Season 3, Episode 6:
Dolce
Will Graham and Jack Crawford are reunited in Florence, while Bedelia Du Maurier has her own plans to escape the clutches of Hannibal and the police.
Tropes:
- Call-Back: Will's "I don't believe you" to Bedelia's claims that she honestly believes she's Lydia Fell echoes her "I believe you" that she said to him all the way back in the season 2 premier.
- Combat Pragmatist: Still injured from their last fight, Hannibal simply hides under a table and slices Jack's ankle when he walks by.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Averted. Hannibal plans to saw into Will's skull and serve his brain to himself and Jack, in an ironic reflection of how they used his mental skills in the past. He's somehow interrupted though.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": "Mrs. Fell" will not admit to being Bedelia Du Maurier, even though Jack and Will obviously know who she is.
- Dream Sequence: Mason imagines walking up to Hannibal's body served like crispy Peking duck.
- Flash Forward: We don't see how Hannibal was interrupted in slicing open Will's skull, or how they both end up at Mason's farm.
- Gambit Pileup: Will and Jack are trying to kill Hannibal. Hannibal wants to kill and eat Will. Bedelia wants to escape spotless and without police suspicion. Chiyo wants to protect Hannibal. Mason Verger wants to catch and eat Hannibal, using the Italian police as agents. At the end of the episode Mason is winning, with Will and Hannibal in his possession, while Jack's location is unknown and Bedelia seems to escape scot-free.
- Karma Houdini: Hannibal is being caught before he has the chance to eat Bedelia, and she creates an ingenious plan to escape criminal charges: she doses herself with the drug Hannibal used on Miriam Lass and pretends that she's been mentally manipulated to an even greater extent than Hannibal's previous victims.
- Mythology Gag: Hannibal trying to serve Will's brain to Jack echoes the film version of events with Paul Krendler and Clarice Starling.
- Shout-Out: Hannibal sketches a rendition of Sandro Botticelli's Primavera, one of his favorite art works, with Will and Bedelia replacing some of the characters.
- Spanner in the Works: Mason's bounty makes cooperation with local police impossible, as revealing that Hannibal is at large in Florence will drive officers to act outside the law to capitalise on the cash prize.
- Wham Episode: Hannibal and Will reunite, Hannibal captures Will and Jack, then proceeds to carve Will's head open with an electric saw to serve his brain. Then the show shoots forward to Will and Hannibal in Mason's clutches.
