Handmaid’s Tale: It’s Time to Join the Resistance

To escape a nightmare, sometimes you just need to remember that your life is worth waking up for.

In the two most recent episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) learned that two of the people she cared about most—her husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and her best friend, Moira (Samira Wiley)—are still alive. When she thought she was alone in Gilead, June just focused on surviving. Now she has a reason to live, to escape, and to join the resistance. “I want to help,” June tells her fellow handmaid Alma (Nina Kiri), who earlier informed June about the sinister goals of the Mexican trade delegation, “with Mayday.”

And though Alma initially brushes June off, she soon gives her a task: Go back to the illegal brothel Jezebel’s, find someone at the bar, and bring home a package. So with some clever placating and wheedling, June convinces the Commander (Joseph Fiennes) to take her out again. She tells him it was so exciting: to dress up for him, to sneak out with him, to spend the night pleasing him in bed. She lets the Commander see returning to Jezebel’s as his idea, as the next play in his game of controlling and rewarding his besotted handmaid. Before long, the Commander is taking June back out past the barricades, while his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), sews at home.

Instead of going to the bar at Jezebel’s, the Commander takes June straight to a bedroom. Later, when she asks about going downstairs for a drink, he says he’s not dumb: He knows she wanted to return to see Moira. He knows her too, the Commander tells her, smiling, reminding her he can use them both at his discretion. He lets Moira (known as Ruby at Jezebel's) into the room, graciously giving them the gift of a few minutes alone while he showers.

When June explains her Mayday mission, Moira tells her to stop being delusional. There’s no getting out of Gilead—just go home and do what they say. But June, crying, begs Moira to help her escape, to find and save her daughter Hannah. “You promised, you fuckin’ pinky swore,” June says. “Do not let them grind you down.” But Moira has been ground down. They’ve beaten the fight out of her.

That’s how Gilead rules: The government takes everything away from women—their freedom, their agency, their bodies—until they have nothing left to fight for. After giving birth, Janine must surrender her daughter to Warren (Stephen Kunken) and Naomi Putnam (Ever Carradine). She’s completed her duty as a handmaid, and will now be the property of another Commander. Once Ofwarren, now Ofdaniel. Convinced that Warren will come to take her and baby Charlotte away from Gilead, she fights off Daniel during the Ceremony. Janine runs away, back to the house of the Putnams, taking her baby and making it to the railing of a bridge.

Standing above the Charles River in winter, Janine threatens to end her own life and her daughter's. “I did all the fucked-up shit you wanted,” she shouts at a desperate Warren. “You promised me we would run off and become a family.” Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) begs June to come down from the edge. Rather than lying and trying to convince Janine that Gilead isn’t so bad, June tells her that there’s hope. “All of this, it’s all gonna be over one day, and everything is gonna go back to normal,” June tells Janine, whose eye was plucked out for talking back, who is raped once a month, whose baby was stolen from her. June imagines a livable future, a time when Gilead feels like a distant memory. “We’re gonna get hammered. We’re gonna go dancing, and watch the sun come up.”

For a moment, Janine is convinced. But then she remembers her life, and how inescapable it feels. The icy water seems like the only way out. “Come with me,” she says to June. “It can’t hurt very much. Then we’ll be free.” The offer tempts June, but she can’t, because of the slim chance to one day be reunited with her husband and daughter. She convinces Janine to spare her infant, but not herself: After passing Charlotte back to June, Janine jumps, a red dress against the icy current. For her, the only way out of the nightmare was to never wake up again.

After witnessing Janine’s fall, June is numb. As she wanders through the market picking up food, the butcher hands her a suspicious extra parcel. She sneaks around the corner and pulls a note out of it: “Praised be, bitch. Here’s your damn package. XOXO, Moira.” Armed with a package for Mayday, June is now fully part of the resistance.

Back at Jezebel’s, Moira reprises her attempted escape from the Rachel and Leah Center, using a shiv to kill a client and take his clothes before driving off into the night. That's the thing about freedom—you can take it back. Praised be.