Blessed Be the Fruit Loops!
This article contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season 5 and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.
Imagine an old man sitting at the head of a campfire with a group of children gathered around. As he weaves myth and lore, he watches their faces. Are they yawning and nodding off? Are they smiling and eager? Are they moved to tears or waiting for the next twist?
The storyteller doesn’t own his tale. As soon as he puts it out into the world, it belongs to the audience. We’re the ones who fall in love. We feel the suspense and tension. It’s meant for us, which means it should be tailored to suit our demands.
Good writers spend their time trying to predict how the audience will react to their work. The creators of The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 are no different. Make no mistake, they are listening. They read reviews and likely monitor social media. Some studios even run studies and test out alternate storylines.
To some, that might seem like a sterile, corporate approach, but that’s missing the point. It’s all about us. Shortly after filming began, Elisabeth Moss announced that season 6 was devoted to fans of the franchise. It’s our season. They plan to give us exactly what we want in a tour de force worthy of a once-in-a-generation masterpiece. But what do we want?
We can answer that question by taking a look at what’s missing. What have we been waiting for, and where do we want the characters to end up?
Concluding a Masterpiece
Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, is something of a sadist. She used descriptive imagery to pull us into the narrative, like the smell of genesis in Janine’s birthing chamber and the sensation of walking down the Waterford’s stairs with tunnel vision. It created a visceral experience that was so much more than words on paper.
We weren’t standing alongside Offred or watching her in our mind’s eye; we were Offred, living her torment, her trauma, and pain. We felt the Guardians and Aunts staring us down, reminding us how to breathe, where to look, and how to carry ourselves. It was constricting–a vice grip tightening against our temples. There was no mercy and no hope, and we felt that absence deep within us. We were pushed well beyond the breaking point.
No one who read that book could feel comfortable in their skin until Gilead had fallen and Offred was free.
But Atwood wasn’t about to let that happen. The Handmaid’s Tale was created to inspire fear, not excitement or relief. In the end, Offred disappeared into the back of a van, never to be heard from again, and we were asked to attend a symposium on Gilead Studies held more than 200 years later.
At the time, The Testaments sequel hadn’t been written, which meant that from our perspective, Gilead could’ve lasted for more than a century–and indeed that may have been Atwood’s original intent. It was wildly frustrating, and we had absolutely no chance of receiving answers.
We were lucky to get the 1990 film. But it failed to expand on the existing material, and while it did feature a deliciously vicious Faye Dunaway as Serena, it was visibly low-budget.
If we wanted a rendition capable of doing the novel justice, we’d have to first get past a series of taboos. Hollywood refused to touch anything that could be considered critical of Christianity; it was box office poison, certain to kick off protests and boycotts. Heads would have rolled.
There was prejudice surrounding religion in film, and that showed no sign of letting up, even as restrictions on homosexuality faded. It wasn’t until 2016 that fans finally caught wind of a Hulu series in the making. At that point, many of us had been waiting a full 30 years to see what happened next.
But the premiere was just the beginning of the journey. The series was fraught with delays–pregnancies, a pandemic, and two strikes. It seemed like every single time we got a glimpse of that world, it was ripped away from us.
It’s been 8 years, and here we are waiting for a resolution that may never come. The series will end, but Gilead won’t fall. We may never see the final battle, and Hannah won’t be rescued for at least a decade. By that time, she probably won’t remember June.Part of this is the nature of the work. The Handmaid’s Tale was meant to scare us and show us what it meant to live under that regime. It’s shock treatment for the politically complacent. Everything else, including the revolution, is completely beside the point.
So how are the creators of The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 going to satisfy us?
So much of the series was communicated to us through silent cues and gestures. We developed an intuitive syntax, taking it all in until we could literally see inside each character’s head.
We were meant to see Gilead in them–Serena’s resentment; June’s quiet rebellion; Luke’s insecurities, his restlessness, and despair.
Their physical circumstances were always on the back burner. The internal struggle was the real story. Was June looking back? Was Luke in mourning? Could Emily find closure? Every character had a journey inside them they had yet to complete.
Ann Dowd addressed this at a red carpet event for Paleyfest LA, stating, “I think the arc of each character comes to a place where the audience will be tremendously grateful and satisfied.” She spoke with passion, adding, “I really mean that. It’s beautifully done.”
Regardless of the state of the world when everything is said and done, we can be certain that the people we love will have reached a fulfilling place within themselves.
Maybe they’ll discover who they are. Maybe they’ll find out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Perhaps they’ll disappear into the crowd and move on from their past. It will never be enough, but it will be something to cling to.
June’s Future
The original novel was never meant to be the story of a single woman. We saw through her eyes and felt what she experienced. But she wasn’t given a name. She was one in a string of Offreds, referred to solely by her patronymic. If she died or the Eyes abducted her, another Offred would take her place, and it would be like she never existed at all. She was nobody and she was everybody, which gave us a broad perspective on the countless handmaids throughout the nation.
The series changed all of that. At the end of the first episode, Offred stood up and announced that her name was June and this was her story.
During the first two seasons, she was adrift. What little control she had over her life was earned through flattery and begging, which wasn’t really control at all. That changed in season 3 when she found herself in a hospital room, kneeling in front of her shopping partner Natalie’s bed.
In order to cope with the horrors of Gilead, Natalie decided to take on the state religion. She didn’t actually believe, but she insisted that she did, and she was resolved to be obedient. That’s why she alerted Aunt Lydia when she saw June gossiping with Hannah’s Martha Frances at Loaves and Fishes.
Aunt Lydia had Frances executed and the MacKenzie’s moved Hannah to another district, supposedly freeing June from temptation. When June found out what Natalie had done, she decided to drive her insane.
It worked. By the time June was finished, she had Natalie bawling and rushing around Loaves and Fishes begging to be forgiven. Finally she grabbed a Guardian’s sidearm, and they shot her down.
She died, but the authorities decided to keep her on life support to give her unborn child time to gestate. Aunt Lydia was furious. She grabbed a cushion, set it in front of the bed, and told June to kneel and pray. She could go home when her shopping partner went home.
June’s Turning Point
The next episode was one of the most difficult moments in the entire series. We had seen June endure all kinds of physical and emotional duress, but we’d never seen her placed for so long in unbearable conditions.
Within a month, the isolation and confinement had severely impacted her mental health. She was pale and sweaty with bags under her eyes. She’d rock back and forth with her teeth clenched like she was in pain.
She stole a scalpel from the sharp box next to Natalie’s bed and used it to slice Serena’s hand. Rather than report June, Serena recognized that she was unwell and quietly alerted the doctor.
He came in and sat her down and explained that he had warned Aunt Lydia. They couldn’t force June to stay in that room. Her brain would atrophy, and she would sustain damage.
A part of her literally died–something small but integral to her being, and with it, her inhibitions. Her fear of the Guardians, the Aunts, and the Commanders died as well.
In a sense, it was a reverse form of the brainwashing used to break the Aunts, which Lydia herself went through in The Testaments. They were systematically stripped of their identities until everything they were had washed away and they could be made anew.
June was made anew. She realized that even with all of the guard towers, soldiers, and checkpoints, a determined handmaid could still do damage to the regime.
The doctor also told June that he knew her mother, Holly, a wildcat feminist with true strength of spirit. She was one of the first to be sent to the colonies after the war.
He asked June what she would do to honor her mother and Hannah, and she decided that she was going to make Gilead hurt as much as they hurt her. That was when she started planning Angel’s Flight.
June’s Final Transformation
After Angel’s Flight, June became a celebrity, inspiring women across the country to act out against the regime. Here we see her become more than a disgruntled handmaid. She was a leader within the resistance.
She had to overcome a series of issues during season 5, including her mental illness, but she never stopped moving closer towards her final goal of becoming a fighter.
She joined up with Mayday. She reentered Gilead to obtain information about Hannah, and she worked with Commander Tuello to coordinate a strike on the school that was holding her. The resources were there. The momentum was there, and now all of that is going to come to a header in season 6.
The series is known first and foremost for its intensity. It’s June biting her lip against the pain, a pair of pliers ready to rip out her fingernail, a cattle prod pressed to her neck, her head bashed against a doorframe.
Commander Lawrence once asked her, “What do you know about how much a person can take?” She replied, “Everything.”
At times, it seems like there are very few forms of trauma she hasn’t endured, and we’ve experienced all of that along with her. It hasn’t been easy. Some fans have to watch the series in short stints, and more than a few have been triggered by it. Many trauma victims can’t watch it all.
Her suffering did serve a purpose. It kept us tense and on edge, begging for her to fight back, and now, after 8 years, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. In the trailers we’re seeing images of handmaids with switchblades, running through the streets and killing Guardians. They’re calling it a rebellion, which will no doubt be a thrill.
But something meaningful will have to be accomplished in order for viewers to walk away with a sense of fulfillment. It could be a Commander purge or a mass exodus of children and handmaids. Maybe Aunt Lydia will establish her network, giving handmaids a reliable means of escaping to Canada.
Whatever happens, we know June will survive. According to The Testaments, she’ll go back to Canada where she’ll live on a hemp farm, working as a Mayday operative.
We don’t know whether or not we’ll see her again after the series concludes. There has been talk, but it’s been left open. Either way, June’s story will end, and we will move on to Aunt Lydia, Hannah, and Nichole.