#shadowsgiveusdepth

I look at it this way: Red Dragon was, clearly, not necessarily meant to be part of a series when Harris published it. It’s a pretty good thriller, but nothing remarkable; in it, Hannibal is absolutely not a central character, and a lot of his backstory was later abandoned by Harris after he decided that he wanted to make Hannibal a recurring, better-developed character.

Harris also clearly thought that Will Graham was a solid, interesting MC...but by the time he published Silence, he realized that Clarice Starling was a far more interesting (and important) MC than Will could ever have been, especially since her relationship with Lecter was less hostile, more dynamic. Even if that wasn’t obvious from the different ways that Harris writes about the two of them (Will and Clarice, that is), it’s clear from the way that Will gets a very dark, closed ending in Red Dragon--though possibly because Harris just wasn’t planning on a series back then--whereas Clarice’s story in Silence ends on a very optimistic, open note.

tl;dr In the end, Harris threw his lot in with Clarice (and Hannibal of couse), not Will; with Clarice and her story, not Will’s, Harris makes a number of sociopolicial observations and arguments; and it’s Clarice, not Will, that drives Hannibal’s development into more than just some smart-mouthed boogeyman, which is basically what he is in Red Dragon. Hannibal loathes Will Graham, full stop. Hannibal attempts to kill Will twice--the second time, he doesn’t even care that Will’s family is collateral damage. Hannibal and Will can’t even really have witty banter, because Hannibal views Will with disdain above all else. And again, Clarice’s character has a lot of symbolic sociopolitical significance that Will’s lacks--you’d think that that would be appealing to a showrunner in this day and age. 

But no--instead, they chose to erase Clarice, replace her with a male character, and then steal her dialogue so that they could so a little queerbaiting while they were at it (thus basically erasing both Will’s and Hannibal’s canon relationship while they were at it--I know Molly was in the show in some capacity, but Will as he’s written is a straight, horny-but-faithful husband to Molly, and Hannibal, of course, “makes a girl’s fur crackle” and is solely focused on Clarice).

Why they thought they could or should tease a homosexual relationship between two demonstrably heterosexual characters who hate each other, I don’t know. I’ve heard that they couldn’t buy the rights to Clarice’s character. But despite the dumpster fire that NBC Hannibal turned out to be and the skin-crawlingly bad “Hannigraham” ship...I’m honestly glad they didn’t get their hands on her.