'Hannibal' 'Pilot' Recap

Police leave a house. Inside, there is blood all over, and two bodies.

Will Graham closes eyes, erasing the police in his mind. He approaches the woman on the floor, deleting her body and the blood stains. He mentally takes himself out of the house, going backward, and observes the house, the woman walking in the window. He goes forward, breaks down the door, and shoots the man coming down the stairs. He shoots the woman, who is trying to work the alarm while crying. He explains where he is shooting these individuals in expert shots.

“This is my design,” he says. He shuts off the alarm, and the man on the other end asks who he is speaking with.

In real time, Graham tells the police to call the alarm company. They learn there was a false alarm the previous week. Graham realizes the phone was tapped, and the killer recorded the conversation with the alarm company to shut it off again.

“And this is when it gets truly horrifying for Mrs. Marlow,” he says.

It is part of his lecture at the F.B.I. Academy. Jack Crawford approaches him as class ends. He says he wants to borrow Graham’s unique “imagination.” His empathy that allows him to see what other people miss.

He tells them 8 girls were abducted from the university. No bodies, no parts, nothing has been found. Graham says they were taken from somewhere other than they thought where they were taken. They are taken near a weekend to cover tracks.

The eighth victim is Elise Nicols, who was supposed to be housesitting for her parents and feeding their cat. Graham says they need to focus on her, 1-7 are dead. All the victims have similar features. Graham explains the killer has one intended victim, a “golden ticket.” He is trying to hide how special she is.

Crawford wants his help but Graham won’t take the case. Crawford needs his “very specific way of thinking about things.” He says Graham makes jumps you can’t explain. He asks for help finding evidence.

Minnesota. Graham observes while Crawford talks to Elise’s parents. They ask if she is still alive, and Crawford says they have no way of knowing.

“How’s the cat?” Graham asks. They admit they didn’t notice. He steps aside and tells Crawford they took her from the home. Crawford calls in and declares it a crime scene. Graham goes to see her room. The cat is clawing under the door. Mr. Nicols goes to open the door, but Graham stops him. He says they’ve been going in and out. But Graham makes him hold the cat so he won’t touch anything.

Elise is on the bed. Her father goes to move toward her but he makes him stop and pushes him out. Crawford tells him to look around and let him know when he wants them in. Graham stares at the body, going back in time in his head. Elise stirs. He chokes her, but he is interrupted by a woman who recognizes him.

She tells him she found antler velvet in two of the wounds. Graham is thrown by the interruption, but when Crawford comes in, he explains that antler velvet promotes healing and the killer may have put it there one purpose. He wanted to undo as much as he could—put her back where he found her.

“This is an apology.”

He is on a plane. He goes home to Virginia. He sees a dog running up the road, and tries to catch it. He brings it back home, feeding and washing it. He introduces “Winston” to a porch full of dogs.

Sleeping, he turns and sees Elise. He reaches to her, and she is levitating, covered in blood. He wakes and changes his clothes, soaked in sweat.

Graham washes his face at the police bathroom. Crawford comes in and tells him they need to talk. Graham is twitchy and upset. He says he doesn’t know this kind of psychopath. The killer was upset because he couldn’t honor her.

“Feeling bad defeats the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn’t it?”

He couldn’t show he loves her so put her back. He is not disrespecting his victims and doesn’t want them to suffer. To his thinking he is killing them with mercy. Graham says he will take next girl soon—he knows will be caught.

The woman who interrupted Graham before, Beverly Katz, is wiping the blood stains on Elise’s nighty when something falls off.

“I got you,” she says.

Crawford talks to a woman from the university who has been observing Graham, named Dr. Alana Bloom. He had asked her to study him previously, but she had refused. She tells him Graham’s strongest drive is fear, and she needs him to not get too close. Crawford says he needs him out there and her to make sure he is not out there alone.

They perform an autopsy. She has been impaled on antlers, Graham points out. Not gored—mounted. They note her liver was removed and sewed back in.

Graham realizes there was something wrong with it, and they tell him she had cancer. He says he is eating them.

Shot of Hannibal Lector eating.

A man is pleading—Hannibal hands him tissues and helps him through his anxiety. Crawford goes and speaks to Dr. Lecter. He sees his excellent drawings, as Lecter sharpens pencil with scalpel. Crawford explains he was referred to by psych department by Dr. Bloom, and asks for help with psych profile.

Lecter meets with Graham, and tries to psychoanalyze him. Graham gets upset and leaves. Lecter tells Crawford that Graham is “pure empathy,” and that it is an uncomfortable gift.

Birds in a field are picking at a corpse impaled on a stag head. They’re calling the killer The Minnesota Shrike.

Graham says it is a copy-cat killer. They reveal that her lungs were cut out—probably while she was alive.

In his kitchen, Lecter prepares and eats lungs.

Graham said that this is not the killer who loves women, and wants to consume them. This killer thought this woman was a pig. Suddenly he is sure who they are looking for—a man with an antler room, with a daughter matching the victims. An only child, who is leaving home. He can’t stand the thought of losing her—the golden ticket.

This killer will probably never kill this way again. He tells Crawford to have Lecter profile him.

He takes a shower. There is a knock at the door, and it is Dr. Lecter. He comes in, with Tupperware of breakfast. He explains he is careful about what he put into his body. They eat, and Lecter apologizes. Graham suggests they just keep it professional.

He tells him he doesn’t think the Shrike killed the girl on the field.

“It’s like he had to show me a negative so I could see the positive.”

He takes him to a construction site. They found a small piece of metal shred from pipe threader. In the office, they go through papers. Graham settles on a man named Garrett Jacob Hobbes, and asks the receptionist if he has a daughter. Lecter asks what he found so peculiar about the file—Graham said there is a phone number but no address, and he misses work for days at a time.

The three begin to load boxes of files into a car, but Lecter drops some. The receptionist and Graham go to clean it up. Lecter goes inside and picks up the phone with a tissue.

The daughter answers at Hobbes’ home and gives her father the phone. Lecter tells him it is a curtsey call.

“They know.”

Graham is covered in blood.

It goes back. He is fine, in his car. He and Lecter are pulling up to Hobbes’ home. Hobbes throws his wife on the porch. Her throat is slit. She dies on the porch, and drawing his gun Graham runs inside. Hobbes has his daughter with a knife at her throat, he starts to cut it and Graham shoots him. He tries to stab his daughter so Graham keeps shooting.

He bends and tries to help the girl, who has had half of her throat slit.

“You see,” Hobbes says before he dies.

Lecter comes and puts pressure on the girls’ wound, more effective.

She is wheeled out into an ambulance.

Crawford goes to his class-but Bloom is teaching.

“You said he wouldn’t get too close,” she reminds him accusingly off to the side.

Graham is at the hospital. He goes to see the girl. Lecter is there, asleep, holding her hand. Graham sits.