He gives her the knife to open her, and she hesitates.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feel about eating her after all this.”

Her father tells her eating her is honoring her. Otherwise it is just murder. Reluctantly, feeling the deer’s pelt, she begins to gut it. Her bloody hands are in her own hair, and her head is lifted backward, revealing her dead face, blood dripping.

Abigail awakes from her coma, frightened by all the hospital equipment.

Will Graham lets out his motley crew of dogs, in his pajamas. Alana is in the yard. She tells him Abigail woke up. She suggests they get a cup of coffee, though he wants to get his coat on immediately.

She makes him drink the coffee as Jack continues to call. She wants to act as a “buffer,” she says. He tells her Abigail has no one, and she tells him he can’t be her everyone. Dogs keep a promise a person can’t. She needs to talk about it to someone who wasn’t there. She wants to reach out to her in her own way.

Alana goes to see her. Abigail says the nurses won’t tell her if her parents are dead… but she knows they are. Alana tells her that her mother was cremated, as per her wishes. Her father is more complicated.

Abigail admits she remembers. She wants to sell the house and go to college. Alana shows her the clothes and music she brought her.

Alana and Dr. Lecter talk to Jack, who wants to speak with Abigail. Alana wants him to wait, but he is eager to talk to her, as a suspect. Alana admits she thinks Abigail is hiding something. She is questioning her state of mind. Jack insists on Will talking to her.

Will goes through a lecture on the Minnesota Shrike—Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He settles on the final girl who was murdered, by the copycat killer. He says that it was intended to know that he was better than the Shrike. The copycat is a reader of Tattlecrime.

Lecter and Jack enter in the side, and observe the lecture. Will mentions the untraceable call. He believes that man was the copycat—Lecter smiles.

Freddie goes to talk to Abigail to get her story. Abigail insists she tell her what she know before she fills in the blanks. He was very sick, she tells her.

“Does that mean I’m sick, too?”

Freddie tells her whatever she says now will define the rest of her life. She explains that Will caught him because he can think like insane men. Will comes in and she repeats that point before she leaves.

Will asks if she remembers them, and Abigail says yes; he killed her dad. Lecter invites her for a walk.

Will apologizes for not being able to save her mother. Abigail says she saw him kill her. She says her father was loving right up to the point he wasn’t. She asks if she will be messed up, and she worries about nightmares. Will says he does too.

Abigail says she wants to go home.

Freddie Lounds is waiting outside to formally introduce herself. She apologizes for her behavior. She says she thinks they both genuinely care about Abigail. She says she can undo what she said—or make it a lot worse. He tells her it is not very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living.

Jack reads the words off Tattlecrime, mad at Will and at Lecter for letting him say that. He says if Abigail wants to go home, let her. Alana does not agree that she is ready. Lecter says she is right, but it may go in a more positive way.

Freddie speaks with a man about Hobbs. He is the brother of the final victim, and angry at the family. She tells him Abigail came out of her coma.

At Abigail’s home, someone has spray painted “Cannibals” on the garage and front door. She sees the blood stains, and asks if it is where her mom died.

She goes inside, looking at all the boxes marked “evidence.” She notes that the crime scene cleaners did a good job. She asks if Will goes places and thinks about killing a lot. She asks if he pretended to be her dad, and what it felt like. He tells her the crimes on her and her mother were desperate. They tell her about the phone call and ask if she remembers the voice, but she doesn’t.

They hang in the living room, and they mention that her dad left almost no evidence. She gets excited, asking if that is why they brought her—to find evidence. She asks if they are going to reenact the crime… and tells Lecter he can be the man on the phone.

Alana calms her down. Abigail tells them that they’ll never find the other girls. Her dad honored every part of his kills. Someone appears in the door—a friend. The girls go outside and talk. The friend admits she wasn’t supposed to talk to her. She says everyone thinks she did it. The friend reassures her she doesn’t think she did it.

“I do,” says the brother of the last victim, showing up. He accuses her of being the bait. The friend throws rocks at him, and he spits at them before leaving as Will comes outside.

The friend Marissa’s mother comes and demands her daughter come home. Will asks if she has ever seen the man before and she says no, as Lecter covers up the bloody stone from his head.

Will holds Abigail, promising, as her father did, to make it all go away. He slashes her throat, and a stag falls dead.

His alarm clock wakes him.

They go to the cabin. Abigail says he cleaned everything. She thought he was afraid of being caught but she guesses now he was just afraid of being caught. She says that no parts of the deer went to waste, otherwise it was murder. She turns in horror.

“He was feeding them to us, wasn’t h?”

Lecter tells her it was likely.

She says that before he cut her, he told her that he killed those other girls so he wouldn’t have to kill her. A drop of blood hits her head, and they look up.

Will goes upstairs. He calls for help on his cell phone.

A girl, in her underwear, is impaled on deer antlers on the wall. Will lifts her head as Abigail gets away and runs up, recognizing her friend Marissa.

The police come. Will thinks that the boy was the brother of Cassie Boyle. He notes that he scraped his knuckles on her teeth. Jack says Will told him that the man would not kill again this way… Lecter suggests it was the brother, Nicholas Boyle.

Jack pressures Will about Abigail’s involvement. He thinks she is manipulating Abigail. Will says he know that it is the same killer as Cassie Boyle. Lecter suggests that someone might be after Abigail. He asks Lecter to escort her out of the state.

Outside, Marissa’s mother screams at Abigail that she killed her daughter by coming back. They carry her out of the way. Freddie appears and says she wants to help, but she too is escorted out. Lecter asks if she has seen Nicolas Boyle. She asks why it is important.

Inside, holding a pillow, Abigail cries. She hears her father’s voice telling her that none of her will go to waste, and suddenl she rips open the pillow. It is stuffed with human hair.

Nicolas Boyle appears. He tells her he won’t hurt her, but she has to listen. He didn’t kill that girl. Abigail tries to run, and he stops her, throwing her against the wall. She stabs him in the stomach, and he falls. She stands, horrified.

Alana comes looking for her, and Lecter sees Abigail with her hand covered in blood. He knocks Alana out and tells Abigail to show him what happened.

Nicolas Boyle is dead. Abigail says he was going to kill her.

“Was he?”

He tells her it was not self defense. She butchered him. They will see her as an accessory to the crimes of her father.

“I wasn’t.”

He says he can help her, at great risk to himself. They can tell people she was defending herself when she gutted Boyle… or they can hide the body.

Alana, in the ambulance, says she can remember nothing. Jack tells her that Boyle attacked her, Lecter and Abigail. Abigail scratched him on the way out of the house, and that tissue matched the tissue on Marissa’s teeth.

“He got away?”

Jack reassures her they will catch him. Will stands. He wants to go home.

Lecter is in his office when the door creaks. He knows it is Abigail—she escaped the hospital and climbed the wall. He says she has nowhere else to go. She tells him she doesn’t want to go to sleep.

“I didn’t honor any part of him so it’s just murder, isn’t it?”

He tells her if they tell the truth most will say she was taking after her father. She realizes Lecter is glad.

“You’re the one who called the house.”

She asks what he said and he lies. She says she thinks he called the house as a serial killer, just like her dad. He says he is not like her dad. He made a mistake. He promises to keep her secret, and she says she will keep his.