existingcharactersdiehorribly:

sullenriots:

I still don’t understand how Hannibal got that doctor to lie to Will about his encephalitis. Is he a psychopath too? I mean he is in the medical field. Why was he so willing to let Will suffer just because Hannibal asked. It’s so unethical.

As Bedelia says, “What [Hannibal] does is not coercion, it is persuasion.”

He had known Dr. Sutcliffe for years, so he would know what would persuade Dr. Sutcliffe, he who said, “The projected image is more interesting than the projector – until the projector breaks down.” 

Here Hannibal is, offering him the chance to study the projector breaking down. 

But he wasn’t a psychopath. We clearly see that he’s concerned about the implications of what he’s doing, he expresses them to Hannibal. “How far is this going to go? Put out the fire or let him burn?” 

This in part is what marks him for death, and soon. He cannot be trusted, because he might let his Hippocratic oath override his yearning to learn. So before he can give Will the results of those new tests, Hannibal kills him to eliminate the risk. 

In a sense, Bedelia was also right. It was his whimsy, his self congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning, that almost got him caught. He thought he could keep stringing Will along and take advantage of Dr. Sutcliffe’s desire to learn something unique, but in the end he couldn’t risk leaving Dr. Sutcliffe alive, and thus expanded the scope of the copycat killings enough that Will saw Hannibal’s pattern – and forced his hand to frame Will.