Two episodes before the end of the fourth season of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” June stood in front of her Gilead abusers and testified about their crimes.
June escaped the oppressive patriarchy in what was once America and was now living in the more traditionally democratized Canada, but even there, what a man had to offer was more valuable.
June wanted Fred to feel as afraid as she was when she was running for her life in the woods in her former home country, and it certainly appeared he did.
So we have now a bunch of characters who have made it out and they all have very different experiences processing through their trauma and they’re still going through it.
And in our perception of things, a desire for revenge and a desire for justice are very close to each other, and one is considered quite noble and one is considered quite injurious.
You don’t want to show the group dynamic: you want to show June’s attitude and attitude and all the other characters’ attitudes and that they’re different.
I think the strength was born of enduring trauma and she’s still dealing with the trauma, so she still needs the strength and still needs that really clear-eyed vision of what to do with your day to survive.
I feel bad saying it and I don’t want to lay bare the mechanism of how we do TV, but honestly there was much more story with lots of those characters that we just physically couldn’t get.
I don’t think you can reach back and say, “OK let’s see how Clea DuVall reacted when June got out.” One of my favorite scenes in the entire show was a scene between Clea and O-T Fagbenle talking about what it’s like to have your spouse come back traumatized.
But in terms of kind of trading one person for a bunch of rebels, in terms of how porous the border is and how easy it is for people to communicate and actually move back and forth if you’re a man and if you’re a military person, those things are all true.
He was building a country almost because he felt like it was impossible for him to build a family, but now he’s building a family, so he doesn’t give a shit about the country.
And of course, there will be that , but right now, there’s no crime.
I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do yet, but my sense was one of the problems is that June has lost the ability to be covert.
But she said, “I don’t want to be America’s widow.” And so, for Serena, I think she would have to make the active choice to move on, and I don’t know whether she’s going to do that because, as we see, her connection with Fred puts her in a position that she is really comfortable in.
We spoke about justice a few minutes ago, and it certainly feels like that’s an area lacking for Janine at the end of the season.
There’s the idea that if I just hit x, everything’s going to be fine — “if we just get rid of Trump, if the pandemic just ends, everything’s going to be fine” — but that’s not the way the world works.
I think that’s a wakeup call for Lydia in realizing that every single handmaid she comes across would rather die than be a handmaid, which is making her think about how to make handmaids sustainable.
I love her character, I love her arc and the way that she plays it has been fantastic.