If it's one thing we love, more than dear family members and this great United States of America, it's NBC's "Hannibal." The operatic horror series, based on the Thomas Harris novels that also inspired "Silence of the Lambs," "Manhunter," and, yes, "Hannibal" (sorry if this is getting confusing), is one of the most visually striking, emotionally riveting and just-plain-scary television series to ever hit the small screen. All of this makes the wait in between seasons downright torturous, especially since it was recently announced that the show wouldn't return until summer. And thanks to a new trailer for the third season that NBC has just unleashed, well, that wait is going to be even harder.

The show, of course, follows the adventures of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), a murderous shrink who is involved in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an FBI profiler named Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). For those of you who haven't seen season 2 yet, we'll tread lightly on spoilers, but it does appear that Will has survived a particularly ghoulish season finale and that Hannibal is somewhere in Europe.

In fact, by the looks of it, this new season (overseen, as always, by the brilliant Bryan Fuller) will combine a number of Harris novels, borrowing from "Hannibal Rising" (with the Lady Murasaki character being introduced), "Red Dragon" (Richard Armitage from "The Hobbit" was recently cast as the Tooth Fairy himself, Francis Dollarhyde) and "Hannibal" (yes, Mason Verger and his flesh-eating pigs will be back). In other words, this season is going to be wild.

For a while Fuller spoke about how the production didn't have the rights to some characters and scenarios from "Silence of the Lambs," partially because another network was working on a show completely centered around the Clarice Starling character (essayed by Jodie Foster in "Silence of the Lambs" and Julianne Moore in "Hannibal"), but that clearly never went anywhere. My out-of-left-field prediction for the conclusion of season 3 is that Will is out and a new female profiler is introduced... One we might already be familiar with...