After last year’s insane season two finale nothing in “Hannibal” was certain. You really had no idea how things would progress into season three and who would survive to be part of it. Four of the show’s main characters were dead or bleeding out.

The beautifully made series has always been a bit of a rebel. In the first two seasons, it established a new world that took only pieces from the Thomas Harris books and inverted those ideas into something else to make for a more immersive and insane world. This is one of the very few cases where the villagers of the internet didn’t take to their social networks with torches and pitchforks angry about the series not sticking close to the source material. And it really is a large jump from that material but at the same time, it is the most well-written love letter ever given to horror literature.

The first few episodes of season three manage to free itself more from that source material and also goes out on a very ballsy limb and separates itself from the atmosphere and structure of the first two seasons.

This season finds Hannibal in Italy. He and Dr. Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) have set themselves up with some new identities. We get a really good look at the ever-shifting dynamic between these two. Their retro verse “Bride of Frankenstein” relationship is brilliant. They quickly became my favorite couple from anything, ever.

Hannibal, of course, has not stopped eating people. He continues to consume people but as he does he brings Du Maurier a little closer to his world with every meal.

I never thought I would love Anderson coupled with someone more than I did her and Duchovny on “The X-Files” but this relationship proved me wrong. These two are amazing together.

Du Maurier constantly challenges Hannibal’s ways but does not run from them. The longer they are together the more truth she is able to give Hannibal. She even goes so far as to tell him that he will eventually be caught.

The betrayal and broken relationship between Hannibal and Will Graham that fueled the last few minutes of season two is the main focus of the season so far.

Graham is on the hunt for Hannibal. His reasons are not quite clear. A lot of apprehension lies in that very thing. What will he do when he gets to Hannibal? He approaches the chase with forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t kill Hannibal given the chance. Graham’s path is more times than not, a scarier one than Hannibal’s. We know what Hannibal is but Will Graham is still on the fence and is more of the wild card when it comes to what will happen.

In season three “Hannibal” manages to kill itself to save itself. The series is one of the most beautifully shot TV shows I have ever seen and the narrative approach is fascinating. But season one and two always suffered from being chained to a weekly crime procedural component. I always figured that was NBC injected the crime procedure aspect of it in order to play it safe with something that they are familiar with. However, “Hannibal” didn’t need to play safe. In fact, it needs to be unrestrained. In season three we get exactly that. You can almost feel Brian Fuller and team take complete control.

Instead of making the manhunt in Italy feel like a large blockbuster production, they go in the opposite direction. The first few episodes feel like an unbridled indie film. It jumps around chronologically, it doesn’t bother explaining itself and it turns the established aesthetic of the show and turns it up to 11.

Brian Reitzell’s score continues to be a character all on its own. His uses of sounds that verge on distorted melody are more haunting and erratic than ever. Keep an ear out for the reprisal of the drip sounds that Will Graham heard in his cell during season two. Reitzell is constantly telling a subliminal story that screams like a jazz band that was raised by brass percussion and horror. “Hannibal” would not be “Hannibal” without his sounds.

The first few episodes of “Hannibal” season three are a great and disorientating start. While it transformed itself from top to bottom it also becomes its own show. I can firmly say now that there is nothing else like this. It feels like being in lucid sleep after eating a rare stake and drinking caffeine while a nearby neighbor plays Italian opera music.