cellar door. we might as well be a symphony.: The Handmaid's Tale

We have lived through six seasons of violence and brutality against women, witnessed the cruel deaths of so many of them, seen characters escape only to be returned to even worse situations. The Handmaid’s Tale, which is both a beginning and an end at the same time, makes the deliberate decision to spend an entire episode on the hope of a new start, never leaving the bounds of recaptured American territory, deliberately leaving the space and time for reflection, breathing, regathering. It’s not the end of the fight – Mayday and the US forces are intent to fight Gilead state-by-state, a process that sounds like it could take a long time, and Gilead is reorganising now that the Boston High Commanders are all dead, promoting people from Western states (which means that Hannah's family will be moving from far away Colorado to much closer Washington D.C.) to take over leadership. All of this is for the future though, not for The Handmaid’s Tale, which has now ended with the beginning of the storytelling of what happened. This has always been June’s story, but now it will be June’s story as told by June, left for future generations to read – as her mother says, for the people who are still incessantly looking for their lost loved ones and need hope, and as Luke says, as tribute to those who loved her along the way and were lost in the struggle. Margaret Atwood transported June’s manuscript so far into the future that it was read by archaeologists who had to piece together the to them frequently culturally ineligible pieces to make sense of the past, but June’s story here is about the close future, where a warning about what happened in Gilead is salient and relevant, where a new future must be built with the full awareness of what exactly happened to allow the past to occur. It’s fitting because that is precisely the function that this show has fulfilled over the last few years, as the distance between what the show depicts and what reality is becoming has narrowed.

What I love about this finale, and maybe didn’t expect because The Handmaid’s Tale has been so incessantly brutal, is that the entirety of it is about the women who surround June. Serena’s whole arc of trying to change Gilead from the inside, her incomplete journey to realising how wrong Gilead was from conception, has now ended for good. She is a refugee now, stateless, as disempowered as she ever has been. Before she goes on a bus to a UN refugee camp with Noah, she talks to June. She gives her the opportunity to grieve Nick, which June refuses (“He led a violent and dishonest life”), but Serena reminds her that if he had the opportunity, he would have chosen her and Holly. June tells Serena that she it is enough to be Noah’s mother, that she should focus on that, be that, instead of trying to reach for more, and these words land with her once she is alone with Noah on the cot in the camp – that this can maybe be enough for her. Serena also finally fully takes responsibility for what she has done to June without attempting to shift the blame or argue that her own suffering has cancelled out what she has done, and it is delivered with enough genuine intention that June, for the first time, accepts it and forgives Serena – and maybe that forgiveness ultimately means more to Serena than the power she has been trying to attain. In the end, Serena is left with a bed, chair and table – and maybe that is enough to sustain her and Noah, in its eerie echo of how June begins her own story, with Offred in her chamber that contains the same things, just enough to forge a new path to freedom.

June goes home to her old neighbourhood, looking into the storefront of what used to be an ice cream parlour, the same one she bonded with Emily over all those years ago when they first met. And then the most impossible thing happens – Emily is right there, another survivor, somehow back at the end of the beginning. June takes something away from all of her interactions in the episode, but among them, this one is more magical than even Janine’s survival and return is. Emily, who went back to Gilead, should have died, but here she is, telling her own story of survival in a household as a Martha, with a Commander who became a friend, with a tentative sustained connection to her wife and child and the prospect of rebuilding those bonds. She says that her family was the reason for why she was fighting, and the same is true for June, with Hannah still somewhere in Gilead. Emily went back because she found it impossible to return to a regular life in Canada, even when she reunited with her family, and later in the episode, when June makes up her mind to return to the fight not just for Hannah but for all the other children, there are echoes of Emily’s resolute decision in her. As long as Gilead continues to exist, they won’t be safe wherever they are. Gilead isn’t just a regime, a state, it’s an ideology that spreads like the plague (remember what happened in Canada), and can therefore reach wherever it infects the minds of others. June and Emily’s reunion is so impossible that, as Emily says, they might as well adjust their concept of the impossible and believe in what can happen in the future. As they walk along, Guardians are strung up on the walls that used to hold the victims of Gilead.

At the halfway point of the episode, June dreams of a present that is unlike the past before Gilead or Gilead itself: it’s a version of reality where Gilead never happened, where Janine never lost an eye, where all those friends she made along the way didn’t die horrible deaths. They are singing along to Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide, they are unburdened by the knowledge of what horrors Gilead has wrought. It’s an unreachable dream, but in its essence, it doesn’t deny what happened: it just paints a picture of what life should have been, what each of these women was robbed of.

If I were more cynical, I would refute the impossible rescue of Janine, but instead it feels as if some kind of account is being righted: nobody has suffered more. If Janine did not end up free at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, hope would be lost. Someone wakes up June, who has fallen asleep exhausted on the streets, to take her to the new border with Gilead, where Eyes drag a body forward on the path, and then Naomi and Lydia step into the light. They have returned Janine, and even more incredibly, Charlotte. We won’t know what strings Lydia pulled, who was a minute away from being hanged, to deliver on her own promise to save her girl, but here she is, free and united with her daughter. June thanks Lydia, who returns to Gilead to continue the fight on the inside and on The Testaments: “Blessed is the woman who does not walk in stride with the wicked.” It has taken a long time for Lydia to realise that Gilead is brutalising these women, that she has sold herself to a wicked regime by doing its bidding, and it feels impossible to forgive her for her past actions, but there is value to changing your mind at the risk of your own life.

Finally, after Luke has managed to restore power and opened Logan airport, Holly returns with baby Holly to reunite with her daughter. June, at this point, has already made up her mind. She has to return, “because Gilead doesn’t need to be beaten, it needs to be broken”. She is doing it to get Hannah back, but also for the children and grandchildren who won’t be safe until Gilead is gone. She has come to this decision completely independently of Luke, and this whole episode makes it clear that their paths have finally diverged, even if they may come back together in the future. Luke has found his place: he will continue his fight with Mayday, has found meaning in using his skills for the resistance, even if that means that June is walking a different path from him. They don’t even fight about this, both of them have made up their mind. Both Holly and Luke tell June to write her book as a record, to create something that can be passed on into the future. She returns to the burned out shell of the Waterford residence, where everything began, to the chamber she found an impossible escape from, to begin narrating her story.

Random notes:

I loved the episode, I thought it was a graceful an end as the show could have delivered, and yet I ask: what about Moira? It’s never been more glaringly obvious that this show stopped having ideas about what to do with her character a long time ago and then didn’t even make an effort in this final episode. By all rights, it should have been June and Moira at the end of all of this, especially with the theme of the episode being all of the women that June connected with. Justice for Moira!

Serena: Congratulations on your victory.
June: None of it would have happened without you.
Serena: Yes. I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Serena, the unnamed architect of Gilead, ended up being the one to deliver the greatest blow to the regime, helping to kill its elite which included her husband. She doesn’t know yet what the consequences will be, especially for herself, but it’s the least self-interested thing she has done, and I think it’s this decision that ultimately made it possible for June to forgive her. It’s also a lovely coda that June picks out a Boston Red Sox onesie for Noah that saves Serena in her new, severely resource-depleted life: June has been involved in every step of Noah’s life, has been more instrumental in his life and survival than anyone else.

We love a good knitted hat!

I actually cheered when I realised that Alexis Bledel agreed to return for the final episode to give Emily a last chance to shine: I still think this would have been a better final season if she had remained on the show.

There’s some great acting in this episode, but the very bittersweet moment of June seeing Janine united with Charlotte, while haunted with memories of Hannah, is a stand-out. She is so happy for her, and yet she is grieving that her own reunion is still far out of reach.

I very recently realised that Mabel Li is going to be in The Testaments (maybe you can’t make The Handmaid’s Tale without Australian actors), so there’s a good chance that I’ll start writing about the show once it airs next year.

What this episode reminded me of, in a weird way, is the series finale of the great The Expanse: where by all rights not everyone should have made it through alive, based on what had happened on the show previously and the books it was based on, and yet in the end, survival triumphed. It feels like such an impossibly positive ending for a show that was frequently almost unbearably bleak, and yet I'm glad that it happened this way, at this moment in time, where everything seems to be getting darker.

Thursday, 22 May 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale – They don’t get to decide who you are anymore.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x09 Execution.

As armed Handmaids wreak havoc upon the households of their Commanders, the group of Red Centre Handmaids including Moira, Janine and June are making their way out of Gilead, hoping that the resistance has successfully taken over the guard post on the border. All three of them intend to stay behind to continue the fight, in spite of the fact that June at least will have a hard time from here on out to remain unrecognised. They fall at the first hurdle: the Guardians have not been overpowered, and instead arrest everyone, singling out June who identifies herself to spare the life of the other women who the Guardians are all too ready to kill one by one. It is astonishing in and of itself that pictures of June haven’t been circulated widely enough that they can’t pick her out of a line-up. Mayday’s bombs are going off and somehow, Gilead’s command knows exactly who the motor behind all of this is. All of the dreams about a kinder, gentler Gilead that Serena and Lawrence may have harboured are dead now.

Serena, wandering the streets bathed in the blood of her fellow Wives and their husbands, finds shelter in Commander Lawrence’s house for now, but Naomi, awoken from her sedative-induced slumber, voices what is likely already being discussed by all the surviving Commanders. The dream of New Bethlehem is dead, the regime will strike back mercilessly, beginning with the ceremonious killing of the apprehended women. Naomi tells Serena to return to her husband, whom she has helpfully called over. Commander Wharton appears apologetic and ready to make amends to get her back, offers to try for their own children without admitting that if they failed, he would fall right back on his original plan. Serena is trapped now: Gabriel wants her to go deeper into Gilead, further away from the safe haven of New Bethlehem, a place that already no longer holds the promise of a better or different life. He also tells Serena that June was behind everything and used the wedding ceremony to execute her plans: a very personal betrayal of trust and the idea that they were ever friends, but it’s interesting to watch Serena grapple with this information: she has seen behind the façade of the Commanders now and seems to understand June more than she ever has, and is horrified at the idea of a public execution. If all of her plans to create a better world for Noah to grow up in and for herself to be free have failed, than her next best bet is for June’s rebellion to succeed.
Wharton goes to speak to June, who is being kept separate from the other women in a cage. He opens the cage, places two chairs opposite each other. I’m not sure what he seeks from her: a sense of triumph at having the face of the rebellion in front of him and planning her execution, being able to use his interpretation of scripture to force her to admit fault, or a validation of his very personal anger that June used his wedding, his wife, for her purposes. In any case, June comes prepared for his religious arguments and counteracts them with her own interpretation of god. She refutes his arguments (“That’s the thing about state-sanctioned rape. Patience is not an option.”), telling him that nothing about Gilead has ever been about piety, that it has always been about power. Wharton, as one of the few surviving Commanders, is the most self-righteous one, a man who has distinguished himself from the other Commanders and maybe because of that reason has even less capacity to admit to the true nature of the regime he has built. How could he argue against her, having witnessed the excesses of people like Commander Bell at Jezebel’s? June compels him to “be the man” that Serena believes him to be, but there’s no world in which Wharton is capable of admitting his wrongs to a woman he despises so much.

The public execution of June and the Handmaids is less of a massive spectacle than we are used to from Gilead, but this is a nation under pressure now: 37 Commanders have died (nobody mentions the fate of their Wives). The econo-people asked to witness the deaths are horrified at the notion that Handmaids are being led to the gallows, since the entire ideology of Gilead is built on the idea that their fertility makes them holy. It’s a miscalculation, as is adding Aunt Lydia to the mix, who is horrified to see her beloved girls and especially Janine about to be executed by a regime she so recently supported. “They have been prisoners of wicked, godless men.”, she shouts into the masses, and then Wharton, so eager to once again win the argument and subdue her, gives June a pulpit to speak from.

June: Who have too long been oppressed by evil. Rise Up. Fight for your freedom. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

As June is lifted up by the rope, Mayday, including Luke, begin the attack with knives and guns. Rita saves June’s life. US fighter jets begin a bombing campaign in Boston. Wharton manages to escape.

If you consider the twist in the episode, that the titular Execution should have applied to the women that were captured and June herself but that they managed to, against all odds, be rescued at the last moment by Mayday, ready to strike at the public execution, then it becomes all about the three men who are headed for the doomed airplane.
Nick, who has revealed his true face, or maybe just decided to pursue the path of least resistance, is a father now, and his wife eggs him on to embrace a more brutal Gilead because June’s plan has put her and their child in danger. He is the future of Gilead – a man who would have amounted to nothing much in the world before Gilead has lifted himself into new heights in this world which rewards opportunism so highly. He had as many opportunities as Serena to choose a different path, and yet he ends up on the same plane as his father-in-law.
Commander Lawrence, who started off as a pragmatist deeply troubled by his own sins and yet eager to avoid real consequences for his actions (such as a war crimes trial), seems horrified at the prospect of seeing June executed, since he was such a vital part of the plan that he pursued to save his own skin. He even asks Serena to pray with him, and seems to already know that he will never see Naomi and Charlotte again when he sends them away together. He is desperate enough to ask this woman he married against his will to break the laws of Gilead and read to Charlotte, to teach her. “We’re her parents” (Janine would disagree), he says, but he already must know that he is unlikely to come back to this family, because everything he pursued before the Mayday attacks now puts him at odds with the surviving Commanders. Both he and Serena have nowhere else to go after the attack on the public execution: Serena is taken into protective custody by Mark Tuello (a man who holds her life in his hands – she, too, is under threat of being put on trial for her crimes), and Lawrence is now forced to help Tuello with his plan to ensure the success of the rebellion by placing a bomb on a plane (“I’m an economist, not James Bond”). June (again, why the most recognisable person would do this, I don’t know) drives him to the airport, but the Commanders arrive too early. Joseph, a man who wears the mantle of courage to awkwardly, is now faced with the choice of abandoning the plan or getting on the plane along with the bomb that will explode once it reaches altitude. There is a beauty to the fact that the least likely character to make the brave choice of self-sacrifice is the one who ultimately dooms the future of Gilead by taking out its remaining leadership – and Bradley Whitford gives an astonishing performance here, looking back at June emotionally before getting on. June watches Nick arrive, and there’s not really anything she can do: if she warned him or tried to save him, she would doom herself along with the fate of the entire resistance. Maybe, before he carelessly allowed for the killing of all those women at Jezebel’s, she would have still done it, but now June just watches as the plane takes off and explodes spectacularly in the sky. Like Joseph says to Nick, who knows to ask him about June’s fate: Can’t keep a good woman down.

Having just finished the astonishing second season of Andor, it’s very difficult not to watch these final episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale – a show that started all the way back in 2017 – and draw parallels, and think in particular about the contrasts. We don’t know yet who will make it to the end of this show or into The Testaments, but this episode cuts down the number of people to survive the beginning of the visible, large-scale rebellion significantly. The point of Andor – that a successful rebellion takes all kinds of different approaches and ideologies, and that frequently, its most relevant agents do not survive to see the world changed by their acts – resonates through The Handmaid’s Tale as well, but I find myself yearning for a broader spectrum of individual stories, for more of an insight into other perspectives, that I suppose we might still get from the spin-off but that are only gently teased for now. The Handmaid’s Tale does give us an insight into both sides of the equation through the eyes of Serena and June and who they are connected to, but this episode in particular gives us a glimpse of some stories on the sidelines that I think could have coloured in the picture even more. Mark Tuello, who has repeatedly proven he is willing to sacrifice anyone to the cause (but would he sacrifice himself as well, I wonder) and the story of how Ava/Aunt Phoebe went into deep cover in Gilead would make for a great show on its own. The so-called econo-people, who must make up the majority of Gilead have not appeared in this show since June sought shelter with a family and ultimately doomed them. Surely there is revolutionary potential in their difficult lives, so far removed from the luxuries of the Commander households, such a wide section of society that in no ways profits from the radical ideology of Gilead and yet fears the excesses of its terror. Without a glimpse of the bureaucracy (and it is such a cautionary tale to think that something driven by an obsession with rules and regulations above all can prop up any kind of regime without regards to the morality of it) behind Gilead beyond the Commanders at the top, we also don’t really have a sense of what will keep the regime together now that most of them are dead. One more to go!

Random notes:

This is beside the point of the episode but the reveal that D’Arcy Carden’s character was CIA the whole time made me realise that I really want a 1940s TV show in which she plays an OSS agent, with the severe sense that she would have fit seamlessly and perfectly into my beloved Bomb Girls. I would watch seasons of that.

I wonder what will happen Serena at the end of all of this. June convinces her to share the vital information about where the Commanders are, and she must know that this means Wharton’s death: which signifies the end of any connection to Gilead and dreams of reforming it into something different. It’s a clear choice between a woman who has saved her life (in spite of hating her) and a man who has proven to be a disappointment (in spite of claiming to love her).

Nick was never going to make it, but there’s something powerful in leaving it in June’s hands to decide his fate and to finally fully embrace the idea that the rebellion requires her to cut off her personal feelings. It would have hit harder emotionally if he hadn’t revealed himself as the opportunist willing to kill anyone to save himself and June, but then, I don’t think June would have made the same choice in that case, and there’s a list of character whom she wouldn’t have allowed to get on that plane even if it had meant that the plan failed (this is what sets June apart from most of the characters in Andor, I would say). June has not spent her entire life training for this, she was thrown into this role, and as frustrating as her feelings about Nick have been, especially in this season, I do like the conflict between her personal feelings and the requirements of her as a figurehead of the rebellion.

Wednesday, 14 May 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale - You’re just like the rest of them.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x08 Exodus.

Who were we under these clothes? Who could we be? Who had they prevented us from being?

Exodus is a thrilling episode. It is in essence a heist, precariously perched between success and failure, hinging on the women who have become a symbol of Gilead’s evil and wrongness. Gilead’s great success is its fertility programme, which rests on the rape and exploitation of the Handmaids. They are in every powerful household, robbed of their name and individuality, reduced to their function of carrying children for Commanders and their Wives. June has decided that these women in their uniform of red will be her army – a perfect army because of their access to power, granted because nobody expects them to organise and fight back. In Serena’s great wedding ceremony, they sit quietly in the back. At the reception, they side on the sidelines. In the lives of the Commanders, they exist quietly, aware of the brutality they would face if they resisted, embedded in the grand mansions. All it takes is some knives, handed off one by one in the pews of the church, and the sedatives that Rita has baked into Serena’s grandiose wedding cake. It’s such an elegant beginning to the revolution, making use of Gilead’s arrogance and its constant misjudging and underestimation of the women it has subjugated.
Apart from June’s voiceover, pondering the life before Gilead, when capitalism was the engine that drove the fashion industry, the two-sided sword of personal choice in what to wear but also frivolity in spending hours at work to earn the money to buy new clothes, the majority of the plot unfolds quietly, because the Handmaids are meant to be seen, not heard. June and Moira craft their own robes, hiding the knives they will hand out, and Aunt Phoebe guides them to their place at the back of the church. The ceremony is what you would expect in a totalitarian state in which the Commanders are heads of church and state at the same time: instead of a priest, Nick leads it, marrying Serena Joy to Commander Waterford. It’s a reminder of his stellar rise through the Gileadean hierarchy: once a driver living over the Waterford’s garage, he is now vested with the full power to marry his former employer to one of the most powerful men in Gilead, who is also his father-in-law.
Afterwards, there is a moment of panic when Serena takes time out of her own wedding to address the Handmaids. June and Moira slip to the back, attempting to hide their faces in their white wings, but there is still just enough space visible to capture June’s eyerolls at her little speech about how Gilead is changing and how Serena could have been kinder to her own Handmaid, and how they “both said unforgivable things to one another, and now I can count her as a good friend”. It’s spin, and branding, but it is also, unfortunately for Serena, genuine: she truly thinks that this is the truth of her and June’s relationship, and she still believes that her plans for a kinder and gentler Gilead will come to fruition now that she has shored them up with her marriage to a man who can deliver them. There is such a clear engine for the plot in this episode: will the uprising succeed or not – but there is a quieter current that runs through it that leads inevitably to the moment when Serena realises that all of her meticulous plans have come to nothing because she has once again trusted the wrong person, and it’s a disillusionment that happens very, very quickly.

At the reception, the rest of the knives are handed out to the remaining Handmaids. The cake – dosed with enough sedatives to put everyone to sleep in one to two hours – is cut and handed out, and, in the case of the Handmaids, hidden under their chairs. At the last moment, it looks like the plot will fail because Aunt Lydia, returned from Washington D.C. too soon, returns just in time to catch a glimpse of June and become suspicious enough to put all the pieces together. She finds the left behind cakes. She forces her way into the sleeping chambers of the Handmaids in the Red Centre and finds one of her girls fully clothed under the blankets, trembling at her discovery.

But first, before all the things that June and Moira have set in motion begin to unfold, Serena is carried over the threshold of her new house in Boston by her new husband. They’ve had their meticulously planned ceremony; they’ve shared a romantic dance. Her life back in power is just beginning, and she has plans to atone that require now personal sacrifices. But when she looks around, she sees a Handmaid kneeling there, ready to begin her service (I wonder if she, too, has been given a knife, or if she didn’t make it to the wedding). Ofgabriel is there to provide the many children that her new husband has been dreaming of, just in case Serena’s own fertility fails. As much as Serena’s rocky road to change has been frustrating and half-realised, I think that this is a moment of some true redemption: she does not back down. She is furious (at herself, perhaps most of all: “I was so stupid to do this again”), and betrayed. She insists to Gabriel that Handmaids are people, not vessels, and attempts to leave (“You think God wants this abomination of a marriage?”), but is stopped by a Guardian. Gabriel reveals who he truly is, underneath this thin veneer of civility: a man who has indulged her but will now have his due, who will never take Serena seriously enough to sacrifice anything that is important to him. It looks like he might imprison her in another marriage, the way that Fred did at the end when he revealed his true face, but then she throws the truth at his face: as a Commander, he cannot be a good man and good husband. She leaves through the door with Noah, but where will she go, and what will the world even look like in a few hours when the knives come out and the bombs go off?

The Handmaids walk down the snowy Boston streets, in an episode that does beautiful work with their uniform movement, capturing them in overhead shots. Individual Handmaids pull off from the column one by one to go home to their Commanders, knives at the ready. June goes to Commander Bell’s house where he is dozing off next to the phone, sedated by the cake and by whiskey. He puts up no fight – this isn’t a man who has ever had to fight. With beautiful symmetry, June stabs him through the eye and then frees Janine, who has lost an eye. When they turn up together at the Red Centre, Aunt Lydia is holding everyone hostage, commanding the one remaining Guardian against this massive betrayal she has uncovered. She has ranted scripture at them, and Moira, who Lydia does not remember, has stood up to her, but what changes the equation is the appearance of Janine. It’s interesting that Lydia has such a limited ability to think in structural terms about what Gilead is doing, that she only started to truly question things when she saw the effects on one specific girl she cared about more than the others.

June: You did this. You trained us to be like this. After you beat us and after you mutilated us, and after you tortured us, after you took our children away. You did this. But I think you’ve seen things you can’t unsee. And I think that you’ve learnt things that you can’t unlearn. And I know that in your heart of hearts you know that rape is rape. And you know it wasn’t our fault and we don’t deserve this. And we’re not fallen women, we’re rising up because in each and every one of us is this immaculate soul that was given to us by God, that is just crying out for dignity and freedom.
[…] Is there a God that would empower a woman like you to stand up for us? To arc toward the light, and to finally declare: enough? Because we, all of us, together, we’ve had enough.

It’s a great speech, once again falling back on June’s personal version of religion that exists separately from what Gilead has twisted religion into, put into precise terms that Lydia is bound to resonate with. Janine is who changes Lydia’s mind, and she lets them all go, and the Guardian – more a boy than a man – lets it happen. They are free. The revolution has begun, but how far will it come in the two episodes that remain, and who will survive to see the end?

Random notes:

The unspoken fact about this episode, which I thought was very good and compelling, is that the tension between the plot succeeding or failing existed almost solely because June was the weak spot. If she hadn’t been there, there would have been barely any risk of discovery – even though the things that gives it away in the end is Lydia’s suspicion (by itself mainly raised because she thought she spotted June) and finding of the cakes under the chairs. June had to be there for story reasons – she is the face of the rebellion – but she is also one of the most recognisable faces in Gilead, who has in the past intersected with several of the guests. There was no reason why she had to be the one there, or why she shouldn’t have simply gone off to kill Bell after the sedative was delivered without ever attending the wedding.

There’s almost a fairy tale quality to this episode, especially with the cake putting the entire kingdom to sleep, but I did giggle a little bit at the very Fight Club vibes in the opening monologue.

Nick, in his sermon at the church, says “mine own child first and forever”, opening the forever question of which child he is talking about. June seems ready to blow the plan at several points, and for a moment I thought she might just use her knife on him instead of freeing Janine. I think Rita’s very well-timed “eye on the prize” speech to get rid of Serena is aimed directly at June and her furious, fuming eyes.

Serena’s hopeful little conversation with Commander Lawrence is almost tragic: she tells him how committed she is to their shared plan, not knowing that he has moved on, that he knows she cannot deliver on them, that he himself delivered this wedding as the perfect opportunity to rid himself of his political rivals. Do we think that he ate the cake at least? He definitely encourages his beloved new wife to have heaps of it, perhaps looking forward to a moment of quiet before preparing for the fall-out.

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale – We’re here for all of those women.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x07 Shattered.

If there is one noticeable difference in tone since previous seasons of this show, it’s that we’re naming things as they are: in this episode alone, Luke calls Nick a “Nazi” and questions how June could fall in love with one, and Commander Lawrence, now a more reliable contact to the inside of Gilead because it’s in his self-interest to support Mayday, has the word “fascist” thrown at him, immutable in spite of his cooperation. A lot has changed since this show started in 2017, with the rise of the extreme right being the most horrifying monster to rear its ugly head. Since the first season, religious extremists have forged a happy and fruitful alliance with these groups, and it has altered the language of the show accordingly.

June’s faith in Nick has destroyed Mayday’s plans to kill the Commanders at Jezebel’s, and it has cost the lives of the women forced to work there, who are all shot, with the exception of Janine, who is taken away. It’s Nick who is responsible for these deaths, but June is culpable as well, because she trusted him with information that she should have never given him. These women were meant to be rescued, and now, they have died – as so many others have who followed June. Nick argues what we already know about him, that the only thing he has always reliably done has been saving June, that he has never shown any dedication beyond protecting himself and her – but she loved him, and she thought he was someone he wasn’t, because what does it say about her now that she could have loved such a man?

June: You gave up those women to save yourself.
Nick: We all want to save ourselves. We’re fucking human, that’s what we do.
June: You’re just like them.
Nick: And you love me. So what does that make you?

I think the twist that Lawrence goes to Mayday straight away to ensure that other plans are in motion to kill the warhawks who have already planned his death is interesting: here is a man who has never, by anyone, been considered as more than self-interested. He is reliable because he is predictable, because nobody expects him to do more than look out for himself. That makes him a better ally in this case, because what could be a greater motivator than saving his own life by ensuring that his enemies die? And what better occasion to hit as many influential people in Gilead as possible than Serena’s wedding, which has now been moved to Boston because in her meeting with other, proper Gileadean wives, it has become obvious that her plans for reform are falling on deaf ears. All these wives – these women in green, facing a woman who no longer wears that colour and is not one of their own anymore – have no interest in reforming a system that benefits them. They so easily fall into a rhythm of “my husband says” without holding a thought of their own, revealing to Serena that her plans – and what she considers Commander Wharton’s plans for now, as well – are doomed to fail without a show of power. With the wedding being back in Gilead, it also means that Handmaids will be present, forced to witness a ceremony so connected to their own subjugation, never meeting the bride’s eyes. It’s already a concession that Serena has to make, but it’s also the weak point, because Mayday can use them to infiltrate the ceremony. Lawrence also knows exactly how to hook June on his plan, as she’s packing up to leave a place that is no longer welcoming to her: would she want Serena to win in the end, to have her move up in the world while June’s legacy will be defeat?

On the sidelines of these plans developing, Luke and June once again reaffirm that they will continue to support each other, that their love still exists in spite of everything that happened, not just because of Hannah. Luke is furious, but he can’t stop loving June (June asks him to not pity her, and gives him an out, but he doesn’t take it). I wish that Luke had gotten a bit more to do this season, that he was more than just a mirror for June to reflect her own weaknesses back at her, but at least his bombs are still in play: with Serena requiring more Guardian support at her wedding, all those precious buildings will be unguarded. If anything, this plan feels more solid than the original one did, except it comes at the cost of all those lives lost at Jezebel’s.

Janine, meanwhile, is once again taking the brunt of all the horrors, perhaps, as Commander Lawrence suggests, wishing she had died at Jezebel’s instead. Commander Bell has saved his favourite and taken her on as a Handmaid, and as much as Aunt Lydia is overjoyed to her that she is still alive, she realises what that means for her instantly. She is not “presentable” enough to attend Serena’s wedding, because Commander Bell and his wife seem to take joy in abusing and beating her (the cold shiver of “we’ve been working on her adjustment all morning”), which thankfully happens off screen. June has her own plans to save her, but I hate that the show keeps falling back into its favourite habit of torturing Janine, who has survived so much. If she had left with June and Moira, she’d be safe and sound with Mayday now, but she made the selfless decision of staying behind, and is paying for her courage now.

Moira and June sneak into the Handmaids training centre while Lawrence gets Aunt Lydia out of the way, offering her the opportunity to speak to the birthing centre plans in D.C. Aunt Phoebe is in place – a resistance mole, placed perfectly for this mission – to prepare the Handmaids for their mission. Before the shit hits the fan, June offers a prayer that ends with “Give us the strength to murder those goddamn motherfuckers.”

Random notes:

What an absolute treat to have D’Arcy Carden join the revolution, even if it’s almost the end. There should have been many more seasons of A League of Their Own, but I’m always happy to see her. I wonder if her character will carry through to The Testaments.

Nick, being revealed as who he truly is to the only person whose opinion he cares about, now takes it all to the obvious conclusion: he no longer has to pretend to care, he can do the easiest thing in the world after proclaiming that it’s all just about saving his own skin, and step back from his promise to Rita to help her find her family. Which brings Rita back into the Mayday fold, ready to deliver for them.

I really like June and Moira’s little conversation, where Moira is all too ready to forgive June for trusting Nick: she says that if a Commander had saved her life, she might have fallen in love with him too if he was “Angelina Jolie hot” (June, in what is a funny moment in a very dreary episode, says that Nick is definitely not that).

“Her narcissism brought down one nation, now it’s going to bring down another.”

Moira: Say something leaderish. Leadery.

Thursday, 1 May 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale - Are you on board?

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x06 Surprise.

All the tension of this episode – it’s the shortest of the season so far, and yet the most propulsive in terms of story– comes from the question of whether June and Mayday’s plot will be betrayed. The whole point of a secret plan is that it remains so, that as few people as possible learn about it, and yet June, due to a series of truly unfortunate decisions very much in line with what Moira blamed her for in the previous episode, now has to rely on a group of people who are, for various reasons, inherently untrustworthy. As much as June has been in the resistance for a long time now, she is not a seasoned revolutionary, and by the end of the episode it becomes obvious that the plan will fail because she trusted the wrong person.

Worse than that, the person who does end up betraying her is the one, among the three who could have, she trusted the most. Commander Lawrence, so hesitant to get involved in anything related to June, both for professional and personal reasons (the episode reminds us that June let his wife die), turns out to be trustworthy because he can personally profit from what Mayday have planned. The very Commanders who he has just spied plotting his death through the walls of Jezebel’s will die in the attack, leaving him the sole man standing to finish his project, which he does very directly connect to his wife in this episode. His guilt is not so much derived from the pain and suffering caused to June and all the other women like her, but for creating a prison for his wife, who was utterly miserable in Gilead. It’s a reminder that all these characters have personal motivations for their actions that are less about ideological resistance to a reprehensible regime and more about the specific people they have lost or are trying to save. Lawrence gets out Moira safe, but June stays behind to meet up with Nick, who is tasked with retrieving the letters and plans from Jezebel’s that were locked in the safe. It has always been clear that Nick’s uneasy cooperation with Mark Tuello is about June and their daughter Holly, not about any intention to destroy Gilead. His love for June – who, he can guess, is engaged in activity that makes future meetings more and more unlikely, is the reason for the foolish and reckless decision to ask her to stay the night. June’s decision to stay, in the context of all that is on the line and all she owes to Moira and Janine, is completely bewildering. Nick thinks that his father-in-law has left New Bethlehem for D.C. with Rose, but of course, with all that has been happening, with his guilt about killing the Guardian in the hospital, he should have realised not to rely on it. Commander Wharton is diligent and keyed into everything that happens in Gilead, and he has made it explicitly clear in the past that he is watching everything that Nick does. Of course he received a phone call when the Guardian died, and of course he’s decided to turn back to confront Nick – there are just too many suspicious coincidences piling up.

While June waits in the car outside the house, Nick is on the brink of discovery. Wharton is not a man who is easily lied to, and he loses his temper for the first time here, revealing how truly dangerous he is underneath the veneer of control and civility. He has always been the most dangerous of the Commanders because of his control, for the very reason that keeps him so far away from the other Commanders at Jezebel’s: he is a true believer, and he is powerful enough that he can afford not to buy into this scheme of mutually assured destruction that they engage in whenever they go out in mobs to terrorise the women at Jezebel’s. Nick has to give him something, and he’s not going to sell out June, whom he loves, whom he made silly, childish plans with when they were meeting in his apartment above the Waterfords’ garage. It’s June’s naivety that she’s never made a difference between trusting Nick with her life and trusting him with information about Mayday’s activities, in spite of the fact that he’s repeatedly proved that he can only be trusted with the former.

June, left out in the rain, flees to the only other potentially safe place in New Bethlehem. It’s a last resort, especially in light of how far these two characters have come just in the few months since they were on that train together. Serena is now engaged to the most powerful of Gilead’s Commanders and very much once again an architect of Gilead, even if it is towards a changed and potentially less obviously heinous one. June has reunited with her mother, whom she thought dead, and become a vital part of a plot to terrorise Gilead. There is a lot on the line for both of them, a lot that they are each risking by meeting. If you had to bet on anyone to betray June in this episode, it would be Serena with her incomplete comprehension about her culpability, her inability to admit just how responsible she was for the suffering of June and other women. And yet – as much as possible, and much more than expected – she provides a safe haven for June, even after they fight, even after June once again admits that she will never forgive Serena for what she has done, let her off the hook for her sins, that she has already done all she will ever do for her when she helped bring Noah into the world and saved her. June lies to Serena about why she is on the wrong side of the border, making up a story about asking Nick to come with her to Alaska to raise Holly with him, an idea that rubs Serena wrong in all the religious ways (“what does your husband think about that”). I think in the context of what Nick proposes later in the episode, a romantic plan of both of them running away to Paris that the show leaves hanging in air for viewers to interpret (would she say yes?), it’s interesting that she has never even thought about that option, not necessarily because of Luke, but because it would mean leaving Hannah behind – and how interesting that Serena, who I would have thought knows June better than most people at this point, doesn’t pick up on that.
The most interesting part of their conversation is when Serena reveals that she is now engaged to Commander Wharton (and, awkwardly, about to become Nick’s mother-in-law). June seems to react to it with a mixture of sarcasm and genuine concern for Serena, asking her if she initially realised that “Fred was Fred” (we’ve seen in a flashback that she didn’t – she was just as starry-eyed and excited as she is now) .She warns her that she is once again subjugating herself to a man and serving Gilead, but in light of the betrayal at the centre of the episode, there is a certain irony in the warning – June is not heeding her own advice, and she has completely disregarded what her own mother said about Nick.
Serena gives her clothes and a bed, and she invites Rita over the next day for them all to have a beautiful, serene, light-filled breakfast, during which June tries to recruit Rita into Mayday even though she has just reconnected with her sister and is on the brink of actually living a safe life (the subtext is that the plan that June is executing for Mayday would very much put an end to this – but what do they all owe to each other?). Nick comes over and proposes his plan of escape, very much motivated by the narrow escape he just had from his father-in-law, who pops by to see his fiancée – and tell her all about the thwarted plan against Jezebel’s, which he has shut down, because the only way Nick could get off the hook was to tell him everything about it. By trusting Nick too much, June has sold Janine’s freedom – the same Janine, who was so ready for the plan, who turns down Lydia’s attempt at making up for her own mistakes, and is now left with absolutely nothing. Janine decided to stay behind to save the other girls, and now her way out has been closed off.

Random notes:

Again a shout-out to Madeline Brewer in this episode: she gives Lydia absolutely nothing, she screams at her for taking away her daughter and having no way to give her back, she wants to burn Gilead to the ground. How will this all end for her?

June reading Serena’s writing – she’s definitely working on her comeback book – and realising that Serena truly does not comprehend what she has done – I do wonder where Serena will end up at the end of the show, if she will make it out alive. She’s irredeemable, but in a very interesting way.

I’ve thought about that flashback to Nick and June a lot, especially how Nick talks about that he would have never met June if it weren’t for Gilead – he would have been a nobody, and now he isn’t, even though he’s not yet managed his stellar rise. Remember, he was an Eye – an agent of terror in the regime, that transformed him from a man with no college education and prospects into someone who holds power, even if it’s not as much as his father-in-law. I don’t think that June is really hearing all of that, she’s just thinking about how romantic it would be to go to Paris or to a date at a presumably long-closed Italian restaurant. She calls him “good, kind, brave” – and it’s taken her this long to realise how wrong her assessment of him was.

One of the low-key favourite moments in the episode is Commander Lawrence teaching Charlotte/Angela chess: she is much too young, but I think the more important fact is that this is a man who, after hearing of June’s plot, thinks that she will grow up in a very different Gilead where it is no longer considered unwomanly to play chess, as Naomi thinks. He’s making up for the world he created that made his wife suffer, but now maybe he’s working to build one that will be kinder to his adopted daughter (and there’s always a fun aspect to how Naomi always seems to be lurking suspiciously, how he can never be sure that he isn’t being watched by the wife he never really wanted).

Monday, 28 April 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale - Are you getting us out?

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x05 Janine.

At the centre of Janine are two conversations. One compares suffering, inflicted – what it means to have been deliberately ignorant about the reality of it, which really just works as a cover-up of actual, direct responsibility for it. The other compares suffering, endured – and arrives at the realisation that victims of the regime playing one-up about it just play into the hands of the oppressors, because it takes the focus away from who is causing the pain and makes solidarity more difficult.
The first conversation happens between Aunt Lydia and Serena Joy, who are both engaged in a project of atoning for their guilt, although I’d argue that neither of them has admitted the true extent of it, and is conveniently looking at the other as less evolved. Lydia wants to save Janine after realising that she has been blind to the lies that were told to her about where her Handmaids would eventually end up, but it doesn’t feel like she is questioning the project itself, only that it wasn’t truthful about delivering the Handmaids out of their misery after they have endured their suffering. She still casts herself as a protector to her “girls” and as a victim. Serena is trying to build a different Gilead out of the example she is setting in New Bethlehem, but she, too, still believes in the project of Gilead itself, which she believes to be reformable. Serena doesn’t question the ideology behind Gilead, only the excesses it has committed against women, and she hides her responsibility for the specific suffering she has caused – to June, especially – behind her wish for a child at the time, a wish that we know is now exalted way beyond the borders of Gilead. The fertility clinic she has built in Canada, the freedom that women enjoy in New Bethlehem, are all meant to showcase was Serena originally wanted, as if any deviation from it was the fault of anyone but herself. The two meet in the middle: Aunt Lydia suggests that her Handmaids could work as attendants in new fertility clinics instead of being sent to the Colonies, or the wall, or to Jezebel’s. She doesn’t want to end the Handmaid programme, or allow “her girls” any true measure of freedom. Serena can’t admit that her dreams of a reformed Gilead are dead in the water (how truly dead they are is revealed when Joseph Lawrence overhears his fellow Commanders plotting his downfall and the end to his project of open borders through a spyhole at Jezebel’s), and that whatever freedom for women she has achieved in New Bethlehem is both short-lived and only accorded to a few privileged people such as herself. There is no true regret here, or atonement, only self-interested attempts to soothe their conscience.

The second conversation is much thornier, because it goes beyond the world the show has built and reflects, on the meta-level, on The Handmaid’s Tale itself. June and Moira, still furious at each other, are going into Jezebel’s to warn Janine about Mayday’s coming attack. They’re successful, and Janine seems prepared for what they have planned, giving them the best access point plus a door code. At the last moment, June asks Janine to come with them right now, putting the entire plan to save all of the women at risk. It’s Janine’s responsibility for the other women that keeps her there – nobody else is better equipped to ensure that as many of them get out before the attack than her. Moira is stunned that June would have put the life of her friend before those of all the other women here, and would change the plan at the last minute. They have it out: Moira accusing June of always putting herself first, using her own suffering to centre herself, without much thought about what everyone else has gone through. She asks if she has a right to her trauma as well, as someone who escaped the abuse and rape of Jezebel’s, or if only June’s pain as a Handmaid counts. They do find their way back to their love for each other, realising that this argument of measuring each other’s pain against each other means losing sight of who is inflicting the pain – but it’s also one of the core issues that this show has been struggling with, and by allowing June and Moira to make peace again, it feels like The Handmaid’s Tale is writing itself a hall pass in the process. This whole show has been based on the idea that the horrible aspect of Gilead is that these things that have historically happened to people of colour and queer people are now happening to straight, white women. June’s pain has always been more central than everyone else’s, because she’s the main character: Elisabeth Moss is the face of the show (a centrality that was initially maybe mediated when Emily was still around – and I wonder if there’s a version of the story where Alexis Bledel didn’t leave and it would have turned out differently) and June is the face of what Gilead has created, and now the face of the resistance against it. Moira has always been on the sidelines of that struggle, a supporting role in June’s deliverance and now her resistance. I wish that the show had given her more time to articulate the wish to break free from that, and followed her into that independence.

Once June and Moira come back to each other, the whole plan goes sideways. A guardian traps them in a room and attempts to rape Moira, a horrifying moment already but unbearable in light of the fact that Moira has returned to the place where she was raped and abused repeatedly. They kill the man, but his absence is quickly noted, and they are delayed by having to get rid of the body. At the gates, Luke is turned away by another guardian and almost arrested in his attempt to get June out. They end up having to rely on Commander Lawrence – a man who has just overheard the other Commanders plotting his death – to get them out in the boot of his car.

Serena, haunted by Aunt Lydia’s words about “a healthy womb must never go to waste”, walks right into a proposal by Commander Wharton that has been a long time coming: he’s built her a library as proof of his promise that he wants Gilead to change too, that he will never treat her as her former husband did. It’s very romantic, and also an impossible situation for Serena to escape: she has to believe him, because she can’t say no. We know that the bombs will soon go off, and I doubt that he will stick to his words when Gilead comes under actual threat.

Random notes:

Serena uses her wellness branding language so effortlessly – she fits neatly into a fold of the current overlap between fascism, wellness and self-improvement literature.

Lawrence is correct in saying that the other Commanders despise and disrespect Commander Bell, but he doesn’t have to taken into account that they mistrust him more, because he is already inherently suspect for not sharing in their aggressive misogyny. Lawrence wants to reform Gilead, but these men are happy with Gilead as it is.

Janine’s “You’re not a good guy. Just compared to them you are.” hits hard. It also makes me wish that Madeline Brewer, between this and her final season performance in You, had been more available this season.

Nick is in hot water as well, because one of the two guardians he shot to save Moira and Luke has survived and is waking up from his coma. He meets the mother of the man, only to make the inevitable task of getting rid of him harder. The walls are closing in.

Commander Lawrence’s “Oh hell no” was great comedic acting.

Thursday, 17 April 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale - This is my turn.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x04 Promotion.

I feel like it breaks us every day.

I don’t really have much in terms of theories about where all of these characters will end up at the conclusion of the series. The Handmaid’s Tale has often been bleak and cruel to its characters, and maybe it would feel like a cop out to give any of them a happy ending, to provide a beacon of hope when Gilead is going to continue existing, and the precarious places of relative safety are shrinking. June, Moira and Luke could have returned to Alaska after the rescue to build a family with the two Hollies (Holly being Nichole’s true name), but it would have required that June and Luke give up the hope of finding Hannah, an impossible preposition. They have returned and retreated from Gilead like a yo-yo, each time leaving more of themselves behind, with their odds of survival diminishing. Promotion builds up to the final moment, where Luke and June decide they will continue fighting the regime together because they know they can ultimately never escape the draw of reuniting with their daughter – and Moira will return too, eager to build a life separate from her two friends, returning to the place she barely escaped all those years ago to help Jezebels escape before the attack.

Everyone’s return is of course inevitable, narrative-wise. Had they flown off to Alaska, the story would be over – the fight would continue, but without them. Holly is now conveniently out of the way, safe in Alaska, and there is nothing stopping them from dedicating everything to what feels like a last-ditch effort, directed by a disillusioned Mark Tuello who does not care about the human cost. Luke has been using his knowledge as a civil engineer to plan where Mayday can best place their bombs for maximum damage on the Commanders, and he feels so responsible for the plan that he wants to execute it in person. Moira and June are horrified at the prospect that Mayday is intending to attack Jezebels without any care for the women who work there against their will, and so they must go in and safe as many of them as possible before the gun squad arrives. It all feels inevitable, but also inevitably doomed, because as June insists again and again, even in the best-case scenario where everything goes to plan, which she doubts it will, they might not end up finding Hannah at the end. Luke is still driven by his shame and guilt about not having contributed enough to a fight that has caused so much damage to his wife, and he is even more eager to prove himself after June has had to rescue him, once again. Moira is driven by frustration over June’s protectiveness, by the feeling that she has lived someone else’s life and is now once again almost robbed of the chance to do something by herself, for herself. I don’t think that all of them will return alive.

On the other side of the equation, the potential targets of the Mayday attack are lining up. In honour of his successful project, Commander Lawrence becomes a High Commander, in a weird, half-religious half Freemasons inspired ritual. Naomi, his reluctant wife, has warned him that all these Commanders care about are proofs of virility that are both gross rituals of hypermasculinity and a way to incriminate everyone well in sight of each other. Wharton is the outlier, a man who is so steadfast in his belief and so safe in his power that he doesn’t have to go to Jezebels to prove anything to anyone, but Lawrence doesn’t escape, because his position is still precarious. This episode spends a lot of time on this complex man, who is reluctantly connecting to his step-daughter while still very much struggling with this marriage he never wanted. At Jezebels, he finds a woman he knows well – Janine, who is there because Naomi couldn’t tolerate her presence in her household, and because Lawrence kept her from the colonies and the wall. He performatively takes her to a room in front of the other cheering Commanders, but of course he just wants to talk, and he gives her one of her daughter’s drawings. He has personally created most of the programmes that are terrorising women in Gilead, and these are the smallest ways in which he is now trying to make up for it. There is a whole host of characters indirectly implicated in what has happened to Janine – part of June’s decision to scope out the place to save the women isn’t just about saving Moira, but her “little sister” Janine.

Serena is courted by Commander Wharton, who has had his eyes on her even before the death of her first husband (who Serena, satisfyingly, refers to as an “anvil”). Wharton is like the absolute expression of how Gilead probably, in ideology, wanted to recreate masculinity (while Jezebels is an example of how that ideology failed in reality), and beneath the veneer of chivalry and charm, it looks a lot more terrifying than Fred ever did. He talks about how he used to be too shy to talk to her, he asks her to dance with him on the dimly lit streets of New Bethlehem. It’s a fucked-up romcom, and when Aunt Lydia steps into view, probably already thinking through how she can use this for her own purposes.

Random notes:

Timothy Simons, forever Jonah from Veep, appears as Commander Bell, an exaggerated gross example of what weak men turn into when they are given a smidgen of power. If anyone’s for sure going to be at Jezebels when the attack happens, it’s him.

Serena helps Rita reunite with her sister in New Bethlehem and is eager for her to move there, maybe out of guilt, maybe to have one other person there she knows and trusts. But it takes Nick, who genuinely cares about her (and vice-versa, apparently) assuring her he can track down the rest of her family even though it will take them, for her to make the decision. I don’t think that New Bethlehem will be quite the safe place it is now after Mayday have finished their campaign.

It feels like Lawrence reading The Little Princess to Angela was just The Handmaid’s Tale revelling in what a great narrator voice Bradley Whitford has – and rightly so.

Monday, 14 April 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale - There’s no god here.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x03 Devotion.

This is the first episode of the final season that felt like it existed in the No Man’s Land between tying up some storylines while still waiting for new ones to take off. Your mileage with Devotion may vary based on how you feel about Nick – but as someone who’s with June’s mum on this one, this wasn’t a great ride for me. June and Nick even talk at the end about how they always end up saying goodbye like it’ll be the last time, so this time they’ll say “see you soon” – except maybe this is now actual a final time, because Nick goes above and beyond here to risk everything once again for the mother of his child, and with all of his father-in-law’s attention on him, it’s hard to see how he will continue to evade detection.
June goes to Mark Tuello to figure out how to retrieve Moira and Luke, who are stuck in an abandoned waterpark in No Man’s Land. Since Nick has stopped providing information on Guardian routes, they’re trapped there, but June knows that Nick will once again do whatever she asks to help, even if he has so much else to protect now. He makes the truly mindboggling choice to go off himself – reluctantly taking June along with him – while the biggest diplomatic event is happening in New Bethlehem, which has invited foreign dignitaries eager to repatriate its populace of Gileadean refugees there. While they search for Luke and Moira, Commander Wharton continuously asks where Nick is, and as much as he seems drawn to Serena (in a creepy way – remember, Serena is meant to get remarried, and there doesn’t seem to be a Mrs Wharton in sight), I’m sure he can keep more than one thing on his mind at any given time. The rescue is relatively unspectacular: Moira watches Luke melting down, doing an Aria Stark routine with the names of the Commanders that ordered the airstrike, killing any hope of rescue for Hannah. Just as they’re about to leave, they do run into a Guardian patrol, but cornered, Nick doesn’t seem to hesitate a moment before he pulls his gun and kills them. It feels kind of low-stakes, like the kind of storytelling device that was necessary for June to leave the relative safety of Alaska, and culminates in another scene in which Nick feels sorry for himself for loving June more than she loves him. His heroism may have gone down a bit more smoothly if he didn’t bother to remind her that he just risked it all to save her husband, whom she chose over her. Both Luke and Nick are frustrating in their own way, but at least Luke’s desperation to prove himself (curtailed by the fact that June once again had to save him, with the humiliating element of Nick’s presence) is more understandable: his daughter is still lost. Moira has suffered so much more than either of these men and yet continues to be a rock and voice of reason.

Back in New Bethlehem, the spotlight is on Serena’s ability to sell the place to people who at least pretend to care about the ultimate fate of refugees who will return there (a nice thought, in the year 2025). As someone who is still skillfully playing the victim card (her missing finger out of view but never out of mind) while also weaving a narrative about seeking forgiveness for her transgression against other women, she talks passionately about the freedoms women will be granted here. What sells it in the end (and I hate to use this word again, but frustratingly) is babies. As much as the two foreign dignitaries ask questions of concern and doubt the sincerity of Gilead’s intention, once Serena rolls out Baby Noah and Commander Wharton presents his pregnant daughter, they become reduced to loving coos, which might just be one of the most insulting things that this show has ever done (an inspired choice for the two main ones who get to speak to be women). They are meant to be respected negotiators, but melt into a puddle at the prospect of holding a baby. Gilead is doing baby diplomacy – which they’ve always known was their biggest selling point – and it still feels like a choice by this show to have them fall for it as badly as they do. It can maybe be excused by the cynical idea that these diplomats were sent their symbolically, that all these countries are all too eager to get rid of refugees and restore diplomatic relations anyway and need only a sliver of an excuse to do so, but still, I do expect more from The Handmaid’s Tale. I hope I could still see through the thin veneer of fascist propaganda if it came with a side of cute puppies and I'm not a career diplomat.

The fun bits of the episode are Serena’s wildly different experiences with Commander Lawrence vs Commander Wharton. She knows that Lawrence is not a true believer, that he can’t even believably pray with her (he says “if there is a god”, a great line for a man representing a theological totalitarian state). I don’t think that any previous iteration of Serena Joy would have had the capacity to realise with just as much pragmatism that his ideological shakiness is exactly what makes him a great ally, whereas Wharton, who speaks her language of devotion perfectly, is much more dangerous to her. Wharton also gives us an insight into what is really going on here: while Lawrence and Serena dream of Gilead transformed by New Bethlehem, with more model villages joining the frays and things eventually changing in Gilead proper, Wharton sees this very much as a limited diplomatic exercise, a symbolic gesture that only serves to restore trade. Wharton has no intention to change Gilead, and he seems, from what we’ve seen, to be much more secure in his power than Lawrence, the odd man out, could ever be. Lawrence wants is driven by his feelings about his dead wife and his guilty conscience, Serena wants to fix the country she broke, but Wharton is perfectly happy for everything to stay exactly the same.

There aren’t many incentives for men like Wharton to change Gilead proper. He doesn’t seem to feel guilt over what he has helped built, and he is living a life of privilege. Back in Gilead proper, Aunt Lydia continues her journey of disillusionment – she would have thought herself to be a paragon of Gileadean virtue, and she believes that her work has helped the women she has, in her interpretation, cared for. It’s the kind of work that has made all these now diplomatically vital babies possible. But now, at Jezebels, she realises that she has been lied to: Not only is Janine there, but three other Handmaids who have fulfilled their duty, who she thought would be living a life of comfort now, are there as well. Janine explains to her that they are the lucky ones – other Handmaids were sent to the colonies, far away from prying eyes. Jezebels, where Gilead allows those who can afford it the privilege to vent their religiously repressed desires, is state-sanctioned, a pressure valve. Aunt Lydia makes it her mission to save Janine from there (Janine warns her that every time she tries to help, she makes things worse – and if anyone has been through the worst, it’s her), and she goes to New Bethlehem to ask Naomi and Commander Lawrence to take her in, which Naomi furiously refuses. What other authorities does Aunt Lydia have to appeal to?

Random notes:

I think this episode was even more frustrating for all it teased in its scenes set at Jezebels: I find myself much more engaged in Janine’s story and Aunt Lydia’s (probably misguided) attempts to save her, but how much of that will be part of The Testaments rather than this final season remains to be seen.

Serena’s “You’re crying right now. On the inside.” made me laugh. Yvonne Strahovski doesn’t get a lot of comedic acting on the show but she’s so good at it.

I think these first few episodes of the season have shown that Mark Tuello truly does not care about the people he sends – he is fighting what he knows is a doomed battle. I think Nick’s life is likely coming to an end soon, but I don’t think that Mark will outlive him by a lot.

Thursday, 10 April 2025

The Handmaid’s Tale – It is not over.

The Handmaid's Tale: 6x02 Exile.

The only way is to show up and fight.

I think the animating question of this final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, with limits imposed on how far the resistance against Gilead can be allowed to proceed since there is already a Gilead-set sequel in the works, is about the personal decision on how to live a meaningful life with the existence of a terror regime looming over everything, even the relative places of safety that both June and Serena find themselves in now. They are coming at the question from opposite ends:
Serena is one of the architects of the original Gilead in all its horrors, contributing the ideology and profiting from its exploitation of other women. The episode shows her in the days just before, visiting her declining father, a preacher of some kind, excitedly telling him about her relationship with Fred and how they are changing the world (significantly, as his beautiful garden which he can no longer care for lies fallow and wilting around them). She has always believed in the tenets of Gilead, and she still does, with some caveats regarding the power accorded to women (and I think it’s pretty clear that these doubts about Gilead stem much more from her own experience than from being moved in any particular way by the suffering of others, including June). In this episode, she has found an unlikely haven that she should thrive in: a religious commune in Canada that cares for women and children, devoid of the brutality and violence of Gilead. She is safe there, and if she could let go of her desire for power, she could continue to exist, in this small life, harvesting ripe tomatoes and seeing Noah grow up exactly the way she has claimed she wants him to. But it’s not enough! I don’t even think that in the end it’s Commander Lawrence’s thinly veiled threat about the Eyes knowing where she is, the stick he brings out when he fears that the carrot of giving her power and influence in New Bethlehem isn’t enough. It’s sufficient that his diagnosis of her boredom is correct: Serena will never be satisfied with a small life, and she has taken all the wrong lessons from what happened to her on the train. She will not quietly atone for her sins in a community of women who accept her in spite of knowing who she really is. She wants to become an architect of Gilead once again, this time of a transformation that promises to continue Gilead on into the future.

There are historical examples of totalitarian regimes building model villages – and model concentration camps – to create the illusion that things are not as horrible and terrible as they are. It gives other countries an excuse to stop the boycotts, to also profit from what Gilead has achieved, without seeming too morally compromised. Once these connections are made, once Canada and others begin importing Gileadean goods, perhaps even use similar methods to bring babies back, it will be next to impossible to meaningfully oppose the true Gilead that will continue to exist. The thaw already has consequences for the refugees in Canada, who are being terrorised and evicted from their new homes. New Bethlehem’s existence does not mean that the other horrors of the regime have ended – nobody has yet talked about what is happening in Gilead proper, in the Handmaids training centre for example, and what effect it will have on the Colonies or the judicial regime of terror. It’s a fig leaf for Commander Lawrence, who is horrified by what he has created but too cowardly to face the consequences. It’s Commander Wharton who points out to Lawrence that he needs Serena as the face of New Bethlehem – and he knows that his position is precarious enough within the regime that he has to do whatever he is told. He tasks Nick, who is now under the watchful eye of his father-in-law, to use his contacts in the Eyes to track down Serena. Lawrence arrives in Canaan with his new wife in tow – we’ve seen him and Naomi bickering, with Lawrence deeply uncomfortable in this new life that Gilead has assigned him, hesitant to give up his control over his house and awkward around Naomi’s (Janine’s) child. He knows how to play Serena, how she ticks, and the scene at the table where neither he nor his wife can deliver a believable prayer before the meal showcases why he is in the position he is in: he’s barely passing as a true believer in Gilead, without the religious fundamentalism or the true faith of the other Commanders (Wharton, on the other hand, wears the role so comfortably – in his conversation with his son-in-law about how he grew up with a mother that “worked outside the house”, with a father who didn’t care for him, and a hidden warning to Nick that he reads well enough to toss the phone SIM that Tuello has given him). Serena is the one who ends up saying grace in a way that sounds like she is already prepping for her newly assigned role, perfect, seamless, ending in a goodbye to the women who have accepted her and Noah into the community. She was never going to be satisfied with this quiet life they were offering, and her time has once again come to regain her power.

June is on the other side here. She is a victim of Gilead. Horrible things have been done to her. Alaska is a place of safety, of an impossible reunion with a mother she has thought lost. She could stay here, settle down, or go on to Hawai’s or Guam, the other remaining parts of the United States. Luke, freed for now by Tuello and Moira, is waiting for his hearing in Canada, but if all goes well, he could join her. If it weren’t for Hannah pulling her back, this is once again a promise of a relatively safe life. But we’ve seen Luke’s fury boiling for a while now, his shame for not fighting harder, for having suffered less than June and done so little to fight back. He is just as eager as Moira to join Mayday, and off-screen, they begin their fight and get lost in No Man’s Land. In the conversation between Nick and Tuello, it becomes clear how willing Mark is to send these untrained people to be chewed up as cannon fodder: he will do it for as long as he has people to burn, regardless of whether they have a shot at real change or not. He is so open to Nick about it that he doesn’t even realise he is burning that contact, because Nick isn’t willing to put himself and his new family in danger if there is no clear upside at the end of it. Without Nick as a contact, Mayday doesn’t have access to the kind of information it needs to operate. Suddenly, the phone calls (a limited resource always effectively adds drama) June makes from Alaska stop going through, until she finds out that her best friend and her husband are lost, and she is the only one able to help, because Nick would listen to her. Holly, her mother, asks her not to risk herself again. She has only just found her daughter, after years of desperately trying to find her and hoping she was still alive. Holly is also the first person who calls Nick what he truly is – a Nazi. As much as Nick is also not a true believer, his actions have enabled the regime, he is a part of the Eyes, essentially secret police that is terrorising Gileadeans. It doesn’t matter if his heart is in it. Holly thinks June shouldn’t trust him, but she’s never been clear-eyed about Nichole’s father. The only thing Holly’s pleading achieves is that June leaves Nichole behind when she goes back to join the fight. Holly thinks that the rational thing to do in light of the overpowering presence of Gilead is to protect the people that you love, to hold them close. June still wants to burn it all down, and it might be the only way to get Hannah back.

Random notes:

There’s some great acting happening between Elisabeth Moss and Cherry Jones to showcase how complex the relationship between June and her mother is. In the past, Holly has always been the radical, blaming June for her relatively mainstream life, but now that June wants to do something dangerous that could put her in danger yet again, Holly asks her to stay.

Bradley Whitford and Ever Carradine do some great comedic work in their uneasy interaction as unwilling spouses. I’m also looking forward to more showdowns between Whitford and Josh Charles, who are evenly matched.

Rita is thinking about going to New Bethlehem because she is looking for her sister and about to be evicted in Toronto. It’s easy to see Gilead as a villain – it’s a totalitarian state – but the idea of Canada acquiescing and becoming an unsafe place for refugees is maybe the more terrifying proposition in 2025.

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Thursday, 29 May 2025