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It isn't difficult to see why Hannibal has stuck around in pop culture. When the show first came out in 2013, it was unlike anything that was on network TV at the time, with its artful visuals that managed to make the violence in the show look beautiful. Hannibal quickly gained a following on sites like Tumblr, where fans shared GIFs from the show and went wild over the show's psychological plot. I just know that fifty years in the future I'm going to be sitting on a porch somewhere saying, "Now let me tell you about what it was like when Hannibal first hit the airwaves-" before someone collects me in my wheelchair. 

For Mads Mikkelsen, who played Hannibal Lecter on the show, the show's continued popularity has been completely unexpected. Speaking with our video producer Ashley Victoria Robinson at Emerald City Comic Con earlier this year, Mikkelsen shed light on what it was like to see Hannibal move beyond the ephemeral.  

"[Making the show] was very, very hard work. So in the midst of that, you just focus on that, and hopefully people will receive it [well]," Mikkelsen began. "But we were just doing it three years in a row. But then now ten years later, we realized how iconic it is to a specific group of people in many places in the world. And it's heartwarming. You can't anticipate those things. It's fantastic to see people [at Emerald City Comic Con] with little flower crowns on, and they're part of the group that calls themselves 'Fannibals.'" 

The flower crowns, in case you're not familiar, belie the show's debut in the year 2013, when flower crowns (and that very specific Coachella-inspired aesthetic) were all the rage. When Hannibal first came out, fans on Tumblr were editing flower crowns onto images of Mikkelsen's Hannibal and Hugh Dancy's Will Graham, a practice that was common in other fandoms beyond that of Hannibal. However, unlike other fandoms, Hannibal fans brought the flower crowns into the physical world by wearing them to conventions and offering them to cast members during photo opps. After all, the flowers themselves certainly fit in with the pastoral aesthetic of the show. Ah, what a time that was. And it's a time that continues to stay alive in the hearts of Fannibals everywhere. 

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