Jack Crawford will never be my favorite character on NBC’s Hannibal.

That dubious honor goes to the titular character because I’ve been unhinged and unwell about Hannibal since reading Hannibal Rising day of release in the library.

But while I’m not a Jack fan, I’m not a Jack hater. I thought his character – played by Laurence Fishburne – was perfectly serviceable and fit established genre tropes really well. He’s Will Graham’s “boss” and pushes Will to dig deeper and deeper into cases that damage him in order to solve horrifying cases. So, not a great boss… and yet he’s far from the worst person in a series full of sadistic and manipulative serial killers.

Well, that’s what you’d think if you weren’t a die-hard Will Graham kinnie (someone who hyper-identifies with/as a fictional character) or a Hannibal/Will (Hannigram) shipper.

If you were – or are – either of those things, you probably would believe that Jack Crawford is the worst character on the show.

Not the worst written, but the most monstrous.

For the past 11 years since Hannibal began its three-season run in 2013, a loud and annoying majority of the fandom has made it clear that Jack Crawford is a bigger monster than Hannibal Lecter could ever be. Despite their insistence elsewhere that they’re oh so good at media literacy, they have no understanding of what Hannibal is actually about. The show’s characters and plot absolutely flew over their heads with plenty of room to spare. I can’t see any other way for them to get to “Jack is the worst friend/person on the show” after watching Hannibal do… all of that.

I know Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy have chemistry out the ass and that Hannibal as a character, leaves viewers seriously scare-roused, but… Hannibal is a bad guy. He’s monstrous. Even with his shifting tragic backstory, he’s still one of the most vicious monsters in fiction. He’s compelling, complex, and fills out a suit really well… But he’s not a good guy. Will thinks that he is, for part of the series, but one of the amazing things across the series is Will – with Hannibal’s “help” – recognizing not just his own monstrosity, but Hannibal’s.

And even in the context of his relationship with Will, he’s not a character who treats Will well.

He gaslights and otherwise manipulates Will, including using him as a fall guy for his own crimes. To say nothing of him feeding people… other people. You know, without their consent. Even before we get to the fact that he’s a serial killer and cannibal, the way he treats other people around him isn’t great.

However, if you listened to those fans – many of whom aren’t youths failing at the media literacy they maybe weren’t taught in schools, but grown adults in their 30s and 40s, you’d come out of it thinking differently.

You’d view Hannibal Lecter as a white knight saving poor maidenly Will from dark abuser Jack Crawford. You’d see them say things like “Hannibal was the best friend Will had,” despite things like Hannibal breaking into Will’s house and repeatedly feeding his dogs human meat or Hannibal lying to Will about his encephalitis. They hop on to bond over their shared “fear” of Jack’s yelling – if you’re here from the Star Wars fandom, that “fear” will sound familiar to you, I’m sure.

They frame him fixing Will’s glasses in the first episode as a badtouch moment that makes them oh so uncomfortable – despite how many Hannigram fics focus on boundary crossing moments as a form of intimacy. There are posts on Tumblr from a decade ago talking about how “jack comes across as harsh and cruel” – even the ones purporting to defend him from fandom – for how he handles Will’s glasses, when compared to Hannibal’s behavior around eye contact. They’re still being reblogged to this day. I’ve watched people, who said they’re “triggered” by Jack’s engagement with Will… eat up the silky smooth way that Hannibal mistreats will. (Yes, it’s objectively hotter, but it’s not BETTER.)

And I just keep frowning at the years of this out-of-touch, super critical or negative reading of Jack because fandom is always like this.

I bring this up often in conversation with friends, but there was a point where “fandom looked like fandom” was our go-to tag for talking about unsurprising instances of antiblackness in fandom spaces. Fandom always looks like, behaves like, fandom.

There are no surprises here.

Not for us.

Whenever Black fans bring up the hyper-critical approach fandom brings to Black characters, we are often told that we are the ones “making it about race”.

Often, we are met with people trying to clap back at us that, “oh are we not allowed to dislike Black characters” and positioning us as the real racists. This is because they erroneously – and purposefully – misrepresent our grasp of behavioral trends in fandom that mean Black characters are held to far higher standards than other characters – especially white ones that fandom likes better – in the same piece of media. They (claim to) see it as Black fans being obsessed with ideological and moral purity. They choose to misinterpret us pointing out that fandom loves white villains and will run cover for them to become “soft boys”, woobies, or the real victim of a narrative they’re thriving in while making up awful things to hate Black characters for.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people in fandom to understand that their reactions to Black characters and people aren’t formed in a vacuum. They’re not apolitical.

You watch a show about a serial killer who takes joy in gaslighting the main character and come out of it feeling like the series’ lone Black main character is infinitely worse… That’s a bias on display. It’s a bias that fandom has always had when faced with Black characters in any capacity, even when they’re not the main character.

It’s how you had people seriously insisting that Kylo Ren respected Rey and her agency more in the same film where he knocked her out, kidnapped her, and threatened to kill her friends. It’s how Wyll is widely assumed to be the most boring character in Balder’s Gate 3 and unworthy of attention. It’s how Candice Patton was widely assumed to be the worst actor on The Flash… you know, a CW show with frankly average acting across the board. It’s how people starting Merlin or Doctor Who for the first time feel comfortable posting about how much they hate Gwen or Martha for imagined shortcomings.

The Hannibal fandom tweet I saw – and made a TikTok about – truly caught me on a moment because I’m thinking about the way fans of AMC’s adaptation of Interview With the Vampire treat Louis de Pointe du Lac.

I have always been a Louis hater, because I love Claudia an unreasonable amount. However, I also know what antiblackness in fandom looks like.

Even though it absolutely chaps my ass to say it, Louis is not worse to Claudia than Lestat is. Neither of them is worse to Lestat than he is to them. (Yes, they did try to kill him… after he dropped Louis from the middle of the sky. If you are angrier that they tried to kill him and not about him trying to kill Louis after beating his ass, think about that.)

And yet, antiblackness underpins the show’s fandom at horrifying rates. It shapes the way that Louis and Claudia are treated by the fandom and how Black fans are not given space in said fandom. Fans have spent two seasons making up reasons to dislike Louis while calling Lestat their little meow meow and disavowing the stuff he absolutely does in-show.  

The connection that then got locked into place for me when I saw yet another tweet from a white villain stan vilifying a Black character was… well, obvious.  It’s woobification with a side of antiblackness and I just don’t care for it. It’s not that fandom broadly can’t dislike Black characters “because they’re Black”, as if we’re over protective of the undeserving. It’s that fandom already makes it clear that it dislikes these characters because they’re Black and, in this case over a decade, cannot imagine extending a bad boss the same grace they do a cannibal serial killer.

Jack isn’t the cuddliest character on Hannibal and I don’t think I’d enjoy him as my direct supervisor.

However, if you came out of that show thinking he was the worst character on the show – especially if you’re reading into his relationship with Will – you probably shouldn’t be on Al Gore’s internet claiming you know anything about media literacy because you certainly did not understand anything about the show you supposedly watched and love.