Will Graham is a fictional character and protagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. Graham is also the protagonist of two film adaptations of the novel, Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002), and the television series Hannibal (2013–2015), which adapted various parts of the Hannibal Lecter franchise.
In Red Dragon, Graham is introduced as an intellectually gifted and highly esteemed former FBI profiler who has the ability to empathize with psychopaths, to the detriment of his own psyche.
Graham is responsible for the capture of Hannibal Lecter, a forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer who nearly kills Graham during their first encounter. The incident severely traumatizes Graham, who then retires from the FBI. During the events of Red Dragon, Graham reluctantly comes out of retirement to find and apprehend a serial killer known as "The Tooth Fairy," requiring him to confront and seek assistance from the incarcerated Lecter.
Other than passing mentions in Harris' sequel The Silence of the Lambs, Graham does not appear in any other book of the Lecter series. In the films Manhunter and Red Dragon, he is portrayed by William Petersen and Edward Norton, respectively. In the television series Hannibal, he is portrayed by Hugh Dancy.
Character overview In his original appearance and its adaptations, Graham is an FBI profiler responsible for the capture of serial killer Hannibal Lecter, and later assigned to capture serial killer Francis Dolarhyde. 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.
Appearances Novel Red Dragon establishes Graham's backstory. He grew up poor in Louisiana, eventually moving to New Orleans, where he became a homicide detective. He leaves New Orleans to attend graduate school in forensic science at George Washington University. After attaining his degree, Graham goes to work for the FBI's crime lab. Following exceptional work both in the crime lab and in the field, Graham is given a post as teacher at the FBI Academy. During his career in the FBI, Graham is given the title of 'Special Investigator' while he is in the field.
His first major case involves a serial killer nicknamed the "Minnesota Shrike", who preys on female college students. He catches the killer, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, at the suspect's home, in the process of trying to murder his own family. Graham finds Hobbs' wife on the apartment landing, bleeding from multiple stab wounds, who clutches at Graham before dying. Graham breaks down the door and shoots Hobbs, who is repeatedly stabbing his own daughter in the neck. Hobbs' daughter survives and eventually goes on with her life. Graham is profoundly disturbed by the incident and is referred to the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital. After a month in the hospital, he returns to the FBI.
In 1975, he tracks down another serial killer nicknamed the "Chesapeake Ripper", who surgically removes his victims' edible organs. He notices that a victim with multiple stab wounds has a healed stab wound; according to his medical records, the said victim received the wound in a hunting accident five years before. He tracks down the doctor who treated the victim in the emergency room, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, now a renowned psychiatrist, to interview him about the patient. During their first meeting, Lecter claims not to remember very much. Graham returns to see Lecter in his office, and within minutes realizes that Lecter is the killer he seeks. Graham goes to Lecter's outer office and makes a phone call to the FBI's Baltimore Field Office. Lecter, who has removed his shoes, sneaks up on Graham and slashes his abdomen with a linoleum knife, nearly disemboweling him. FBI agents and Maryland State Troopers arrive and arrest Lecter, and Graham spends months recovering in a hospital. It was only after a while in the hospital that he realized what had tipped him off—the antique medical diagram Wound Man, whose wounds match exactly those of the Ripper's victim. Graham's capture of Lecter makes him a celebrity, and he is revered as a legend at the FBI. A tabloid reporter, Freddy Lounds, sneaks into the hospital where Graham is recuperating, photographs Graham's wounds, and humiliates him in the National Tattler. Traumatised by the experience, Graham retires from the FBI shortly after his recovery.
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.
Will Graham is briefly referred to in The Silence of the Lambs, the sequel to Red Dragon, when FBI Academy student Clarice Starling notes that "Will Graham, the keenest hound ever to run in Crawford's pack, was a legend at the Academy; he was also a drunk in Florida now with a face that's hard to look at..." Crawford tells her that "[Graham's] face looks like damned Picasso drew it." When Starling first meets Lecter, he asks her how Graham's face looks. Before Lecter's escape, Dr. Frederick Chilton tells him that Crawford is not happy that Lecter "cut up his protégé", referencing Graham.
Films Graham has been portrayed twice in film: in Manhunter by William Petersen and again in Red Dragon by Edward Norton.
The depiction of Graham in Manhunter is faithful to the character as presented in the original novel, with some notable alterations. In the novel, Graham is married to Molly and is stepfather to Molly's son, Willy. In Manhunter, Graham and Molly (Kim Greist) have a son named Kevin, with the film making no indication Kevin is not Graham's biological son. It also changes somewhat his relationship with Lecter, here spelled "Lecktor" (Brian Cox); while in the book Graham only consults with Lecter once, in this film he talks to Lecktor over the phone to better understand Dolarhyde, here spelled "Dollarhyde" (Tom Noonan). The film also changes the ending of the novel: in Manhunter, Graham saves Reba McClane (Joan Allen) from Dollarhyde affirmatively attempting (albeit reluctant) to murder her, and kills him in a tense standoff.
The 2002 film version of Red Dragon changes the nature of Graham's connection to Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). While in the novel he meets Lecter for the first time while questioning him about the death of a patient, in the film he and Lecter have apparently known each other for some time, with Graham often consulting Lecter on his cases. He talks with Lecter about the latest serial killer he is investigating, a cannibal, and intuits that Lecter is the killer he seeks after finding a recipe in Lecter's house that includes all the organs taken from the killer's victims. In contrast with the novel, in this film Graham meets with Lecter several times. Unlike Manhunter, the film changes Graham's climactic battle with Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes) only a little; while the confrontation between the two results in both of them being critically wounded by gunfire, his face is left unharmed, and it is Graham's wife Molly (Mary-Louise Parker) who kills Dolarhyde by shooting him in the head as he gets up to kill them. It is implied in the closing scene that, although pushed psychologically beyond his limits, his life and marriage endured. The 2002 adaptation portrays Graham and Molly as having a biological child, Josh (Tyler Patrick Jones), rather than Graham being a stepfather.
TV series: Hannibal
Hugh Dancy portrayed Graham in Hannibal, a television series about his relationship with Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) prior to Lecter's capture. Graham develops a complex bond with Lecter while working with him to solve other serial murders, before uncovering Lecter's crimes. The show premiered on April 4, 2013.
Dancy's version of Graham is implied to be on the autism spectrum, but series creator Bryan Fuller has refuted the idea that he has Asperger syndrome, stating instead that he has "the opposite of" the disorder; Hugh Dancy thinks that Will developed defensive mechanisms for his empathy disorder which resemble some autistic traits. Hugh Dancy "Post Mortem Interview – Hannibal" June 14, 2014. Sky Living TV. Dancy's Graham possesses "pure empathy" and an overactive imagination, allowing him to mentally recreate the murders he is investigating. He also unknowingly suffers from advanced encephalitis, often making it difficult for him to cope with his mental recreations. Lecter is fascinated by Graham's ability to think like the serial killers he investigates, and he spends much of the series trying to manipulate him into becoming a killer himself.
Season 1
At the start of the series, Graham teaches forensics at the FBI Academy. He left field work due to stress and lives alone in Wolf Trap, Virginia with several stray dogs he adopted. Graham and consulting psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter are enlisted by Special Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) to hunt serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbs (Vladimir Cubrt), the "Minnesota Shrike". Graham finds and kills Hobbs to save his daughter Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl). This is the first time Graham has killed someone, and the experience haunts him. Graham fears that he may have enjoyed killing Hobbs, and goes into therapy with Lecter to better understand his ability to empathize with psychopaths.