‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Finale Is Heartbreaking
If you looked at all of the major characters in The Handmaid’s Tale sans context, and tried to guess based on personality alone who was the protagonist, I’m not sure June would be the obvious choice. She’s not a natural rebel like Emily, she’s not prone to daring escape plans like Moira, she doesn’t have a compellingly tragic psychology like Janine. If it weren’t for her voiceover, June would be an incredibly passive character, and understandably so; on her first day at the Red Center, she’s tasered simply for looking in the wrong direction. She’s been conditioned into passivity; not resisting, not standing up, keeping her head down. This, if we’re honest with ourselves, is what most of us would do in a world like Gilead.
"She’s been conditioned into passivity... This, if we’re honest with ourselves, is what most of us would do in a world like Gilead."
Offred is this world’s equivalent of an everywoman, which is what has made her cautious movement towards revolution so compelling to watch. “They shouldn’t have given us uniforms if they didn’t want us to be an army,” she notes with quiet glee, in a line that doesn’t fully pay off until near the end of the episode, when Aunt Lydia orders the Handmaids to stone Janine to death.
This is a horrifying first - presumably the Condemnation ceremony has only been for men in the past - and a bridge too far. In a potent mirroring of the scene in Episode 1 where Aunt Lydia compels all the Handmaids to tell Janine being raped is “her fault,” here the Handmaids quietly join forces to protect Janine. Led first by Ofglen and then by June, the Handmaids all drop their rocks one by one, a devastatingly effective form of passive protest. Janine’s face throughout this is the most affecting part of all, as it gradually dawns on her that her fellow Handmaids are not going to let this happen.
"This is looking evil right in the face and saying, 'Not today, Satan.'"
And this moment - “I’m sorry, Aunt Lydia” - is June’s awakening, the true beginning of her resistance. Sure, she’s whispered about Mayday before, she smuggled that package into the Waterfords’ house, she's even lashed out at Serena on occasion, but standing up to Aunt Lydia is a level beyond all those tiny kinds of resistance. This is looking evil right in the face and saying, “Not today, Satan.”
This moment in which June unifies her fellow Handmaids doesn’t come out of nowhere. She finds the strength to do it in the contents of that parcel from Jezebels, which turns out to be hundreds of letters from Handmaids across state lines. Their stories are horrifying, of course, but reading their names and their pleas for help is a moment of pure relief for June, who scrawled ‘YOU ARE NOT ALONE’ on the inside of her closet just to try and make herself believe it.
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches” rang hollow back in Episode 4, because back then June really was alone. The Handmaids were not an army, there was no solidarity and no coordinated resistance; June’s only link to Mayday had disappeared with Emily. But now, as June sails out of the Waterfords’ house to the defiant sounds of "American Girl," her attitude finally feels earned.
Whatever June’s future holds beyond that black van, she is no longer Of Fred. Maybe she belongs to the Eyes, or maybe to Nick himself now that she’s pregnant with his child - maybe Season 2 will be a gradual, painful inversion of everything June thought she knew about Nick, with the man who has been her liberation becoming her new captor. Whether she’s stepping into the darkness or the light, her future is an unknown, and she’s at peace because she remembered how it feels to say no.
Talking points:
So... Putnam’s punishment. Yikes. Removing the hand of an adulterer is, of course, taken right from scripture: “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee…” In a world where women have their eyes gouged out and their clitorises removed, the brutality of this isn’t surprising - we already saw in Episode 1 what becomes of rapists - but it’s another startling reminder that under the new world order, even the commanders aren’t quite as powerful as they'd like to think. And since it was Putnam’s wife who ensured his punishment, I’d say Waterford has some solid cause to worry.
Serena is a sociopath. There have been occasional reasons to toy with feeling sympathy for her, but that scene with Hannah was so unthinkably cruel I’m now completely disinterested in any attempts to humanize her. Seeing June finally unload on her, calling her deranged and evil and a C-word who’s going to burn in hell, was incredibly satisfying even though it was completely futile.
Speaking of incredibly satisfying… “You can’t father a child because you’re not worthy.” No lies detected, Fred. Serena is terrible, but when Fred told her, “You answer to me. Go to your room," I wanted her to vivisect him.
Aunt Lydia has softened noticeably over the season, especially towards Janine, which made for a jarring flashback to the Red Center when she yelled, “Parade of sluts!” at the arriving future Handmaids.
God bless Canada. After the brutality of Gilead, of course Moira barely knows what to do with the kindness being shown to her at the Ontario embassy, or with the suggestion that she “pick out a book, find somewhere quiet.” It’s obvious that while her case worker is well meaning, he really has no concept of exactly what she’s been through.
It speaks to how effectively this show has established its own unpredictable brutality that I was truly worried we were going to be forced to watch Janine be stoned to death. She’s just heartbreaking in that scene, too, from her little wave hello to “Not too hard, okay?” to the way she asks Ofglen if she’s okay after being tasered. Janine’s such a fundamentally sweet soul. I hope she’s somehow going to make it to next season, even though Gilead clearly has plenty of other ways to kill women.
Now Rita’s carrying the torch for Mayday. I’ve found Amanda Brugel really fascinating to watch in this role throughout the season; her presence is so deliberately muted that it took me a while to really notice how much she was bringing to her scenes. Seems like she’ll play a bigger role in Season 2, and I’m here for it.
Luke and Moira’s reunion was so beautiful and such a needed moment of catharsis. It played especially well since their most memorable interaction before was their fight in Episode 3, where Moira snapped at Luke for saying he’d “take care” of June after the women’s bank accounts were frozen. But they’re still basically each other’s family.
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