The Handmaid’s Tale (final season)–An Acknowledgement or Acceptance?
Keeping things fresh in the sixth and final season of Handmaid’s Tale, this award-winning drama moves the story ever closer to authoritarianism embedded in a hellscape of a misogynistic dystopia. Gilead is attempting to remake itself, presumably for public relations more than anything else. Smoothing the edges of its own religious extremism with a more feminine touch, New Bethlehem is created as a place where Gilead’s “handmaid” refugees can return and live under a kinder regime. Handmaid June Osborne (the masterful Elisabeth Moss) and the resistance know better than to accept this deception.
Commander’s Wife Serena Joy Wharton (the consistently terrific Yvonne Strahovski) and June assess their new situations. We see both women once again face-to-face in conflict. Having saved Serena’s life and that of her baby (in the previous season), we now witness them in a brutal duel for their children. Where Serena thinks they share a twisted bond as well as a mutual value for survival at all cost, June is not so readily willing to trust Serena and the New Bethlehem with truth-telling.
To watch these two women examining each other, smelling each other animal-like to detect deception or evidence of trust is, at times, thrilling. Each circles the other like gladiators. How to figure out the other’s motives, allegiance to human values, and acknowledgment of community?
The screenwriters allow the development of a complex character arc for Serena Joy. Is this intelligent, formerly independent successful businesswoman, irrevocably brainwashed into being a trad-wife, or is she still a consummate political survivor so shrewd that she has everyone believing what they want to?
June’s character remains consistent: a dedication and rage-fueled determination to save her daughters and the other “ handmaid” women trapped in a horrific patriarchal regime. However, the cost to those June loves is ratcheted ever higher, breaking her over and over again.
The evolution of Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) character arc in episode six is whip-lashing in its suddenness, an obvious device to set up Aunt Lydia’s story for the Hulu upcoming series based on The Testaments (the sequel by Margaret Atwood.) When June reminds Aunt Lydia in the climactic sixth episode: “You’ve learned things you can’t unlearn, you’ve seen things you can’t unsee,” an astute viewer may conclude this will be the lead-in dialogue to The Testaments.
Elisabeth Moss continues to deliver a powerful and nuanced performance as June, equally matched by Yvonne Strahovski, who evokes the icy demeanor of the classic actress Grace Kelly. However, the too-dainty-and-tidy tying-up loose ends into pretty bows in the final scenes are warrantless and tone-deaf. Either the brilliant ending of episode six or the equally daunting episode seven fit the message: Keep fighting for the rest of the country’s liberation. Do not accept tyranny!
Availability: Hulu
Note: For my review of the first season, see https://unhealedwound.com/2017/05/handmaids-tale-service-democracy/