We’ve Been Sent Nice Weather with this Week’s Episode of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
After last week’s botched escape attempt, June now has to decide who she truly needs to be to survive in this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. Spoilers below!
One of the reasons June is such a great character on The Handmaid’s Tale is that she so often resists the injustice of Gilead. Even in this week’s episode, “Other Women”, June challenges Aunt Lydia by denying the name Offred, instead correcting the Aunt to call her by her real name instead.
And in that moment, I pretty much cheered out loud, because it was such a big move of defiance for June after last week’s crushing ending. But with a cold, calculated tone, Aunt Lydia quickly countered June’s resistance with simple but cruel logic: June dies, but Offred could live .Really, that’s one of the main themes of this episode in its entirety, with our protagonist learning what it means to be June and what it means to be Offred- and why she may not have the luxury to make the choice to be who she wants in the end.
As painful as it was to see June dragged back to the Red Center and begin reverting back into Offred, I do have to say that from an out-of-universe point of view it’s great to see Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski back on the show again. I don’t think I can necessarily say it’s good to see the Commander and Serena back, but Fiennes and Strahovski chew scenery whenever they’re on camera here, so I look forward to what they’ll bring to the show.
We really didn’t see much of the Commander in this episode, but Serena is featured pretty heavily. While some members of the household at least pretend that they think June was “kidnapped” by Mayday, Serena wastes no time privately threatening that she was well aware that this was more of an escape attempt. In a great reversal of last year’s threat, June reminds Serena that the child she’s carrying is safe as long as June’s other daughter, Hannah, is too.
Serena struggles a lot with the idea of being a surrogate mother in this episode, too. The baby shower scene shows the more institutionalized response to some of the insecurities that the wives likely face, but Serena’s reaction to June’s cheeky revelation that she’s felt the baby kick shows that this is still probably going to be a source of conflict. In fact, I think that the contrast between that scene and the later scene where June passively allows Serena to basically spoon her so she can feel the baby really shows her character’s trajectory in this episode, from rebellious to compliant.
By the end of the episode, we get a truly haunting look at how far June has retreated into herself. After Aunt Lydia reveals that Omar was murdered, hid child given to another family, and his wife made a handmaid, she blames June for these tragedies. And that is absolutely meant to be literal- again, Lydia blames “June” for these tragedies, not “Offred”, giving her yet another reason to want to retreat into this alternative identity not totally unlike Theon on Game of Thrones.
The final shots show June’s face close up as she heads into town, once again in a Handmaid’s garb. Close up shots of Elizabeth Moss on this show are extremely common, and I can’t help but wonder if this was the payoff moment, because she just looks “off” in this scene. Like the rebellion is gone in her, and she’s just fully given in to being Offred now. So much so that, as much as I’d like to continue calling her June as some sort of weird resistance to Gilead on my own, I can’t help but think that this is really Offred, at least for now. “We’ve been sent good weather,” Offred repeats over and over again in a deeply disturbing tone, even after the camera stops rolling. It’s amazing how such an optimistic statement can sound so horribly bleak.
