3 things Hulu's grueling 'Handmaid's Tale' needs in Season 3
Hulu's “The Handmaid's Tale” ended its emotionally exhausting second season recently with a thrilling (yet baffling) finale. I've heard from several viewers who loved the show at first - and in theory still do - but have decided that they can't go on. Mixed with the daily news cycle, “The Handmaid's Tale” becomes too much to bear.
I get it, even as I urge viewers to keep watching what remains a culturally relevant, impressively realized drama about resistance in the face of despair.
Spoiler alert! Stop reading if you haven't seen Season 2 or have yet to watch the finale.
This season was a grueling ordeal. A shortlist of the horrors we've vicariously endured in the fictional, post-American, fascist theocracy called Gilead includes a prolonged visit to a toxic wasteland (aka “the Colonies”), where infertile and/or rebellious women, including Emily (Alexis Bledel), are forced to shovel radioactive dirt until they die; various beatings and tortures and executions; the public drowning of Eden (Sydney Sweeney), the child bride assigned to Nick (Max Minghella).
To all that, of course, add the rape of Offred/June (Elisabeth Moss) by her keeper, Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), at the suggestion of his wife, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), who held Offred down during the act - the couple's attempt to induce labor and deliver the past-due baby girl Offred was carrying, whom the Waterfords consider to be their own, in a twisted biblical sense.
Then June sacrificed her last, best chance to escape Gilead in the season's final moments, handing her newborn to Emily and opting to stay behind as a secret getaway truck drove off. What could June be thinking? Has she lost her mind - or has she figured out a way to reunite with her older daughter, Hannah? We'll have to wait for Season 3.
It feels like we are owed at least something for our endurance - scenes we've patiently waited to see that still haven't come. “The Handmaid's Tale” prolongs some of its most harrowing traumas at the expense of scenes that viewers not only want, but need. I've come up with a wish list of three aspects of this show that fans deserve to see:
1. Aunt Lydia's back story. Even though Emily stabbed her in the shoulder and kicked her down a flight of stairs in Season 2's finale, surely this is not the end for Ann Dowd's fearsome (and Emmy-winning) portrayal of the matronly enforcer Aunt Lydia. While I'm glad to have seen the character get slightly more dimension this year, we've simply gone too long without seeing the show's customary flashback/origin structure turn its gaze to Aunt Lydia.
Who is this woman? What in her past life turned her into such a dedicated Gileadean, willing to tear down and abuse the women who are forced to become Handmaids, only to build them back up with her twisted sense of care and discipline? There must be more to her story.
Aunt Lydia, after all, has much to tell us about the core nature of Gilead's social architecture and “The Handmaid's Tale's” central theme, going back to Margaret Atwood's novel. It's about the complicity of women who would, on orders from men, take away the rights of other women.
The best thread of this season's story arc involved the extra-complicated relationship between Offred/June and Serena Waterford, which is conspiratorial at its best (together they quietly broke the strict law against women reading and writing) and spiteful at its worst. Whatever happens next between these two women will define the rest of the series. Aunt Lydia, a bit player in the novel, has the potential to be a third pillar in this story.
2. What is Gilead? The finale, which began streaming July 11, included a scene of Commander Waterford in deep concentration over the papers on his desk, which included a map of Gilead - upside-down from the camera's perspective. Pausing the picture and craning my neck, I discern some details: the map shows the former United States divvied up into large territories. Areas in red along the Canadian border, West Coast and Gulf Coast seem to indicate Gilead's war front; a large chunk of the Southwest and lower Midwest are shaded yellow with what appear to be radioactive symbols - the Colonies, perhaps.
This kind of detail is irresistible to a certain stripe of “Handmaid's Tale” viewer. In a story so resolutely and effectively told as a women's narrative, the series metes out only scant details about the origin and establishment of this nightmare government. An entire episode or two of the dawn of Gilead would be - something, wouldn't it?
3. More scenes from the north. Aside from June's rebelliousness against the Waterfords (Fred, particularly), the only hopeful parts of “The Handmaid's Tale” take place in Canada, where June's husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and best friend, Moira (Samira Wiley), live as refugees. Their talents seemed sorely underused this time.
In one of Season 2's most talked-about cameos, June hears part of an underground radio broadcast hosted by the unmistakable voice of Oprah Winfrey, who delivers news of international aid for a U.S. government-in-exile in Anchorage and further sanctions against Gilead. Winfrey then plays Bruce Springsteen's “Hungry Heart” as a reminder to “everyone who's listening - American patriot or Gilead traitor - that we are still here. Stars and Stripes forever, baby.”
“The Handmaid's Tale” got where it is with its unflinchingly dark portrait of an America gone horribly wrong. Now it's time for viewers to get to see a little more hope, in the form of a thriving rebellion up north. Scenes of organized resistance within Gilead - like the sight of all those Martha housekeepers helping June and her baby escape - go a long way, giving the viewer something to hope for.