Hannibal is a fantastic TV show. I shamefully skipped it upon its original broadcast but the sheer amount of positive things I’d read and seen about it made me give it a whirl earlier this year. I was instantly hooked, loving the cat-and-mouse game played between Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter and Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham. Beyond that, the show is gorgeous from start to finish and contains some truly twisted moments that rank among some of the craziest stuff I’ve seen in a TV series. Hell, even as a seasoned horror fan there were scenes that had me watching through my fingers.
The show made its way to Netflix earlier this month and it quickly picked up a whole new fanbase, shooting into the top ten list, where it’s remained ever since. On top of that, it’s facing some stiff competition from classics like Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Office, with new Netflix Originals 13 Reasons Why, Space Force and Floor is Lava also jockeying for a position in the charts.
But could the show’s newfound burst of popularity mean a fourth season is on the cards? Well, the cast and creative team have all indicated they’d love to return for more. Showrunner Bryan Fuller even has a pretty solid idea of what it’d be about. Back in 2015, he said:
“If we get the chance to tell The Silence of the Lambs, I think it would be very interesting to have a black or non-white Clarice because as much as you want to say, ‘Oh, race doesn’t matter!,’ race totally matters. Race totally changes your point of view. It’s a different experience. That would be something that would make that story worth telling again, in a way that we could do what we did with Red Dragon and Hannibal with that character. I hope we get the opportunity to do that. I would love to see Hannibal: The Silence of the Lambs and see Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal with Clarice Starling. As long as I’m alive, I’ll be trying to do that.”
More recently, he’s described his vision for the future of Hannibal as being inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Inception, which sounds absolutely incredible. But there’s something that may block this from happening.
You see, CBS’ Clarice will follow Clarice Starling and is billed as a sequel to the 1991 movie. It presents problems because the rights to Thomas Harris’ serial killer universe are split, with Fuller able to work with everything in the books except characters introduced in Silence of the Lambs. If CBS’ Clarice is a hit, then getting permission to use Starling could be a difficult proposition. Still, we live in hope. And honestly, I just want to see more of Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter.