Will Graham

Lore & Background

In the television series Hannibal, Will Graham is an FBI profiler responsible for the capture of serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Graham is depicted as being intellectually gifted, skilled in criminology, and possessing extraordinary empathy. His empathy manifests as the ability to assume the point of view of criminals and psychopaths so he can vividly construct the mentality and motives of such individuals, even with limited data. This level of insight makes him adept at tracking down violent criminals, but also leaves him extremely disturbed; he fears that he understands psychopaths because he is one himself.

He also has an eidetic memory to rival Lecter's. During his first meeting with Lecter, Graham realizes within minutes that Lecter is the killer he seeks. Lecter sneaks up on Graham and slashes his abdomen with a linoleum knife, nearly disemboweling him. Graham spends months recovering in a hospital. Traumatised by the experience, Graham retires from the FBI shortly after his recovery.

Reader's Guide

In 1980, Graham is living with his wife Molly, whom he met a year after the incident with Lecter, and her son Willy in Sugarloaf Key, Florida. His former boss, Jack Crawford, persuades him to come out of retirement and help the FBI catch a serial killer nicknamed The Tooth Fairy, who had murdered two families on a lunar cycle, the first in Birmingham, Alabama and the second in Atlanta, Georgia. After studying the crime scenes, Graham consults Lecter, now institutionalized in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, on the case.

Lecter only taunts him, however, and later sends Graham's address to the killer, Francis Dolarhyde, in code, threatening the safety of his wife and stepson. The family are moved first to a cottage owned by Crawford's brother, but Molly later decides to take Willy to stay with her late first husband's parents in Oregon. Graham resumes tracking Dolarhyde and uses Lounds in an attempt to break the coded communication between Lecter and Dolarhyde by giving Lounds false information, insinuating that Dolarhyde is impotent, homosexual and the product of incest.

Enraged, Dolarhyde kidnaps and brutally murders Lounds. After linking him to a film developing company, Graham, Crawford, and FBI agents arrive at Dolarhyde's home to arrest him, only to find that the killer had set it on fire with his blind girlfriend, Reba McClane, inside, apparently shooting himself as part of a forced suicide pact. Graham rescues McClane from the burning house and consoles her, returning home, believing Dolarhyde's reign of terror to be over.

However, Dolarhyde's apparent suicide is revealed to have been a ruse; he shot a previous victim in the face, fooling McClane and the policemen at the scene into thinking he was dead. Dolarhyde attacks Graham and his family at their Florida home, stabbing Graham in the face before being killed by Graham's wife Molly, who unloads their revolver into him. Graham survives, but is left with disfiguring facial scars and implicit irrecoverable psychological damage.

Soon afterward, he receives a note from Lecter sardonically wishing him 'a speedy convalescence' and hoping Graham 'won’t be very ugly', which Crawford destroys.