The final season of “The Handmaid’s Story” had explosive deaths and a lethal wedding ceremony, however the ultimate episode is sluggish and impressionistic, moderately than the crescendo of a climactic plot. June principally wanders across the newly liberated Boston, excited about her previous, current, and future — and even an alternate actuality the place the women of Gilead led regular lives singing karaoke to Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide.” A superb chunk of the episode’s final ten minutes is simply June strolling up the steps of the Waterfords’ charred house in slow-motion. By this level within the sequence, the usage of molasses-paced montages and excessive close-ups has misplaced its poeticness, changing into self-indulgent and bordering on parody.
Whereas the dialogue-heavy callbacks, reunions, and goodbye scenes are supposed to reward followers, they really feel very compelled. Serena begs June for forgiveness; June thanks Aunt Lydia for her ultimate act of heroism in releasing the Handmaids; Emily makes a random reappearance and divulges she’s been working for the resistance all alongside; Luke and June acknowledge that their relationship is irreparable. Each one among these rigorously constructed exchanges screams, “THIS IS THE FINAL EPISODE!”
All the pieces wraps up shortly in a neat little bow, which sarcastically is precisely why the present creator Bruce Miller advised The Hollywood Reporter {that a} completely happy ending with June discovering her daughter Hannah was by no means within the playing cards. The present solely focuses on “June’s journey from handmaidness to freedom. The query of how she rebuilds her household felt like an entire different step.” It is unsatisfying to not see June reunite with Hannah or to solely make a small dent in Gilead’s downfall, but this ending would be the most sensible — and most related — given our present political local weather. Is hope and happiness the antidote we want proper now, or wouldn’t it really feel disingenuous?
June explains the price of silence and complacency
The finale affords little catharsis and is extra of an introspective and artfully shot method of circling again to the start of June’s story. The scene the place June tells her mom that liberating Boston is just the start of toppling Gilead is essentially the most real a part of the episode. It conveys why “The Handmaid’s Story” shies away from providing any false hope or overly optimistic closure:
“However the factor is, Mother, I am not protected. Neither are you. They’re by no means going to cease coming for us. And even once we’re gone, they’re gonna come for our kids and our grandchildren. Preventing won’t get us every thing, however we do not have a alternative. As a result of not combating is what bought us Gilead within the first place.”
June’s observations about not combating again recall her voiceover within the third episode of season 1:
“Now I am awake to the world. I used to be asleep earlier than. That is how we let it occur. After they slaughtered Congress, we did not get up. After they blamed terrorists and suspended the Structure, we did not get up then both. They stated it will be momentary. Nothing modifications instantaneously. In a steadily heating bathtub, you would be boiled to dying earlier than you knew it.”
It looks like in the present day, in America, we’re simply as deep in that boiling bathtub. Submerged on this scalding water, it is troublesome to visualise a future the place the following generations will escape the ideological harm that deepens with every passing day, pushing us additional in direction of authoritarianism.
Donald Trump’s presidency brings America nearer to Gilead
Again in 2017, /Movie author Hoai-Tran Bui hailed the then-new sequence as politically related. That political likeness has solely grown. Below Donald Trump’s second time period, America appears nearer to Gilead than ever. The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the banning of transgender women and men from the navy was just the start.
Now, Donald Trump is deporting immigrants with out due course of; he is frozen federal funding for prestigious universities resembling Harvard, gutting applications that analysis kids’s most cancers; he is banned the Related Press from masking main occasions as a result of they disagree along with his administration. Much more alarming, he is brazenly mentioned staying for an unconstitutional third time period. These are assaults on our most simple rights: to exist, to be educated, and to talk freely. The street to fascism is being paved earlier than our very eyes.
In ultimate shot of “The Handmaid’s Story,” June begins to write down her story. She appears immediately into the digital camera with a decided stare and says, “My title is Offred.” It is her method of warning the viewers: That is in your arms now. Open your eyes and do one thing — otherwise you’ll find yourself like me.
A sequel sequence, “The Testaments,” will observe June’s daughter Hannah and the true finish of Gilead. If it additionally runs for eight years, it is exhausting to say the place America’s political panorama can be by the tip. Will we’ve got saved ourselves, or will issues have solely gotten worse? The “Handmaid’s Story” finale might lack a definitive conclusion, however its message is one we have to hear. We lengthy for a glimmer of hope and the assumption that oppression can finish joyfully, however the one method we are able to obtain that in actual life is that if, as June says, we get up and do as a lot as we are able to to combat again.