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"And the Woman Clothed With The Sun" is the ninth episode of Season 3. It aired on August 1, 2015.

Plot[]

The FBI's search for elusive serial killer Francis Dolarhyde intensifies as Will Graham begins envisioning himself in Dolarhyde's tormented psyche. Wading deeper into dangerous territory, Will enlists the help of Hannibal Lecter to assist with the killer's profile. Meanwhile, Alana Bloom reminds Will that the last time that he and Hannibal worked together things didn't end well, but Will sees no other option. Elsewhere, a new woman comes into Dolarhyde's life.

Synopsis[]

Will Graham has come to seek Hannibal Lecter's insight on the "Tooth Fairy" in his cell. Neither is pleased to see the other but they are courteous in their remarks. Through scent, Hannibal correctly deduces that Will has a wife, Molly, and a stepson, Walter. Hannibal shows his displeasure in that deduction by reminding Will that he provided a surrogate child for him through Abigail Hobbs. Still, Hannibal agrees to help Will in his pursuit of the Tooth Fairy and Will gives him the FBI file on the suspect.

Flashback to Hannibal and a frightened Abigail in her home. She's afraid that he's going to kill her but he instead apologizes for not protecting her in this life. As Hannibal hooks her up to an apparatus that transfuses her blood to a glass jar, they wax rhapsodic about transformation and evolution. Abigail questions if Hannibal would've murdered her and he admits that he would've slit her throat just as her father did so. Hannibal compares her acceptance of him to her acceptance of her father. He wants a bit of her flesh and gets it via the transfusion. They then proceed to gleefully enact her faked death with an apparatus that projects her blood across the room as he playacts the slitting of her throat.

Will and Alana catch up after his meeting with Hannibal. Alana has a new baby with Margot, a Verger son and heir; Will is happily married to Molly and loves his stepson Walter. Alana expresses her worry that Hannibal will influence Will and he lets her know that Hannibal will not.

In Will's next meeting with Hannibal, the latter gives his assessment on the Tooth Fairy. The suspect is "shy" and is of interest to Hannibal; the latter suggests that he would like to meet him. They both go over the Jacobi family case, replete with the mirrors on the parents' eyes and Hannibal suggests that the killer is like Will, "he needs a family to escape what's inside him." Hannibal deduces that the killer chooses his victims by how they lived and turns that back on Will onto how he chose Molly and Walter - to avoid who he is. Hannibal asks about the yard. If the killer is influenced by the moon cycle, he would want to be naked in the light of the moon after a mass family killing before cleaning himself up.

Freddie Lounds is back to being Will's paparazzi as he visits Lecter. Alana lets Hannibal know that she knows he's up to no good with regards to Will Graham and threatens to take away his dignity - his art, his books, his toilet, etc., in the meantime, until she knows what he's up to.

Flashback to Lecter and Abigail. She is blindfolded and confronted with the scent of a bone-handled knife that her father crafted. This is a psychiatric session; she refuses to believe that her father's attempt on her life is love and Lecter assures her that it is love. Hannibal encourages her to trust her scent and she smells her father. He removes her blindfold and sitting across from her she sees her father, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, sitting in a chair. Hannibal encourages Abigail to revisit the positive memories of her father and their hunting, to allow her to love him in the way he loved her. She responds by slitting his corpse with the hunting knife in her hand. Abigail reacts in revulsion but Hannibal assures her that her complex feelings are normal.

Flashback to Dolarhyde as a child at his grandmother's table for a family feast. He's at the head opposite grandmother, but he's discontent, his feet don't touch the floor. Flashforward to adult Dolarhyde, dinner at his lone table, mentally going over his serial murders, rewatching in his mind the home videos of his victims. Simultaneously, Will is celebrating a family birthday at his home with Molly and Walter but he seems absent, more of an observer than a participant. Meanwhile, Dolarhyde transforms while rewatching home videos of his victims.

Back at Quantico, the forensic team realizes that the Tooth Fairy prefers to murder the family pets before he murders the families. Still, the pets are too far apart geographically to link them to one killer. Will goes back to the Jacobi's home and their yard, in particular, finding a stump to sit on, a broken branch, a clear view into the home and a carving on a tree in red behind the stump, indicating that this was the killer's stake out. As Will leaves, he encounters Freddie Lounds, who wants a scoop. He's not ready to give her one even though she hounds him with what she already knows. Meanwhile, Dolarhyde is an avid reader of Lounds' and still can't decide who he wants to contact - Hannibal or Will.

Dolarhyde visits Reba McClane, a blind photography developer, to request materials that will aid him in infrared photography. He says that it's for filming nocturnal animal behavior. Reba's kindness towards him and acceptance leads Dolarhyde to stalk her and offer her a ride home. She invites him into her home for pie and she reveals that she knows that he has a speech impediment but that she doesn't care since he doesn't care that she is blind. Still, he won't let her touch his face; he has a cleft palate and thinks he is ugly.

Will calls Molly and they banter about the dogs and how they miss one another. Will falls asleep and has a nightmare where he envisions himself as Dolarhyde; he feels he is falling apart. Jack visits Hannibal, who blames him for putting his colleague back in the fray. Jack doesn't bite Hannibal's bait; instead he goads him, "either you'll play, or you won't." As a rejoinder, Hannibal throws a quote from Bella back in Jack's face.

Flashback to Will warning Hannibal that "they know." This time we see that Abigail is there in Hannibal's kitchen to know that "they're coming." Abigail seems intent on "going together," meaning that she, Will and Hannibal are a trio never to be separated. Hannibal tells her to go upstairs to wait for further instructions, alluding to the memory of her hunting with her father, "now you're going to hunt with me."

Back to the present, Dolarhyde has reached Hannibal via phone by impersonating his lawyer. Dolarhyde expresses his complete trust in Hannibal, that he would never be betrayed by him and that Hannibal understands his becoming The Great Red Dragon.

Extras[]

  • The Jacobis’ late cat Kate is named after Bryan Fuller’s cat.

Book to Show[]

  • This episode continues the show’s adaptation of the novel Red Dragon, with material adapted from Chapters 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 29 and 31.
  • The episode takes its title from the William Blake painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, which Thomas Harris name-checks throughout the novel Red Dragon as Dolarhyde’s inspiration. However, Harris describes a different painting, the similarly-named The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, which is the painting seen in this episode. (...with the Sun did appear in the prior episode on the cover of Time magazine, and will later appear along with ...in Sun during Dolarhyde's slideshow in "The Number of the Beast Is 666.")
  • This episode introduces the following characters from the novel Red Dragon to the show: Reba McClane, Grandmother Dolarhyde (after she appeared in a photo in the prior episode), Edward Jacobi and his wife, and their son and daughter.
  • The opening scene is a loose adaptation of Will’s visit to Hannibal in Chapter 7 of Red Dragon, altering the dialogue to fit the show’s more complex version of Hannibal and Will’s history. Specific dialogue taken from the book includes: the aftershave references (in the book, Hannibal infers that a child would be attracted to the ship on the bottle, but since the show already cannibalized Hannibal’s book reference to Will using an aftershave with a ship on the bottle in “Coquilles,” the implication is that Will has now switched to a different brand); the book reference to a Christmas card (which Will burned) is changed to a reference to Hannibal’s letter from the prior episode; Hannibal’s reference to his “other callers”; Will’s line, “I want you to help me, Dr. Lecter”; Hannibal saying he has read about the murders in the papers but can’t clip them; Hannibal saying Will wants to know how the Tooth Fairy is choosing them, and Will saying he thought Hannibal would have some ideas; the “old scent”/“smell yourself” line (which in the book comes during their second conversation, after Hannibal has reviewed the file); and Hannibal saying “Let me have the file” as Will is about to leave. Material which is lost from the show: Will and Chilton’s conversation (which had been mostly cannibalized in “Entrée,” repurposed as a discussion about Abel Gideon; notably, this eliminates the reference to Hannibal attacking the nurse, and on the show it seems that Hannibal has been on his best behavior since his incarceration); the discussion of Officer Stewart who quit the force after seeing Hannibal’s basement; Will complimenting Hannibal’s Journal article; Hannibal prodding Will about how Will caught Hannibal; Will trying to bribe Hannibal with access to resources and appeals to his pride; and the line, “Do you dream much, Will?”
  • As in the book, Will calls Hannibal “Dr. Lecter,” explained as an attempt to keep distance between them.
  • The tray used to send objects into Hannibal’s cell, first referenced in the book Red Dragon, makes its show debut.
  • Hannibal’s reference to a pound of flesh calls to mind the title of Part V of the novel Hannibal, which in turn quotes Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice.
  • In the book Red Dragon, Will waits for Hannibal to look over the file in a “grim lounge,” as opposed to Alana Bloom’s office on the show.
  • Will’s reference to feeling like Hannibal was looking to the back of his skull, like a fly flitting around, comes from narration in Chapter 7 of Red Dragon, as does his “absurd feeling” that Hannibal walked out with him and having to look around, and Alana’s reference to there being only five doors between Hannibal and the outside world.
  • Alana’s axiom about supping with the devil is a modernization of a line from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, specifically, “The Squire’s Tale.” Part VI of the novel Hannibal, A Long Spoon, takes its title from this quote (with Harris misattributing the quote to Chaucer’s “The Merchant’s Tale”).
  • When Will returns to Hannibal’s cell, the initial dialogue is taken fairly faithfully from this portion of the book Red Dragon, albeit slightly reordered, up through the line about the mirrors (with Will being given Hannibal’s book line about the mirrors). Once Hannibal asks about the grounds, the dialogue is again taken almost directly from the book. Dialogue left out of the show includes Hannibal trying to get Will’s phone number, and his ending taunt that Will caught him because they are “just alike” (a phrase previously spoken between the two characters in different contexts in “Apéritif” and “Tome-wan”).
  • Hannibal’s line about the first small bond to the killer itching and stinging like a leech comes from narration in the book when Will imagines that Dolarhyde might have used candles to simulate expression in the faces of his dead observers.
  • Hannibal’s line that Will knows a fair amount about how these families died comes from narration in Red Dragon when Will returns to the Leeds house: “How they lived was on his mind today.” Hannibal being the one to suggest that Will needs to see them living to learn how Dolarhyde selected them is an addition taken from the 2002 film adaptation.
  • Freddie snapping shots of Will leaving BSHCI comes from the end of Chapter 7.
  • Hannibal’s line about moral dignity pants comes from The Silence of the Lambs, when he responds to Clarice Starling’s psychological probing by saying, “You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault.”
  • Alana’s line about courtesy is reminiscent of Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs complimenting Clarice’s clinical techniques in interviewing him: “you’d been courteous and receptive to courtesy.”
  • Alana’s line about what Hannibal is afraid of is spoken by Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs, when he is attempting to undermine Clarice’s offer and broker a deal of his own between Hannibal and Senator Martin.
  • Taking Hannibal’s books, drawings and toilet seat is Chilton’s favored method of punishing Hannibal in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. Unlike Alana, Chilton never threatened to take his entire toilet.
  • Hannibal confronting Abigail with her father’s corpse is inspired by a passage in the novel Hannibal when Hannibal is drugging and brainwashing Clarice. He shows her the disinterred bones of her father and speaks a line similar to what he says to Abigail on the show (“This is what he is, this is all of him now. This is what time has reduced him to”). Abigail also echoes Clarice’s line, “...he was as good to me as he knew how to be. It was the best time I ever had.” Hannibal’s line that what Abigail needs of her father is “here, in your head, and subject to your judgment, not his,” also comes from this portion of the book. The outcome in the book is less gruesome, with Clarice simply exiting the room having apparently decided she does not need anything from her father.
  • The novel Red Dragon devotes almost 10% of its page count to Dolarhyde’s backstory, particularly his childhood. The show, like both prior film adaptations, largely skips over this material (Bryan Fuller on the audio commentary for “The Great Red Dragon” attributes this to a fear on his part that child actors may not be able to properly embody younger versions of emotionally complex characters). This episode provides the show’s sole glimpse into Francis’s childhood, as we see Grandmother Dolarhyde presiding over dinner with the residents of her nursing home as described in Chapter 27 of the book. (In footage of the writers' room in the DVD/Blu Ray special feature Getting the Old Scent Again, Steve Lightfoot and the writers can be seen discussing Dolarhyde's childhood in great detail, indicating that apparently at one point there was a plan to spread the flashback material from the book over several episodes.)
  • The show eliminates the book character of Eileen, Dolarhyde’s coworker. In Chapter 9 of the novel, Dolarhyde is introduced to the reader as Eileen apologizes to him for her boyfriend Bob, who jokingly impersonated Dolarhyde at a party.
  • The sequence of Dolarhyde watching film from his murder scenes is a much-abstracted version of material from Chapter 9 of the book, where he masturbates while viewing his films of the murders of the Jacobis and Leedses and the subsequent rapes of the women. In the book, he sits in a La-Z-Boy his grandfather had bought (to his Grandmother’s annoyance) and turns on a light machine, details left out of the episode.
  • The show skips Will’s visit to the realtor Mr. Geehan to get the key before going to the Jacobi house.
  • Will watches a home movie of the Jacobi daughter’s birthday on an iPad while in their house. In the book, he insists on watching the Leedses' movies on their home projector, rather than at the police precinct. At a much later point in the book, he watches film of Jacobi son Donald’s birthday party, while working out of an empty courtroom.
  • As with the Leedses, the Jacobis lose a child in the transition from book to show. In the novel, they have two sons and a daughter; one son is dropped from the show.
  • The Jacobis’ cat is found exactly as described in the book (strangled, buried in a shoebox with its name in a childish scrawl on the lid, flower in its paws, wrapped in a towel). Zeller’s description of the Leeds dog’s injuries also comes directly from Det. Springfield’s dialogue in the book. (In the book, Springfield telling Will about the dog’s injuries inspires Will to instruct local authorities to check the Jacobis’ yard to see if the cat had been buried; in the show, it seems the cat was simply found through happenstance.)
  • In the book, it is implied that Dolarhyde intentionally selects five-person families with a pet, and that he feels compulsively driven to kill the pet first. The show gives him a more practical, less sadistic reason for attacking the animals, with Jack calling them an “early warning system.”
  • Jack’s line, “Case the place, kill the pet, then the family,” is spoken by Det. Springfield in the book.
  • Will’s line about a special bulletin to veterinarians and animal shelters comes from narration in the book.
  • Will’s second visit to the Jacobi house is a shortened version of Chapter 10, eliminating his detective work scouting for the Tooth Fairy’s entry point from a housing development at the rear of the woods backing the Jacobis’ property. His discovery of Dolarhyde’s vantage point comes from the book, but in the book Dolarhyde (and Will) climb up the tree, making the cut branch and “red dragon” symbol less obvious to find. In the book, Will finds a soda can pull-tab and an apple core on the ground, leading him to find the soda can itself wedged high in the tree. In the episode, he can be seen carrying the apple core in his evidence bag, although he is not seen finding it.
  • The scene with Lounds occurs earlier in the book, as Will and Jack leave the police briefing in Atlanta in Chapter 3. The dialogue on the show is altered and expanded given the characters’ longer history in this version of the story. Dialogue taken from the book includes: Freddie asking when they called Will in, Will saying he won’t talk to Lounds, and Lounds asking how the Tooth Fairy compares to Hannibal. The description of the photo Lounds took of Will in the hospital also comes from narration in this part of the novel (Freddie in the show adds the detail that the black box was big). Will is much more hostile to the male version of Freddy in the book, calling him a “lying shit” and the Tattler an “asswipe.”
  • Freddie’s recitation of her article comes directly from the text of the article in Chapter 11 of the book. In the book, the article explicitly asks the reader to question whether the “federal official” was referring to Hannibal or Will.
  • While the show has updated the book’s tabloid the National Tattler to the website TattleCrime, this episode reveals that TattleCrime also has a print edition. The issue Dolarhyde reads is as described in Chapter 11 of the book, including the headline, the photos of Will (leaving BSHCI) and Hannibal (at the time of his arrest; in the book he is against a state trooper car), and Freddie’s small byline photo, as well the cover photo being cropped to show the words “Criminally Insane” next to Will. 
  • In the book, Dolarhyde sees his coworker Eileen reading the Tattler in the cafeteria and asks for it when she is about to throw it out. He reads it alone in his office, whereas in the show he reads it out in the open in the cafeteria. The detail of Doalrhyde running his fingers over the photos and the ink leaving a smudge on his fingertip, which he licks and wipes with Kleenex, comes from the book.
  • While the show has updated many aspects of the books to its modernized setting, it keeps Dolarhyde’s employer as Gateway Film Laboratory. In the book, Gateway's primary business is developing home movies, and Dolarhyde selects his victims by reviewing films submitted by families for processing. Even at the time of the book’s 1981 publication, home movie film processing was in decline, and narration in the book notes that Gateway recently had to expand to other areas, including transferring film to videotape. The 1986 film adaptation, Manhunter, expands on this reference and has Will discover that the Jacobis’ and Leedses’ movies were transferred from film to videotape by Gateway, whereas the 2002 adaptation (which is set in the 1980s) removes celluloid from the narrative entirely, and has Dolarhyde working for a company called Chromalux which compiles edited home movie videos from shorter tapes. The show is faithful to the book in portraying Gateway as a film development lab, but it removes the now-anachronistic "home movie" element. In the show, it is never established what Gateway's primary customer base is, and it is also left ambiguous how Dolarhyde selects his victims (in "...and the Beast from the Sea," Hannibal posits that he finds them through social media, but this is never confirmed).
  • The show introduces Reba much earlier than the book, where Dolarhyde does not meet her until after he has killed Freddy Lounds.
  • In the book, Reba works for a small company called Baeder Chemical next door to Gateway, which Gateway acquired for work on a government contract developing new emulsions for infrared photography.
  • Reba’s introduction scene faithfully adapts Chapter 29 of the book. Almost all the dialogue is taken directly from the book, as are small details such as the warning sign, Reba using D-76 developer, the “small star-shaped scar” on the bridge of Reba’s nose, and Dolarhyde putting his knuckle under his nose then removing it when he sees Reba is blind. In the book, he visits Baeder under the pretense of scouting space for a dryer they had requested. A few lines are added for the show: the reference to digital (as an acknowledgement of the outdated nature of Gateway’s business) and the dialogue beginning with Reba asking if Dolarhyde plans to process the film himself.
  • The show eliminates Reba’s condescending coworker Dandridge and a section where Dolarhyde views a screening of some infrared samples at Reba's invitation.
  • The sequence of Dolarhyde driving Reba home and coming inside her house faithfully adapts material from Chapter 31 of the book. All the dialogue comes from the book dialogue, except that Reba’s line about feeling no sympathy from Dolarhyde comes from narration in the book, as does the line about sympathy feeling like spit on her cheek (in the book, Dolarhyde projects that Reba feels this way when Dandridge is trying to find Reba a ride home). The book specifies that Dolarhyde has been inside less than a dozen private homes in his life, and only four in the past ten years (his own, the Jacobis’ and Leedses’, and briefly his coworker Eileen’s), explaining his pause at the door in the episode. Reba’s pie-cutting ritual is as described in the book. In the book, Dolarhyde thinks about biting Reba’s fingers like breadsticks when she reaches for him, and he leaves abruptly after the exchange about touching his face. The show leaves out dialogue about: the fact that Dolarhyde does not drink; his design of Baeder’s darkrooms (which Reba says the techs love); Reba reminiscing about a visit to the zoo when she hugged a llama; and Reba revealing that she was hired pursuant to an affirmative action hiring push at Baeder. 
  • Will’s call to Molly is an abridged version of their call in Chapter 5 of the book. Will speaks the “hotshot” greeting in the book. The show adds the joke about the new dog being named Randy (in the book they both say they are horny, and later discuss an unnamed well-endowed new dog). Will having adopted the Leedses’ dog is an invention of the show. Material left out of the show: In the book, Molly talks about a woman trying to return a whiskey-stained dress at the shop where she works. After the “criminal mind” exchange, Molly asks about colors to paint the kitchen, and Will gets snippy.
  • Will waking up sweaty and peeling off his shirt after his dream of Molly’s corpse calls to mind Will seeing Elise Nichols dead next to him in “Apéritif.” Both instances call back to Chapter 2 of the novel Red Dragon, when Will wakes up covered in sweat and sees Mrs. Leeds’s bloody mirrored-eyes corpse next to him. 
  • Jack is never seen visiting Hannibal in the novels. 
  • Hannibal’s references to Jack dressing younger and taking up a sport with a new partner come from Chilton’s prediction for Jack and Clarice after Bella’s death in The Silence of the Lambs (he says this while mocking Hannibal).
  • Jack saying his office forwarded Hannibal’s note to Will echoes the FBI Crime Lab forwarding Will Hannibal’s Christmas card in Red Dragon.
  • The implication that Jack may have been the “federal official” who told Freddie “It takes one to catch one” is an invention of the show.
  • Hannibal telling Jack not to think he can persuade him with appeals to his intellectual vanity, and Jack’s reply, are adapted from Hannibal and Will’s dialogue in Chapter 7.
  • Hannibal’s line about how Jack’s face is all scars, and that there might be room for a few more, come from his musings in The Silence of the Lambs, as Chilton taunts Hannibal over the fact that Jack and Clarice manipulated him.
  • Hannibal’s line to Abigail, “I’m on my honor to look after you,” is spoken by Chilton to Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs.
  • The phone being brought to Hannibal so he can speak to his attorney is a detail from the book Red Dragon.
  • Dolarhyde’s dialogue on the phone comes from the letter he writes Hannibal in the novel, as seen in Chapter 13.

Cut Scenes[]

  • The script has a few instances of Reba’s POV, calling for a “kaleidoscope” effect. Fuller says that they ultimately abandoned this idea when they could not conceive a way to accurately convey the experience of blindness.
  • An early outline for this episode, seen on a whiteboard in the DVD/Blu Ray feature Getting the Scent Again, features a scene where Will is watching Alana, Margot and their child in the park from a distance after he visits the Jacobi house (impliedly because the case is taking a toll on him). Alana later confronts him about it and says she has not told Margot.

Image gallery[]

See other[]

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