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"... And the Beast From the Sea" is the eleventh episode of Season 3. It aired on August 15, 2015.

Plot[]

Will Graham and Jack Crawford are certain that Francis Dolarhyde will strike again with the approaching full moon, but without a solid lead, they remain unable to predict the next family on the Red Dragon's hit list. Certain that Hannibal Lecter can lead the FBI to Dolarhyde, Alana Bloom offers Hannibal a chance at redemption. Meanwhile, Dolarhyde struggles with his feelings about the one good thing that remains in his life-his coworker Reba Mclane.

Synopsis[]

Will, Jack and Alana debrief after losing Dolarhyde at the Brooklyn museum. The docent was left alive with ony a few stitches and the fingerprint Francis left on his entry badge matches the one on Mrs. Leeds's eye. Will thinks the "Dragon" is trying to slow down when it comes to killing. When Jack is suspicious as to how Will ended up at the museum, Will reveals that Hannibal led him there; it's likely that the Dragon was once a patient of his.

Dolarhyde continues to correspond back and forth with Hannibal and it is seen in the setting of a session at Lecter's office. Francis struggles with his growing love for Reba and how it conflicts with what The Great Red Dragon wants from him, which is to kill her. Lecter tells him that he can still love Reba and leave the Dragon to kill someone else. This seems to calm Dolarhyde who then admits that Will interests him. Hannibal mentions that Will has a family, "Save yourself. Kill them all."

The full moon is coming soon and Dolarhyde poses before it, fully naked and imagining himself Becoming. Reba comes by for date night and Francis is setting up a projector with film, saying that he has to check on some work while she's there with him. He wants her to stay and keeps the Debussy playing in the background. As Reba cuddles up to Francis, he rolls the footage. His "nocturnal animals" on film turn out to be Molly and Walter, Will's family.

Walter and Molly save Will's dogs from dying of what turns out to be poisoning. The vet posits that it may be from dog food made in China, notorious for poisoning dogs overseas with their formula. The vet keeps Will's dogs at the clinic overnight for observation. Molly asks Walter not to let Will know about it. As they leave the clinic, there is a notice on the entranceway that the FBI is alerting the public about pet mutilations in the area. Back at the prison asylum, Will meets with Hannibal to grill him about the Dragon and how they communicate. Hannibal toys with Will, implying that the latter thinks of his own family when he investigates the victims. Hannibal thinks that the killer is finding his victims through social media and blames Will's lack of focus for letting them die.

It's the night of the full moon and Dolarhyde has carved his sign on the tree outside the Graham house and puts in his dentures and dons a ski mask. Molly hears a sound and wakes up Walter. She opens a window and urges him to wait in the car; if anyone comes outside other than her, he is to run down the road for help. Molly succeeds in finding a way out as Dolarhyde finds a way in. Unfortunately, she is shot by him as she and Walter get away in the car. In the hospital, as Molly is in surgery, Will arrives to a confused Walter. Even though Will wants to catch the man who shot his mother and put him in a mental hospital, Walter would rather they kill him. Will tells Jack that he, Molly and Walter have to go into hiding until the Dragon is captured.

Alana visits Lecter in his cell and informs him that she knows that the calls from his lawyer have all been false and that she knows that he's been talking to the Tooth Fairy. Jack appears and tells Hannibal that all his calls will now be bugged; Hannibal doesn't refuse the opportunity to lend an ear. Dolarhyde hallucinates that he's being assaulted and beaten by the Dragon when in fact he is inflicting blows upon himself. He surprises Reba in her workplace darkroom and breaks up with her. He doesn't see her as a burden as she posits; he's afraid he'll hurt her. She gracefully accepts the breakup and asks him to leave.

Dolarhyde contacts Hannibal via phone again. The latter assures him that he and the Dragon are one but Francis is not strong enough and that may mean that Reba will die. Jack and Alana are listening. Dolarhyde's fear is that Reba will come to the house post-breakup and want to talk, which would lead to her demise. Hannibal hangs up on Dolarhyde, "They're listening." The call is traced to Lecter's office. The Tooth Fairy used call-spoofing software to use the psychiatrist's old number, but using his lawyer's caller ID in order to call Hannibal in prison. As punishment, Alana removes all privileges from Hannibal's cell, books, art, toilet, etc.

Molly recovers from surgery and guesses that Hannibal is behind her wound. She's angry at Jack, who knew that both she and Walter were at risk but Will reminds her that he isn't exempt from fault. Will confronts Hannibal in his bare cell and the latter admits to giving the Tooth Fairy Will's home address; it's clear that Hannibal has coached the Tooth Fairy into thinking that he can Become, which makes him even more dangerous than before, when he was a "shy boy." Will realizes that from Hannibal's communication with the Tooth Fairy that the latter's murders were not about ending the lives of his victims but transforming them instead.

Extras[]

  • The entire teaser was intended as the final act of the prior episode (ending with the line, “Save yourself. Kill them all”), but it was moved when that episode ran long and this one ran short.
  • Bryan Fuller said on Twitter that Scott Thompson refused to speak on set during production of this episode, since his character Jimmy Price has no lines in the script.

Book to Show[]

  • This episode continues the show’s adaptation of the novel Red Dragon, with scenes taken from Chapters 15, 17, 24, 35, 37, 43 and 53.
  • Jack and Will’s exchange about Dolarhyde eating the painting adapts Chapter 43 of the novel. In the novel, Jack is informed about Dolarhyde’s museum visit while he and Will are on a plane to Missouri, after Will has determined the killer is likely a Gateway employee. On the show, since Will saw Dolarhyde eat the painting, a lot of Will and Jack’s dialogue is flipped from the book, with Will delivering Jack’s lines and vice versa. Jack delivers his own book lines when he discusses the fingerprints and when he says Dolarhyde would have been better off killing the witnesses. Alana saying that maybe the killer is trying to stop comes from this Chapter as well: Jack says this is what Dr. Bloom told Behavioral Science when informed of the incident.
  • The exchange between Jack and Alana about pushing the Tooth Fairy to be “self-destructive” comes from Chapter 17 of the novel, when Jack is talking to Bloom while plotting how to goad the Tooth Fairy.
  • Will saying Dolarhyde couldn’t be certain that his death would affect whatever is inside him is paraphrased from Dolarhyde’s own thoughts when contemplating suicide in the novel.
  • Jack saying Will must know something about the killer comes from early in the novel, after Will has accurately predicted there will be a fingerprint on the family members’ eyes.
  • Will’s line calling Crawford “fisher of men” comes from narration in the book when Jack gets the call from Chilton about the note found in Hannibal’s cell. In the book, Jack is said to be watching his own cork move against the current, not Will’s.
  • Will’s line that Hannibal knows who the Dragon is and probably treated him comes from The Silence of the Lambs, when Chilton tells Hannibal what the FBI thinks about Hannibal’s relationship to Buffalo Bill. (In that book, their assessment turns out to be correct.)
  • In the book Red Dragon, Dolarhyde and Hannibal’s sole communication is the letter Dolarhyde sends, and Hannibal’s coded response in the National Tattler. The show expands on this, with multiple phone conversations.
  • In the book, Dolarhyde seems to be much more in control after he returns from eating the painting, believing he has earned the “power to choose” and that he can now be with Reba and remain in control of the Dragon (although he does not have much time to test this, as he almost immediately sees the FBI at Gateway). In the show’s reordered version of events, he remains much more conflicted even immediately after having eaten the painting.
  • Dolarhyde and Hannibal’s dialogue about Dolarhyde being stunned the first time he saw the Dragon, as if Blake had peeked in his ear, comes from narration in the book.
  • The dialogue about Francis’s twoness with the Dragon is adapted mostly from narration in the sequence when Francis searches for Reba the morning after they have sex, and the Dragon calls Francis’s name. The line about how their wills were once one, but not since Reba, comes from narration in a later sequence, when Dolarhyde furiously lifts weights, trying to silence the Dragon.
  • Hannibal’s line that Dolarhyde never could have had Reba if not for the Dragon is paraphrased from a thought Dolarhyde has in the book while sitting in a motel parking lot after having a panic attack.
  • Dolarhyde’s line about “a living woman” (“How bizarre”) comes from his thoughts in the novel after Reba fellates him.
  • Hannibal’s line, “The Dragon is in your belly now...” comes from Dolarhyde’s thoughts when returning from NY in the book, wherein he plans to “toss the Shermans to the Dragon” (Hannibal in the episode inverts this line, proposing that Dolarhyde “toss the Dragon to someone else”).
  • Dolarhyde’s comment about Will (“Will Graham interests me...”) is paraphrased from a portion of the note he sends Hannibal in the book (in the book, he calls Will a “flatfoot” rather than an investigator).
  • Hannibal’s line, “Save yourself. Kill them all,” comes from his coded response to Dolarhyde in the book, in the Tattler’s ads section.
  • The scene of Dolarhyde watching film of Molly and Walter is adapted from Chapter 35; in the book he watches home movies of his next potential victims, the Shermans. This takes place in the book during the same sequence adapted in the prior episode, where he brings Reba to his house for the first time. The show splits the events into two different nights. Once again, Dolarhyde puts on Debussy as in the book, and Reba makes a martini (in the book, Dolarhyde is a teetotaler and does not partake). The dialogue is taken directly from the book, except that the dialogue beginning with Reba asking, “Are these your nocturnal animals?” is invented for the show. The idea of Dolarhyde filming his victims prior to the night of the murder is an invention of the show.
  • Will’s line about the Brooklyn Museum’s Tuesday scheduling, also spoken by Paula Harper in the prior episode, comes from narration in the book.
  • Hannibal’s line about personal ads and notes of admiration written on toilet paper is a cheeky allusion to the way Dolarhyde and Lecter’s communication plays out in the book.
  • In the book, after document specialist Lloyd Bowman (a character left off the show) cracks the code on Lecter’s “Save yourself. Kill then all” message with Will’s home address, Jack moves Molly and Willy to a house Jack’s brother has on the Chesapeake before Dolarhyde can find them.
  • The sequence of Dolarhyde invading the Graham home is a very loose adaptation of events that occur much later in the book, in Chapter 53, as the novel’s climax. After Dolarhyde has faked his death and Will has returned home, Dolarhyde attacks Will during a family fishing excursion. Molly is much more of an action hero during this sequence in the book, saving Will by attacking Dolarhyde with a fishing rod, then luring Dolarhyde back to the house where she hides Willy and shoots Dolarhyde in the face repeatedly, killing him. 
  • The beginning of the home invasion sequence is reminiscent of scenes in both film adaptations of the novel, 1986’s Manhunter and 2002’s Red Dragon. Each film contains a suspense scene (not in the book) wherein Molly’s son wakes her up in the middle of the night because there is someone outside. In both films, it turns out to be not the killer, but law enforcement arriving to usher them to safety. The show reverses the misdirection of the prior movie scenes by having it actually be Dolarhyde outside.
  • In the book, the countdown to the next full moon is a driving force of the storyline, but Dolarhyde is ultimately brought down before that deadline arrives. The show, in contrast, has the full moon come and go without Dolarhyde being able to murder a family.
  • The dialogue between Will and Walter in the hospital is faithfully adapted from Chapter 15 of the book. In the book, Willy brings Will out back to have this discussion once they settle into Jack’s brother’s house. The show leaves out dialogue of Will telling the Garret Jacob Hobbs backstory, and calling killing “one of the ugliest things in the world” (dialogue he already spoke with Abigail on the show, in “Potage”). In the book, the scene has a sweeter ending, with Willy offering to bring Will a Coke. Walter insisting at the end that Will should kill Dolarhyde is an addition of the show.
  • The recurring baseball motif alludes to the fact that, in the book, Willy’s father was a ball player who died of cancer. When Willy and Molly watch baseball in the book, Will somewhat bitterly takes it as a reminder of Willy’s father.
  • Will and Jack’s dialogue about Will justifying himself to an eleven-year-old, and resentment raising a blister in him, comes from narration in the book.
  • Will and Jack’s dialogue about Jack having feared he might lose Will “for a minute” comes from an exchange about Will between Jack and Alan Bloom in Chapter 17 of the book. In the book, Jack speaks the line about realizing that Will can’t go home until the Tooth Fairy/Dragon is caught, which is given to Will in the show.
  • Jack saying Hannibal has “hubbed hell” is a line he speaks to Freddy Lounds in the book, after learning that Lounds has been calling the FBI pretending to be the killer.
  • The plan to trace Hannibal’s phone calls is an invention of the show (as is the entire idea of Hannibal and Dolarhyde speaking on the phone), but is reminiscent of the plot in the book to plant a fake note from Lecter in the Tattler to bait the killer. Jack’s line about making Hannibal’s contact work for them is a line he says in the book.
  • The scene of “the Dragon” beating Francis up Fight Club-style is an invention of the show, but is thematically similar to Chapter 37 of the book, where the Dragon berates Dolarhyde as he tries to exercise, and makes him place his penis between the Dragon’s teeth.
  • Dolarhyde’s pleas, “Don’t do that,” come from the book when he is in a motel room contemplating suicide, and he hears the Dragon cursing Reba and Dolarhyde.
  • The breakup scene between Dolarhyde and Reba is an invention of the show, but takes most of its dialogue from narration in the book: Reba saying she could never have the light but there are things she can have, that most men are terrified of entailing a burden, and that she enjoyed spending time with someone with the courage to get his hat or stay as he damn pleased and gives her credit for the same (these are thoughts she has in the book after Dolarhyde leaves her house on the first day they meet); her comment that he sounds strange (after he kidnaps her, she says he sounds calm and strange); and Dolarhyde saying he doesn’t know what to say to her (he says this while he has her tied up) and that he doesn’t know what is happening or why, and that she both threatens him and does not threaten him (this comes from his thoughts the morning after they first have sex).
  • Hannibal’s line, “You are the Dragon. You don’t have to be afraid,” comes from narration in the book when Reba opens Dolarhyde’s zipper and he is erect in the presence of a living woman for the first time.
  • Hannibal’s line beginning, “You know who speaks...” is adapted from narration in Chapter 37 when the Dragon taunts Dolarhyde as he works out, as is Dolarhyde’s line that Reba will die if he is not as strong as the Dragon, and his insistence that he didn’t hear Reba’s heart (in the book, he pictures his future victim Mrs. Sherman’s dying heartbeat “quiver like a bird” as he works out, insisting to the Dragon that in contrast, he cannot hear Reba’s heartbeat).
  • Hannibal’s line about Dolarhyde being almost blind to his own true feelings comes from narration from the morning after Dolarhyde and Reba first have sex, as does Dolarhyde’s fear about what will happen in the house if Reba comes back (“He knew how easily she would tear”).
  • Dolarhyde’s line about thinking what the Dragon would do to him if he does not serve Reba up comes from narration when he checks into a motel room after having a panic attack on the way to work. The “sweet man” line is also loosely adapted from this passage: “‘My God, man. That’s so sweeeet.’ That’s what she said. She said ‘man.’”
  • Jack’s line about Hannibal having his fun is paraphrased from a line he says in The Silence of the Lambs after Hannibal’s escape: “Dr. Lecter likes his fun.”
  • Alana strips Hannibal of his books, as Chilton does in Chapter 24 of Red Dragon after learning that Hannibal has been communicating with the Tooth Fairy. In the book, Chilton takes Hannibal’s toilet seat as a petty power play after Hannibal taunts him about a rejection letter from a Journal Chilton received; Alana is more spiteful, taking Hannibal’s whole toilet. Material in the book left out of the show: Hannibal is said to “put on the restraints as though they were dinner clothes,” and comments on the straightjacket, “I hope that’s a thirty-nine—the thirty-sevens are snug around the chest.”
  • Hannibal being bound to a handcart wearing a straitjacket and hockey mask comes from The Silence of the Lambs. In Red Dragon, he is merely placed in a straitjacket and leg restraints when Chilton enters his cell.
  • Walter’s nickname Wally is very close to the character’s name Willy in the novel Red Dragon.
  • Molly asking Will if the killer is after him now, Will saying that Lecter suggested and urged it, and Molly’s response, “It’s a clammy, sick feeling,” come from Chapter 15, as they dine in a restaurant after Molly and Willy have just landed in D.C. Molly’s line, “Hell, I got mad there for a second,” is adapted from this Chapter as well: in the book, she says it in reference to a comment she made about Jack Crawford, as opposed to Hannibal.
  • Molly’s “slippery” line is paraphrased from a line in the book, spoken when Will and Molly are sitting on the back porch of the safehouse.  The book line was already given to Abel Gideon on the show, in “Antipasto.” Will’s response comes directly from the book. Molly’s line, “This could take a while,” also comes from this passage.
  • This is the last time Molly is seen in the show, aside from a brief fantasy sequence in the following episode. The show leaves out material from the novel, including Will training Molly at the gun range, and Molly and Will growing increasingly distant as the investigation progresses, with Molly deciding to take Willy to his late father's parents’ ranch in Oregon (she heartbreakingly calls the county to take away their dogs back at home, telling Will, "maybe somebody will take some of them"). In the show, it is never established whether or not Molly is discharged from the hospital before the end of the season, and if so, what she does. It is also not clear who is taking care of Walter at this point.
  • Will’s line, “I’m just about worn out with you crazy sons of bitches,” comes from the book after Will receives a letter from Hannibal.
  • Hannibal’s line about ugliness being found in the faces of the crowd comes from the novel Hannibal, in reference to the Atrocious Torture Instruments exhibition.
  • Hannibal and Will’s dialogue that before his Becoming Dolarhyde would not have dared any of this, but now thinks he can do “anything. Anything. Anything,” comes from Dolarhyde’s thoughts when bringing Reba to his home for the first time in Red Dragon.
  • Hannibal’s line that Dolarhyde likely thinks Will is a monster refers to a passage in the book when Dolarhyde sees the FBI dusting vans at Gateway for prints. He thinks, “No, Graham just knew he had a van. Graham knew because he knew. Graham knew. Graham knew. The son of a bitch was a monster.”
  • Hannibal quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust (“Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast”), alluding to the passage from Hannibal Rising (quoted in “Secondo”) in which a young Hannibal is said to be “rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust.”
  • The brief deleted scene of Grandmother Dolarhyde in the funeral home faithfully adapts a short parenthetical flashback from the book.
  • In the deleted scene of Hannibal’s cell being emptied, his drawing of the Duomo in Florence, mentioned in the novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, can be seen being confiscated.

Cut Scenes[]

  • The script includes a lengthy scene where Jack explains to Will the plan for “the twenty-fifth” (when the Dragon is expected to strike again due to the full moon), adapted largely from Chapter 17 of the book. They then discuss Hannibal, and Will insists (in dialogue borrowed from Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs) that Hannibal will never reveal the killer’s identity because all that is left for him in his incarceration is fun. The gag reel on the Season 3 DVD and Blu Ray features two bloopers from the filming of this scene, when Laurence Fishburne flubs Jack’s long line from the book about the “Gulfstream standing by at Andrews Air Force Base,” and goofs off after Will’s line about Hannibal having fun.
  • The DVD and Blu Ray feature a short deleted flashback scene of Francis refusing to leave Grandmother Dolarhyde’s teeth with her corpse in her casket. The scene appears to have been cut from the episode rather late in the editing process, as the actors who play Grandmother Dolarhyde and the Funeral Director still appear in the credits. This scene would have come right before the shot of Dolarhyde putting his teeth in to hunt the Grahams.
  • The DVD and Blu Ray feature a deleted scene of Hannibal’s cell being emptied before Alana’s entrance.
  • The DVD/Blu Ray feature Getting the Old Scent Again features footage of the writers' room where a whiteboard containing an outline for an early version of Episode 309 can be seen (best seen at 1:30:05). This early plan for the show seemingly sticks to the novel's sequencing more closely, holding off Reba's debut and thus getting to events which ultimately ended up in this episode and the prior one more quickly. It shows that the initial plan was not to have Dolarhyde attack the Grahams at this stage, but rather to misdirect (as the prior film adaptations did) by having a "stalk/scare" sequence where it turns out the police are at the Graham home, while Dolarhyde is simultaneously stalking his next family. There would also have been a sequence of Will teaching Molly to shoot, as in the book.
  • In the documentary Getting the Old Scent Again, Bryan Fuller also says the plan at one point was to have Dolarhyde actually murder Molly and Walter. He says that once they cast Nina Arianda, he realized they had to give her more to do, and could not let Molly simply be a victim.

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Season 3 Episodes

AntipastoPrimaveraSecondoAperitivoContornoDolceDigestivoThe Great Red DragonAnd the Woman Clothed With The SunAnd the Woman Clothed In Sun... And the Beast From the SeaThe Number of the Beast is 666The Wrath of the Lamb

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