Great essay by Hettienne Park about Beverly Katz's departure from Hannibal, fandom reactions, and Park's experiences as an Asian American woman in theater and film.

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it, JZ. Unfortunately, (spoilers for the source material) there are four characters that pretty much cannot be killed because they are part of what happens later in the novels, and they are all men. Fuller needs to get some credit for creating this great female characters, but since they aren't in the novels, you have to expect that any of them could die at any time.

Isn't this separate, though, sj? He's already diverged from canon in quite a few places.

When you feel marginalized by the world at large, there’s great comfort and empowerment in seeing someone you can identify with on the screen who isn’t subject to clichés or stereotypes. When that gets taken away, you can feel like you’ve been fucked over once again. And unless you’ve ever been hurt merely due to the color of your skin, what’s between your legs, or who sleeps next to you at night, you probably don’t understand that kind of pain.

This. That post was a very thoughtful, gracious response from Park, but that doesn't mitigate how upset I'm feeling over the whole thing. There was this great character on screen, who looked like me, who worked like me, who was competent and funny and compassionate, and now she's gone, largely to fuel men's story. I mean, none of this is surprising given the premise of the show, and what I'm left with is resigned "I should have known better than to expect otherwise." I actually sat in front of my computer and had a good long cry reading her post, that's how upset I am. Of course personal attacks on Fuller are out of line, and of course Fuller did a terrific thing casting Park in this non-explicitly Asian role in the first place. But we are sad and disappointed nonetheless, and it goes much beyond the reasons dictated by the narrative.

I think the problem is, because she got so much more character development by having this rapport with Will, she's the logical one to investigate his claims. Which means she's the logical one to get killed, since Hannibal can't be caught yet.

But they could have let her stay a while longer, and find nothing on her first foray, or have her wait to actually search his house -- she could have searched his office first, for instance.

Yeah, it's a completely shitty thing all around.

There's also this weird awful bind that showrunners like Fuller get into -- he's genderflipped and race-blind-cast several parts that in the source texts were white, male or both (mostly both) and he and the writing team and actors collaborated to make those characters richer, fuller, and more important to the two main characters than they were originally.

And then, since it's a show about someone who eats people and someone else who's trying to stop him, with a killer of the week along the way almost every week, the chance of the meaningful, gut-punching deaths that are inevitable on this show happening to one of those gender and race-changed characters are much higher. And then, then, there's the possible awfulness Park pointed to, of the networks saying, "No more controversial deaths, no more upsetting the fans; stop the weird casting and just cast 'em as they're written" and everything going back to the arguably even shittier prior status quo, because even the showrunners don't have as much power as the money guys.

But the personal sense of loss and grief and guttedness is completely understandable, and I'm staying out of the fandom swamps for now because the few times I've peeked in I've seen some people wanting Fuller's head on a pike and other people dismissing everyone who's upset as a whiny victim-card-playing crybaby, and the reasonable people throwing up their hands and leaving for who knows where.

You guys are brave. I don't discuss shows with anyone but you guys (or my husband). Not engaging elsewhere as a rule keeps my blood pressure down.

I do read recaps and things in other places, though.

I'm only a casual fan of the show and I'm a bit flabbergasted at how hard this hit me, honestly. On a funny (or not) note, I finally get, on a visceral rather than on an intellectual level, why the folks at the Kitten Board was so upset at Tara's death over 10 years ago!

Isn't this separate, though, sj? He's already diverged from canon in quite a few places.

I guess it's a matter of how separate. I expect that if the show continues, the events may play out differently but the major players will be the same. I could be wrong.

But the personal sense of loss and grief and guttedness is completely understandable, and I'm staying out of the fandom swamps for now because the few times I've peeked in I've seen some people wanting Fuller's head on a pike and other people dismissing everyone who's upset as a whiny victim-card-playing crybaby, and the reasonable people throwing up their hands and leaving for who knows where.

Seconding all of this.

I don't like that people are experiencing the kind of grief that Vonnie K is, but I do think that Hettienne Park is exactly right when she says that if her character was going to be kept safe she'd just be a background lab tech, not someone we'd get to know and actually care about. On a show like this one the better roles (I almost said meatier) are likely to involve some peril to the characters.

I do think this is one more example of why we need more diversity in casting on all kinds of shows. If everyone has more characters to identify with, it won't feel like such a betrayal when one is sacrificed to the story. Or at least not that kind of betrayal - it's still supposed to hurt to lose characters we like.

I was very happy to see Beverly tonight. I had hoped that would be the case since we've been spending so much time in Will's head this season.

I was very happy to see Beverly tonight. I had hoped that would be the case since we've been spending so much time in Will's head this season.

Me, too. We still get snatches of Abigail, so I hope this isn't actually Beverly's last appearance.

The crime scene was really disturbing for me. Reminded me of part of The Cell, which I love, but which really gives me nightmares.

I'm also glossing over how Hannibal could have pulled that off without anyone noticing -- the entry to the observatory is right out in the open, for one. And even in the dead of a night, a man carrying giant slabs of lucite inside can't have been an in-and-out process.

The metaphor of it is so perfect, it's hard to mind, though.