She isn’t wrong when she explains to Moira and Rita that the International Criminal Court cares more about what their new source can bring them versus what horror he’s wrought in the past. No judge will toss out the agreement with Waterford just because June is still traumatized. Perched in front of that video camera in a lonely (but chic) bureaucratic building, she knows that her statement is a blip. Legally, June has exhausted all her options. Instead, I wondered whether we’re meant to think of this as female empowerment, and if revenge - violent, bloody, tit for tat, Old Testament-style retribution - is the best possible outcome we can imagine for victims. The irony was delicious.īut I didn’t feel gleeful watching Fred take a swift one to the face.
They turned the system’s tactics against him. And the symmetry was beautifully designed: the former handmaids (and maybe Marthas) arranged in a perfect circle around him, just as they’d been trained to do when told to stone and kill one of their own kind. Here were June and her angels of fury, giving one Commander the sort of ending he’d designed and approved for so many others. I expect we were meant to feel good, or maybe even jubilant, at the sight of Fred Waterford curled up on the ground with righteous fists and feet pummeling him from all angles. The rules of Margaret Atwood’s universe have been bent and twisted and mottled to give June - and presumably, many viewers - closure. The stars have been pushed into alignment so she can confront the show’s Big Bads time and again.
For three seasons now, The Handmaid’s Tale has been building up to one central question: How will June get her revenge? Moss has been ramping up the character’s long stares and twisted smiles.