Gird Your Loins: The Handmaid’s Tale Returns to Traumatize Us All Over Again

SPOILER/CONTENT ALERT: This article discusses the first 3 episodes of season 4, as well as sexual assault and violence.

It’s been 20 months since the season 3 finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, which ended with a wounded June (Elisabeth Moss) being carried through the forest by her fellow handmaids. In that time, so much has happened: a new president, an attempted insurrection, and a global pandemic that has irreparably changed our lives. When The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in April 2017, it coincided with the first 100 days of Donald’s Trump’s administration, offering a disturbingly prescient parallel between Gilead and the beginning of Trump’s cruel authoritarian regime.

But with Biden in office and the beginning of the end of the pandemic on the horizon, what does the future hold for The Handmaid’s Tale? And after such a brutal and violent 2020, do viewers even have an appetite for the trauma and misery porn the prestige series trafficks in?

When we last left her, June had successfully pulled off Angel’s Flight, smuggling 86 children and a handful of Marthas out of Gilead to find amnesty in Canada. Season 4, which premiered the first three episodes this week on Hulu, picks up immediately where season 3 left off, with June and the renegade handmaids hiding out on a rural farmstead. The farm is owned by the feeble Commander Keyes, who has given over much of his duties to his 14 year old wife, Esther (Captain Marvel’s McKenna Grace), whose emotions swing between helping the handmaids and verbally abusing them.

Esther idolizes June and confesses that not only did her husband rape her, but he invited in Guardians and Eyes to rape her as well. Sexual violence is a cornerstone of Gilead, and the series has never shied away from that fact. Introducing Esther as a surrogate daughter for June gives the series some rich new territory to explore, especially given June’s mission to rescue her own daughter Hanna from Gilead.

But June’s maternal instincts turn violent when the handmaids capture one of the guards who assaulted Esther. June gives the girl a knife and whispers “make me proud” as she leaves the girl to slaughter her attacker. It’s a chilling scene, followed by the aftermath where Esther crawls into bed with June and they spoon. June even calls her “banana”, her nickname for Hanna.

Is The Handmaid’s Tale slowly turning June into a villain? Her scenes with Esther border on monstrous, yet we are continually reminded that Gilead is infinitely more cruel and more violent than the renegade handmaid. June may be the leader of the rebellion, but she is not immune to self-aggrandizing, making mistakes, and causing the deaths of those who help her.

There are rich and fresh narratives to be mined from these new power dynamics and June’s rebellion. Unfortunately, they’re squandered by a series that can’t help but recycle plot points and trauma. When June is recaptured in episode three, we’re thrown into an hour’s worth of torture, both physical and emotional. The episode, which is directed by Elisabeth Moss, is brutalizing to watch. But thanks to June’s God-tier plot immunity, we know she won’t die (although people in Gilead have been executed for much less). The rest of the cast aren’t so lucky.

So what’s the point then, of the waterboarding and beatings? To reinforce the idea that Gilead is horrific? Yeah, we know. We’ve had three seasons of it. At this point, it’s just misery porn for misery’s sake. The series remains stunning to watch: gorgeous cinematography, brilliant lighting, and devastating performances by its talented cast. But in rehashing the same plot points, the series fails to grow and evolve.

The Handmaid’s Tale finds itself in the same quandary as The Walking Dead, another long-running genre series powered by relentless bleakness. Eventually, audiences will grow tired of the repetition, of the senseless killing off of fan-favorite characters. In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Bruce Miller promised “a cathartic experience” coming for the audience.

Catharsis for The Handmaid’s Tale? We’ll believe it when we see it.

(image: Jasper Savage/Hulu)

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