'Hannibal' Season Finale Recap: All Ears … Make That Ear

"Hannibal" fans sure have a lot to, ahem, digest after the extravagant thriller's Season 1 finale, "Savoureux" — which certainly hit a high note for the series, leaving fans hungry already for Season 2 of Bryan Fuller's moody offering.

Criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who's as gifted as he is troubled, also had a lot to digest — as in Abigail Hobbs's (Kacey Rohl) ear — but was unable to keep it down. After another freaky dream (he fires a shotgun at what looks like a stag in the woods but turns out to be a devilish man painted black and rocking some antlers), Graham — who's unknowingly suffering from encephalitis  — pukes up the fully intact organ. To make matters worse, he has no recollection of returning home to Maryland from Minnesota, where he'd traveled with Abigail. This isn't looking promising for the ill genius, who appears to be slipping into permanent darkness.

Did he do it? Is Abigail still alive? How convincing is Hannibal? The finale dished up some major reveals and cliffhangers.

No Memory, No Alibi

FBI special agent-in-charge Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) wants to believe Graham's innocent (feeling guilty for pushing him, perhaps?), but the evidence isn't doing the profiler any favors. When Graham can't recall what happened in Minnesota, he is taken down to the station. As crime-scene investigator (and former friend) Beverly (Hettienne Park) cleans out the blood from under his nails — which is Abigail's, by the way — she berates him for not taking care of his mental health. Dang — no one's letting up at all, and he's really starting to believe that he did, in fact, murder the teen. "I killed Abigail Hobbs," he says through tears.

Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), Graham's one-time love interest, is beyond pissed off at Crawford. She can't believe he pushed the clearly unraveling Graham into continuing to help the FBI solve murder cases. Graham does have a hyperempathetic approach of putting himself in the killer's shoes — perhaps it went too far. Crawford fires back that the psychiatrist she recommended, aka Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), said that Graham was fine to work. (Now there's an endorsement.)

Bloom visits Graham in an interrogation room, and if there was a romantic moment in the finale, this was it.  "Guess you dodged a bullet with me," he says, to which she replies, "I don't feel like I dodged a bullet. I feel wounded." (Tears!) Nonetheless, this is no time for rekindling "feelings," and she administers the same mental-health test that Hannibal did previously: drawing a clock. Graham's clock is all screwed up, and now she's sure there's something physically wrong with his brain.

Will Fights His Demons

The FBI finds Graham's fishing lures and realizes that they consist of bits and pieces of all the copycat-killer's victims. Eek, this is looking bad for our handsome profiler. A frustrated (but still supersmooth) Crawford enters the interrogation room and tells Graham about the lures, but Graham is having flashes of clarity; he's now more confident than ever that he's innocent of the murders. He suggests that someone's setting him up, and whoever it is, is close to all the cases … really close. So close that Graham implies it could be Crawford to Crawford's face. (That's not going to make you any friends, Will.)

Crawford puts Graham under arrest for murder and sends him off to medical lockdown in an ambulance, but Graham is not going down that easy. He breaks his own thumb, slips out of the cuffs, takes down his police escort, and escapes (reminds us of Dr. Gideon's getaway, but way less bloody).

Hannibal Cries

Hannibal sure does have a way with words, and in a session with Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson), he plays the sympathy card big-time. While sobbing over how he let both Will and Abigail down, the twisted doctor ruminates on parenthood and his own legacy. Give us a break, Lecter!

The not-so-good doc then meets with Bloom and Crawford and lies about Graham drawing a normal clock a couple weeks back. He's particularly persuasive when reminding them of the many times Graham lost track of time and acted erratically.

Road Trip

After his escape, Graham makes it to Hannibal's lair, er, home and crouches in his library. Then he makes himself known, and Hannibal barely bats a lash.  "How are you feeling?" Lecter asks. "Self-aware," replies a stone-faced Graham. They settle in for a "session" and talk through the crimes, which Hannibal insists Graham almost indisputably committed. As they chat, those pesky hallucinations return, and Will sees past victims all in black, along with the antlered devil-like figure, who's starting to look a lot like Lecter (and "American Horror Story's" Rubber Man , right?). "You catch them by getting into their heads, but you also allow them into your own," Lecter says. If only we could all be so convincing. Will's next suggestion: Let's go to Minnesota. Hannibal's accommodating, and they head off on the long drive.

Curiosity (Almost) Kills the Cat

Once they arrive at the Hobbs's home and bypass the crime-scene tape, the epic showdown we've been waiting for all season gets underway. Graham's ability to deconstruct crime scenes in his head comes in really handy as he realizes — while standing in the kitchen where he killed Abigail's serial killer dad, Garrett Jacob Hobbs (Vladimir Cubrt) — that it was Hannibal who called that day and tipped off Hobbs. Hannibal isn't giving up yet and continues to try to confuse his foe, but Graham's not buying it: "I am who I've always been. The scales have just fallen from my eyes," he says, holding a gun to Hannibal's head.

He's still struggling to figure out Hannibal's motive, though, but a moment of understanding brings him to the devastating answer: "You were just curious what I would do." Perhaps Hannibal shouldn't have been quite so vocal about his curiosity throughout the season. As Graham goes to pull the trigger, he's shot by Crawford, who'd followed them to the Hobbs house. Graham falls into the same corner that Hobbs did — the corner that's been haunting him all season.

Clarice?

The final scene surely gave fans of Hannibal's story a "whoa" moment. After Graham is treated for his injuries and his encephalitis, he's sent to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Hannibal has Dr. Du Maurier over for an elegant dinner of veal (OMG, is that Abigail? All signs point to yes!) and informs her that he's going to visit Graham for one last goodbye. Lecter walks down the long hallway to Graham's cell, and it's practically the same scene from "Silence of the Lambs," when Clarice visits Lecter. What does it mean?! Now, aren't we all glad that this crazy thrill ride of a show got picked up for a second season?

On an equally important note, Du Maurier warns Hannibal that the officials might start to put some stock in Graham's story that Hannibal is actually the copycat killer, since the doc seems to make a habit of taking on violence-prone patients. He asks if her beliefs about him have begun to unravel. We never hear her response. Is she onto him?

Watch the full episode: 

Check out photos from "Hannibal":