'Hannibal' Season 3 Spoilers: 'The Great Red Dragon' Plot Revealed, How Will Richard Armitage's Villain Debut? [VIDEO]

Get the scopp on episode 8
Hannibal's Red Dragon is just around the corner.

'Hannibal' Season 3: Can Cancelled Series Find A New Home? A Move To Netflix Unlikely


The NBC psychological thriller will hurtle three years into the future with episode 8, leaving the fallout from Dr. Lecter's (Mads Mikkelsen) European adventure in the distant past. As "The Great Red Dragon" kicks off, viewers will be treated to an entirely different landscape.


"Dr. Hannibal Lecter has been under lock and key for three years at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, when a new villain arises in Francis Dolarhyde (guest star Richard Armitage), also known as 'The Tooth Fairy,'" NBC teased. "As the investigation unfolds Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) approaches Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) to help catch this vicious serial killer who is targeting families."


Will, however, will have started a new life in the wake of his "friendship" with the infamous cannibal - a wife, a kid, and a break from the FBI. It will take a lot to pull the profiler back in, and Graham will probably be worse off for the experience.


Find out more when Hannibal airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC. Click the video below to see a preview for the series' next episode.

Hannibal: Episode 3.08 “The Great Red Dragon” Press Release
July 5, 2015 Admin
“HANNIBAL”

“THE GREAT RED DRAGON”

07/23/2015 (10:00PM – 11:00PM) (Thursday) : THE GREAT RED DRAGON RISES – RICHARD ARMITAGE GUEST STARS AS FRANCIS DOLARHYDE – NINA ARIANDA AND RAUL ESPARZA ALSO GUEST STAR — Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) has been under lock and key for three years at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, when a new villain arises in Francis Dolarhyde (guest star Richard Armitage), also known as “The Tooth Fairy.” As the investigation unfolds Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) approaches Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) to help catch this vicious serial killer who is targeting families. Caroline Dhavernas, Aaron Abrams and Scott Thompson also star.

SOURCE: NBC

HANNIBAL: Bryan Fuller on HANNIBAL Season 3, endings and what Season 4 could be – Exclusive interview
The series creator talks casting and more

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN
Posted: July 3rd, 2015 / 11:10 AM

NBC has announced that Season 3 of HANNIBAL, Thursdays at 10 PM, will be its last. Executive producer Bryan Fuller, who has adapted Thomas Harris’ novels about the charismatic, cannibalistic serial killer of the title, played here by Mads Mikkelsen, has told various news outlets that “NBC has allowed us to craft a television series that no other broadcast network would have dared,” expressing his gratitude to the network while suggesting that he’s open to making a fourth series for another outlet.

In Part 2 of our exclusive telephone interview, Fuller hints about how Season 4 might work, along with discussing many other HANNIBAL issues.

ASSIGNMENT X: You mentioned that there were rights issues with the Clarice Starling character, who is the protagonist of the next part of the story, Harris’ novel THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Assuming you have a Season 4 and those rights issues haven’t been resolved, do you have a Plan B?

BRYAN FULLER: Yeah. Actually, the Plan B, the way this season ends, going right into THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS wouldn’t make sense. So we have an ending that, like the ending for the first season and the second season, could function as the end of the series, or it could function as a platform from which we reinvent the show.

AX: If you do go into SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, FBI agent Will Graham, one of HANNIBAL’s leads so far, played by Hugh Dancy, is sidelined in the original story. Would you be reluctant to sideline Will?

FULLER: I have ideas on how to keep him integrated.

AX: Michael Pitt played Mason Verger in Season 2. Why is Joe Anderson playing Mason in Season 3, and is the difference in his appearance explained by Mason being mutilated in Season 2?

BRYAN FULLER: Yes. We had a very long negotiation with Michael, and ultimately, he decided not to come back. I’d been a fan of Joe Anderson for quite some time and was actually somebody that I was talking to the cast and saying, “Michael doesn’t want to come back this season,” and Tony DeMeo was like, “What about Joe Anderson? He’s so great.” And I was like, “He is great. Let’s try to get Joe.” And then we did.

AX: Can you say how long Joe Anderson is spending in the makeup chair for Mason?

FULLER: I think it was four hours, because his face is completely savaged. He brought such a wonderful energy to the role and did something completely different than what Michael was doing in Season 2, yet made it an homage in a way to Gary Oldman’s performance [as Mason Verger] in [the feature film] HANNIBAL, yet completely unique. The first conversation I had with Joe, he was like, “So what role do you guys want me to play?” Because he didn’t know. And I was like, “Mason Verger.” “Who’s he?” “Well, did you see the HANNIBAL movie?” “Yes, I loved it.” “The Gary Oldman character.” And he was just like, “That’s the guy you want me to play? I’m in. I’m absolutely in.”

AX: Are there any other cast changes where a new actor is coming in for an established character?

FULLER: No.

AX: What about whoever is playing young Hannibal?

FULLER: When we see young Hannibal, it’s very brief, it’s from a distance and we never see their face.

AX: So it’s not a performance-based requirement, it’s just a resemblance to Mads Mikkelsen requirement?

FULLER: And not even that – a resemblance to the back of Mads Mikkelsen’s head [laughs]. I very much didn’t want the audience to see anybody else but Mads Mikkelsen in the role, so you see a very subtle push-in to the back of a young man, but we don’t see faces, because I didn’t want to demystify the character.

AX: Are any of our established characters besides Mason Verger dealing with new physical disabilities as a result of the Season 2 finale?

FULLER: Yes.

AX: Raul Esparza plays Frederick Chilton, who got shot in the face last season. Is he dealing with a lot of prosthetics?

FULLER: Yes. Actually, Episode Four is the episode that takes place after the [Season 2] finale. We start eight months ahead and then we see where everybody is now, and then we go back and see how they got there. And then we move on with the story. So we get to see how the survivors survived and what the complications are.

AX: You’ve mentioned that Raul Esparza is prominent in the outtake reel. Are we going to get the outtake reels on the DVD releases?

FULLER: Yes, yes. He’s always cracking people up.

AX: How did you decide on Richard Armitage to play serial killer/Hannibal acolyte Francis Dolarhyde in the RED DRAGON section?

FULLER: I had been a fan of his for awhile, and we have several friends in common, and so I’ve always wanted to work with him, because I’d heard such great things about him as a human being and had seen his performances and so he was always in my mind as somebody that we needed to have on HANNIBAL.

Also, in my mind, I had many conversations with Lee Pace [who starred in Fuller’s PUSHING DAISIES] about playing Francis Dolarhyde. And so until the moment that Lee was definitely not available, I was like, “Okay …” HALT AND CATCH FIRE [which stars Pace], when it was picked up, I was secretly, not so secretly disappointed, because then I knew that Lee wouldn’t be available. Then it was like, “Who would be great is Richard,” and I reached out to his reps, who are also my reps, and we got on the phone, and he was just lovely and fascinated and was really up for the challenge of the role and stepped in with such ownership and a collaborative spirit in shaping this new adaptation, and there were many conversations that we had where he was like, “You know, this moment has a particular sweetness to it, and can we weave that into the story?” and “Were you planning on doing this?” He had a lot of really great, interesting ideas about the character and let me read his journals that he was composing [about] his approach and they were meticulously written and well-referenced and demonstrated such a sophisticated understanding of the role. And in the novel, he’s a tragic figure.

For me, I really wanted to challenge the audience into trying to forget that this is a horrible killer of families and a man who is insane that is looking [for] and perhaps has found some rope that he can pull himself out of his insanity and root for him in overcoming his madness. And I think you need an actor like Richard, who brings an innate likability and vulnerability, as well as a ferocity, to the character. And I’m excited for people to see what he does, because it’s both heartbreaking and terrifying.

AX: He was surprisingly Shakespearean in his approach to the dwarf leader in the HOBBIT trilogy …

FULLER: He was great in those movies. And buried under a lot of makeup. So it’s interesting to see his face exposed. [As Dolarhyde] he has the cleft palate. It’s odd to see how much one thing can change the structure of a person’s face.

AX: Are we going to see Dolarhyde’s flashbacks?

FULLER: We see a couple. We see some very limited things that give you an indication of his trauma, but so much of the real estate dedicated to the Francis Dolarhyde story is about his relationship with Reba McClane, who’s this beacon of humanity that might be able to save him from himself, and so I was excited about adapting that, because in reading the book, it was one of the most romantic stories, obviously, in very corrupt circumstances, that the idea of a man bringing a blind woman to the zoo and wanting her to experience it by facilitating her touching the tiger is one of the most beautiful, romantic things I’ve ever seen in any story, and its simplicity and yet in its eloquence, so I wanted to make sure when we told that aspect of their relationship that we were rooting for these two as a couple to overcome.

AX: How did you do the tiger scene to make it safe for the actors?

FULLER: We had a fake tiger.

AX: You cast Rutina Wesley as Reba. Were you a fan of her portrayal of Tara Thornton in TRUE BLOOD?

FULLER: Yes, I was, particularly in those early seasons, when she had more of a human story, and the scenes with her mother in those first two seasons and her romance. When her name came up – it was very simple – I called Grace Wu at NBC and said, “Is there anybody that you folks are excited about working with as we look to cast Reba?” And she said, “What do you think of Rutina Wesley?” I said, “I love her, let’s cast her.”

AX: Should people who are familiar with RED DRAGON be prepared to have our expectations changed in terms of who makes it to the end of that book alive?

FULLER: There are some shifts there and it doesn’t necessarily lay out exactly as it did in the book. It’s pretty close.

AX: Are there any characters from the books or other types of characters that you want to introduce?

FULLER: I do want to get into the tale of Lady Murasaki and Uncle Robertus. So those are storylines that we talked about in Season 3 and then shifted Murasaki into Chiyo [played by Tao Okamoto], because a lot of what we were doing for that character required a certain thrall with Hannibal that I didn’t want to give to a mature woman who is in command of her own story, because there’s a certain dynamic that I wouldn’t necessarily buy in a more sophisticated character. So we shifted that part of our story to Chiyo, and a lot of the Murasaki stuff we held onto and would love to make that part of Season 4.

NEWS | COMIC-CON 2015

Hannibal at Comic-Con: Exclusive first look at the Red Dragon
BY MARC SNETIKER • @MARCSNETIKER

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(NBC)
Hannibal
Posted July 11 2015 — 9:00 PM EDT

The fate of Hannibal may still be unclear — but the fate of Hannibal is not.

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Fans at Comic-Con in San Diego were the first to glimpse the rest of the third season of NBC’s canceled-but-not-dead-yet drama, which still has plenty of punches to serve during the next seven episodes. EW has the exclusive first look at what Comic-Con Fannibals saw, and it’s a doozy.

The footage — screened during the panel moderated by EW’s Jeff Jensen — promises the appearance of Francis Dolarhyde, a.k.a. the Tooth Fairy, a.k.a. the eponymous villain of Red Dragon. It’s an appearance long in the works, and seeing it up on the screen drew the collective breath of the entire crowd of fans.

The clip shows the birth of the Red Dragon, as well as the relationship he develops with a captured Dr. Lecter. Also featured are a vengeful Dr. Bloom and promised cameos by Zachary Quinto and True Blood (how appropriate) alum Rutina Wesley as Reba McClane.

Watch the breathtaking clip below:

“Hannibal” Staffel 3: Richard Armitage lehrt uns als Francis Dolarhyde das Gruseln! (VIDEO)

Lange haben wir darauf gewartet, jetzt gibt es den ersten richtigen Blick auf den neuen Bösewicht in der NBC-Serie „Hannibal“. Bryan Fuller überraschte die Fans mit einem neuen Video, das Richard Armitage als Francis Dolarhyde zeigt – ein wahrer Gänsehautmoment!

Ein weiteres Mal darf Thomas Harris’ Killer Francis Dolarhyde aus den „Hannibal“-Romanen zuschlagen. Zuletzt verkörperte ihn Ralph Fiennes in der Verfilmung von „Roter Drache“ (2002), nun lehrt uns Richard Armitage („Der Hobbit“) das Fürchten. In der NBC-Serie „Hannibal“ wird er zum neuen Gegenspieler für Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), der nach der Inhaftierung von Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) einem neuen Bösen in die Augen blicken muss. Armitages Darstellung des Dolarhyde wurde bereits von vielen Fans sehnsüchtig erwartet. Nun gab es zur Comic Con endlich die ersten richtigen Videoaufnahmen zur „Zahnfee“ – und die haben es in sich.

Die Verwandlung zum Monster

In dem rund 5 Minuten langen Video bekommen die Zuschauer einen ersten Vorgeschmack auf Armitages Killer, der auch in der US-Serie eiskalt ganze Familien auslöscht. Wie „TV.com“ berichtet, habe sich Bryan Fuller aber bewusst dafür entschieden, Dolarhydes Vergewaltigung an den Müttern in „Hannibal“ auszuklammern. „Ich wollte das Versprechen halten, dass wir keine Vergewaltigungs-Geschichten erzählen“, so Fuller. Die ersten Minuten, in denen wir Dolarhyde sehen können, zeigen seine Verwandlung zum Killer und die erste Begegnung mit der blinden Reba McClane (Rutina Wesley). Von der ersten Sekunde an verströmt Armitage in dieser dunklen Rolle eine Gefahr, von der man kaum die Augen wenden kann.

Bryan Fuller ‏@BryanFuller

A DREAM COME TRUE! Cover and contents for FANGORIA #343, guest-edited by “HANNIBAL’s” Bryan Fuller! - http://go.shr.lc/1I1p4O1 via @fangoria

Cover and full contents for FANGORIA #343, guest-edited by “HANNIBAL’s” Bryan Fuller!


Our next issue offers something very special for Fangorians and Fannibals alike: a menu of choice features curated by special guest editor Bryan Fuller, the man behind the boundary-pushing series HANNIBAL and lots more genre TV. Read on for the full contents and cover!

A key focus of FANGORIA #343 is, of course, HANNIBAL itself, with Fuller allowing an all-access pass to the set and the talent; we have extensive words with stars Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, actress Gillian Anderson, makeup FX maestro Francois Dagenais et al., plus Neil Gaiman previewing the Fuller series based on his novel AMERICAN GODS and Tom Noonan looking back on playing the original Tooth Fairy in MANHUNTER. Beyond that, under Fuller’s guidance we explore horror in other media, with features on fright-film novelizations and the new wave of vinyl soundtracks, plus a look at the creation of terror trailers. Then there are retrospectives on classic animal-attack and “hagsploitation” flicks, Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy recalling his time on Tony Scott’s THE HUNGER, an exclusive interview with Kevin Bacon on his tense new thriller COP CAR and more. Head down past the cover for the full details, click here to pre-order this issue and go here to subscribe to FANGORIA!

FANGO343COVERCONTENTSNEWS

GUTS

MINIFEATURE: RIP CHRISTOPHER LEE Screenwriter John Esposito eulogizes the last of the classic-horror greats to leave us.

“HANNIBAL”: ON SET Sink your teeth into a look at the making of the latest season.

“HANNIBAL”: HUGH DANCY AND MADS MIKKELSEN As Will Graham and Dr. Lecter, they perform a dance of obsession and death.

“HANNIBAL”: GILLIAN ANDERSON The “X Files” veteran is now half of an even more dangerous TV-horror partnership.

“HANNIBAL”: THE CUISINE When food stylist Janice Poon is on the case, the snacks are literally finger-lickin’ good.

“HANNIBAL”: THE FX Francois Dagenais is building quite a body of work creating the victims of Hannibal et al.

Q&A: TOM NOONAN The original Francis Dollarhyde recalls the whole tooth about playing Thomas Harris’ original madman.

PREVIEW: “AMERICAN GODS” With Bryan Fuller at the helm, Neil Gaiman doesn’t have to pray for a respectful televersion of his novel.

APPRECIATION: “THE STRANGERS” Over a decade after its release, the home-invasion chiller is still sending shock waves.

INTERVIEW: PETER MURPHY As part of Bauhaus, he provided a hell of an introduction to Tony Scott’s “The Hunger.”

RETROSPECTIVE: ANIMALS AMOK A look back at 10 films in which nature went on the warpath with human guidance. Plus: “Day of the Animals.”

RETROSPECTIVE: HAGSPLOITATION Some of Hollywood’s greatest actresses went very, very bad in their latter years.

FEATURE: HORROR ON VINYL For the record, an old format is receiving fresh life by playing the music of cinematic death.

INTERVIEW: KEVIN BACON He’s back in the thriller genre, on a deadly hunt for those who stole his “Cop Car.”

MINIFEATURE: RIP BETSY PALMER A tribute by David DeCoteau to the woman who played the mother of all slasher villains.

FEATURE: HORROR NOVELIZATIONS Sometimes schlocky, sometimes sublime, these books recapture big-screen terror.

ON SET: “DARK WAS THE NIGHT” A visit to the location sheds light on an above-average independent monster flick.

FEATURE: HORROR TRAILERS Editor Bill Neil reveals how fright films are carved and served in enticing condensed versions.

GRAVY

FIRST RITES Words from guest editor Bryan Fuller

POSTAL ZONE Rochon rocks, “Penny” thoughts

MONSTER INVASION Preview of “Sinister 2”

VHS YES! The substandard subterranea of “Trapped Alive”

DUMP BIN DIARIES Wesley Snipes in “Gallowwalkers”

Why HANNIBAL Badly Needs the ‘Red Dragon’
Posted by Kyle Anderson on July 17, 2015


Next week, NBC’s Hannibal will debut the episode “The Great Red Dragon,” which will begin the second-half story arc for Season 3. The episode will mark the beginning of a very definite and well-known storyline, that which takes place in Red Dragon — Thomas Harris’ first novel to feature Dr. Lecter and the only one to feature Will Graham. The whole series is mostly predicated on weaving the backstory of the characters from that novel. Even if the series hadn’t been canceled by the network, I’d still be here about to say this exact sentence: Hannibal needs the Red Dragon right now even more than it needs Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal or Hugh Dancy’s Graham.

The first half of Season 3 has been entirely about the “hunt” for Hannibal Lecter and having each of the series’ leads deal with the repercussions of the Season 2 finale, wherein, SPOILERS, everybody almost dies. But this season has felt very meandering, with whole acts sometimes devoted to Graham walking around catacombs or Hannibal and Bedelia (Gillian Anderson) having their tenth philosophical debate about how he’s probably going to kill her soon. While the season has certainly been lovely to look at (who wasn’t wowed by director Vincenzo Natali’s trippy, kaleidoscopic sex scene between Caroline Dhavernas’ Alana Bloom and Katherine Isabelle’s Margot Verger?) and has given some context for characters and a bit of insight into Hannibal’s history, it lacked a focal point the earlier stories had.

Part of what makes Hannibal so great has been that it always had the backbone of a police procedural hidden inside a disturbing character study. While Lecter had been slowly turning Graham insane and eventually into a patsy, he’d also been assisting the FBI with their investigations, in many cases actually helping them catch murderers while keeping them just off the trail of the real Chesapeake Ripper, i.e. himself. This offered some gruesome imagery and hinted at the way everybody remembers Hannibal Lecter, as the deranged, people-eating lunatic locked up and helping the FBI from behind thick glass. The first half of Season 2 nicely subverted this with Will incarcerated and believed criminally insane and Hannibal free as a bird. Even in this, there were still very bad people to catch.

While the hunt for Hannibal Lecter certainly services a lot of dangling plot threads, and Hannibal’s sheer recklessness with his new assumed identity as a history professor in Florence has been interesting to watch, it just hasn’t offered the kind of driving force that one would have hoped for. The inclusion of the highly deranged Mason Verger (Joe Anderson) and his essentially placing a bounty on Hannibal’s head has been a refreshing touch, but he’s still a bit too passive, at least leading in to episode 7.


What the Red Dragon story will give us in spades is a new lunatic to hunt, in the form of “The Tooth Fairy” Francis Dolarhyde, played by MI-5 and The Hobbit star Richard Armitage. Dolarhyde is highly complex, being a former military officer who becomes obsessed with the image and narrative of William Blake’s painting The Great Red Dragon, to the point that he has it tattooed on his person. He’s a completely different type of killer to Hannibal or to any of the other maniacs we’ve seen on the show, like Abel Gideon for example, in that he’s not like a supervillain in terms of intelligence or means, but a smart yet savage animal unleashed by something primal deep inside.

Dolarhyde is also, if you can believe it, a slightly sympathetic figure with regard to his relationship with Reba McClane, the blind woman who becomes his love interest. He’s moved by her in a ways he never expected and it makes his ultimate plunge into the deep end all the more tragic. Dolarhyde is a force of nature, not playing a game or toying with his prey, but acting the only way he knows how, even if, it seems, he’s on some level unsure of whether it’s truly what he wants. That’s very compelling as a narrative.

And ultimately, what makes the storyline so rewarding will be that it’ll give Will Graham a clear objective again. They’re going to time-jump to a point where Will has retired and is now married and raising a family. He’s been shaken to his core (understandably) because of his friendship with Hannibal and secludes himself entirely, only returning to the fray because of this case specifically, perhaps due to the Tooth Fairy’s targeting of seemingly normal, happy families. And Graham’s riding the line between his new life and his old one will be something exciting to see for the next six weeks.

More importantly, I think – it will finally allow Graham to come out from under Hannibal’s influence, and his shadow. For the first half of Hannibal Season 3, and for much of the previous seasons, Graham has been hopelessly and senselessly devoted to Dr. Lecter in a way that’s frankly gotten a bit silly. This is especially evident in episode 4, “Aperitivo,” in which Will spends time sitting wistfully in Hannibal’s vacated Baltimore home and then later admits to Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) that he contemplated running away with Hannibal and leaving Jack to die. Will Graham is many things, but he should never be a lapdog. I don’t think Hannibal Lecter would have any lingering feelings of guilt or betrayal over anything having to do with this weak a version of Will. Alana, Bedelia, Mason, and even Jack can be acting the way they are, but Will shouldn’t be.

So, my hope is that the Red Dragon storyline, with its clear and driving narrative and complex new villain, allows Hannibal to return to its former glory, and hopefully surpass it. I’m intrigued to see what Bryan Fuller and company do with what will be the third screen adaptation of the Harris novel, and it should give the series the shakeup it needs to remain a show worth bringing back in some other medium or format, or at the very least, leave us wanting more.

Richard Armitage To Debut As The Red Dragon In ‘Hannibal’

The much-awaited debut of Richard Armitage as the Red Dragon in the cancelled NBC series Hannibal is upon us, and for fans, it can’t come soon enough.

Armitage is still relatively unknown in the U.S., but those who follow his career closely are used to seeing him make women swoon in period dramas. In later years, the handsome Brit has expanded his career by taking on the classic character Thorin Oakenshield — the leader of the dwarves — in The Hobbit trilogy, as well as taking to London’s stage again in the adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible earlier this year.

We are talking about a multi-faceted actor here, one who began in theater like most of his British brothers in this field. Richard Armitage will take on the troubled serial killer the Red Dragon, or the Tooth Fairy, as Francis Dolarhyde is known.

This is by far the most haunted and challenging character Armitage has played in his career, not that he hasn’t enjoyed portraying the Red Dragon. As many of his peers, the 43-year-old enjoys playing the bad guy, and this particular character is so much more than a deranged murderer.
Richard Armitage in Hannibal.

As the second part of Hannibal Season 3 comes to a TV near you, we find that Will (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) part ways after escaping certain death at the hands of Mason Verger (Joe Anderson). Three years later, Will must focus on another threat and asks for Hannibal’s help in finding the serial killer, the Red Dragon or the Tooth Fairy.

Showrunner Bryan Fuller spoke about how Richard Armitage’s version of the Red Dragon will differ from other adaptations about the character.

“The version of Red Dragon that we are telling is very faithful to the literature with the exception of the relationship we’ve been building over the last two and a half seasons. Will and Hannibal’s relationship in the previous adaptations was nowhere near as wet and dark and sticky as what we’ve come to learn of the dynamic between the men in this version of the telling. So, to have Will and Hannibal truly possess a history together that informs their approach to the Red Dragon didn’t necessarily feel like an opportunity to change the story, but to provide many more layers of the tiramisu for the audience to enjoy.”

More interestingly, during the Hannibal panel, executive producer Martha De Laurentiis said that this particular version of the Red Dragon was shaped in great part by Richard Armitage himself and his vision of the killer. Armitage said he based the character on the Thomas Harris novel.

“I got a sense of a man who was very uncomfortable in his own skin and was trying to shed his own skin and was trying to become something more powerful and greater than he really was.

“I realized, in reading the book, that there were going to be some iconic moments that we would come back to and probably end in a very similar place to both those manifestations (earlier portrayals) of the character.”

You can watch Richard Armitage debut as the Red Dragon in Hannibal this Saturday at 10 p.m. ET on NBC. Watch a preview below.

HANNIBAL MEETS THE RED DRAGON IN NEW PHOTOS
POSTED BY KYLE ANDERSON ON JULY 21, 2015
As you’ve probably gathered if you read my recent treatise on the first half of Hannibal‘s third season, I have been champing at the bit for the show to get to the Red Dragon storyline. It’s the very first of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novels and will represent Bryan Fuller‘s program’s first direct adaptation of a particular novel (as well as being the only one of the novels they have complete rights to). Naturally, the show has touched on or borrowed bits from all of the novels, but this will be the first time they’ve straight-up done a book on TV.

If you watched last week’s episode, “Digestivo”, you know it ended with *SPOILERS* Hannibal Lecter turning himself in to Jack Crawford after Will Graham, once and for all, said he wants nothing to do with his former friend/tormentor again. Elsewhere, Alana Bloom was helping her lover Margot Verger kill Mason Verger after retrieving the Verger Baby from a pig’s womb. Seriously, that episode was effed up.

And now we have images for the first two episodes of this second half of this season, episodes entitled “The Great Red Dragon,” and “…and The Woman Clothed with the Sun.” (Check out the complete gallery below!)

It looks like it does indeed take place long after the events of “Digestivo”, and it is much more in line than any of us expected with the events of the Red Dragon novel. We see Will’s wife Molly, played by Tony winner Nina Arianda; we see True Blood‘s Rutina Wesley playing the blind Reba McClane, the love interest to our new villain; and we see the Red Dragon himself, Francis Dolarhyde, played by Richard Armitage. Hell, we’ve even got Lara Jean Chorostecki back as Freddie Lounds, and if you’ve read the book or seen the films, you know Freddie doesn’t have the best time.

If it goes well, and provided such a thing can exist due to the cancellation, this half-season should give a good idea of how a Silence of the Lambs season could go, since Fuller has said he’s wanted to do that one and he’d keep Will in it along with bringing in Clarice Starling. Again, it’s all contingent on if the show gets picked up by another network. For now, though, we’ll just have to be content with the Hannibal Lecter in a big glass box we are getting.

What’re your thoughts on these photos and about where Hannibal looks to be heading? Talk about it below!

'Hannibal' Season 3 Episode Guide: Red Dragon Story Arc Is More Faithful

Jul 21, 2015 09:19 PM EDT | By Rolly Gacelo

Richard Armitage's Francis Dolarhyde to debut in the next Hannibal season 3 episode(Photo : Carlos Alvarez | Getty Images Entertainment)
Latest "Hannibal" season 3 episode guide has it that there will be a huge time jump this week. The last episode marked the end of the first half of the already-canceled NBC horror series.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) surrendered to the FBI after his friend and nemesis Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) decided to cut their connection in any form. However, the lack of communication between the two will not last that long.

The next "Hannibal" season 3 episode is called "The Great Red Dragon", similar namesake for the second half's new villain to be played by Richard Armitage. In Thomas Harris novel where the show's characters were based from, the Red Dragon is famously known in the public as the Tooth Fairy (Francis Dolarhyde in real life), a serial killer from Baltimore who targets families.
The rise of this new psychopath paved way for the reunion of Hannibal and Will. The same storyline is expected to be told in the NBC horror series. However, unlike the films, Bryan Fuller said his work is more faithful to the book.
"The version of Red Dragon that we are telling is very faithful to the literature with the exception of the relationship we've been building over the last two and a half seasons," Fuller said when asked by TV Guide how different his "Hannibal" will be from other projects that adapted the "Red Dragon" novel.
"Will and Hannibal's relationship in the previous adaptations was nowhere near as wet and dark and sticky as what we've come to learn of the dynamic between the men in this version of the telling. So, to have Will and Hannibal truly possess a history together that informs their approach to the Red Dragon didn't necessarily feel like an opportunity to change the story, but to provide many more layers of the tiramisu for the audience to enjoy."
Before that, Fuller said the second half will be slightly different from earlier "Hannibal" season 3 episodes.
"It's a slightly more grounded narrative than what we experienced in the first part of the season. So much of the first arc was all about the grieving process and also the trauma of what these people had experienced. I didn't want to skip over what these characters were feeling, and that's why so much of the first part of the season was contemplative and brooding and surreal. Everyone was in shock."