It started with Season 3, Episode 11 when June just had enough of being repeatedly raped for five years and in a split-second decision (even if that wasn’t a real decision, but a gut reaction) decided “Not this time.”
June didn’t care what she was doing or how she was doing it. She didn’t care that a man begged for mercy and asked her to think of the children he stole and claimed as his own. He was going to die. For what he did to her and what he did to so many others by helping run this horrendous and horrific place that so needs to be burned to the ground.
And, if you just weren’t 100% convinced what a hellish, dystopian, totalitarian, inhumane, monstrous place Giliead is, the finale reminded us in its first scenes. Women herded into cages separated from their children. Other women naked and examined to make sure their “parts” worked. Children with Down’s Syndrome being beaten and berated.
No regard for women as human. No regard for non-perfect children as human. No regard for humanity, it seemed. Is Gilead like Nazi Germany or other more modern cruel heinous regimes? Or, is it a combination of both? Like with so many other aspects of the finale, those scenes stayed with us.
Mayday showed us what an organized and quiet resistance can do against powers some may think are too strong to ever take down. It showed us how ruthless we could become if all we were treated with for five years was ruthlessness.
As June held the gun to that guardian and ordered him to radio that he saw nothing and it was all a false alarm, did you not wish for her to pull the trigger the same way we cheered when she slammed that statue on Commander Winslow two weeks ago?
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That moment is when June truly broke bad. Not when she killed the commander, not when she allowed Eleanor (Julie Dretzen) to quietly die, but when she shot a man who had just shot her.
While there were some implausible moments at the end, it was all still so satisfying. It seemed a little far-fetched Serena lost her immunity deal for forcing Nick and June to create a baby (which, yes, made that a rape) when she’d done SO much worse, but she deserved having a baby she thought of as her own snatched from her. (Do you like how that feels, Serena?)
And yes, it was a Hollywood moment indeed when little Rebecca’s father just happened to be at that airplane hangar and saw his daughter emerge after all these years. But, that’s why we watch TV. For these little Hollywood moments. (And yes, it was even a Hollywood moment as Luke looked for Hannah to come off the plane and…she never did.)
But, in the end, The Handmaid’s Tale finale left us satisfied because we learned there is hope. We learned what people united can do when everything seems rigged against them. And we learned that faith in God doesn’t come in one form only.
June told us that as the other handmaids carried her away to what we assume is safety, so she can live again for Season 4 and 2020 — and hopefully burn down the hell that is Gilead once and for all.
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