The Handmaid’s Tale season one ends the same way the book does: June, or “Offred,” being lead away from the Waterford’s house by armed guards, given a reassuring word by her lover, Nick. There’s hope this means escape for June, but regardless, she leaves the house proud, with her head held high.
Season two, the first to go off-book, does all it can to push June back down on her knees, where – for the purposes of this show - she belongs. In the S2 opener, June and her fellow Handmaids are bound and gagged and led like animals to the slaughter. (This imagery isn’t simply a metaphor; the patriarchal lords of Gilead are intentionally reinforcing for the Handmaids that they are little more than chattel.)
The sequence is long, terrifying and agonizing, taking the time to show June and her friends’ wild-eyed confusion, the dawn of realization at the sight of the nooses, the damp spots on those bright red dresses as Handmaids wet themselves with fear. This scene was written and directed by men.
Though the hanging was eventually revealed a fake-out, the torture of the rest of the episode, and the rest of the season, is real and equally visceral. The juggernaut that was season one seemed to be a glimpse at a future we could still prevent, and a celebration of the indomitable human spirit (female spirit) in even the worst of circumstances. The thesis of season two seems to be that no matter how hard you fight, you’ll end up back at square one.
From the perspective of story, Handmaid’s second season is an ouroboros of pain for protagonist and audience alike. June’s triumphant defiances, which were the high point of season one, are immediately stamped out in soul-crushing manner in season two. Over 13 episodes, June manages to escape and be forcibly returned to the Waterfords’s home an unbelievable three times. It’s not just emotionally difficult to watch June continue to be caged; it wears on our suspension of disbelief. (Surely the ruthless Waterfords, cruel and intelligent enough to be at the forefront of the overthrow of the United States, would weigh the risk/reward of keeping June close and send her to some far-flung corner of Gilead after the attempted escapes, especially after they’ve taken the new baby from her?)
For a show that rests heavily on feminist laurels, it’s difficult to point towards feminist moments in season two (not to mention intersectional feminism, as issues of race are ignored and trans women do not seem to exist in Gilead, among other things). No matter what actions the narrative allows of June, everything inevitably leads back to Gilead, and greater personal anguish. Even June’s final, bold choice of the season, deciding not to leave the country, tethers her further to not just to Gilead, but to one specific section of it (with only brief glimpses of Canada and the “Colonies”). Rather than expanding further upon what this world could be, the show is committed to remaining in Gilead's post-Boston. In doing so, the narrative chooses Gilead over June at most every opportunity, and the show is worse off for it.
On the production side, Bruce Miller has stated a commitment to hiring women at all levels of the show, a commendable goal. Yet ultimately it’s Miller, a man, who is the showrunner and executive producer, and holds June’s fate in his hands – a fate beyond what her creator, Margaret Atwood, imagined for her. It’s a male director, Mike Barker, who constructed those anxious, awful moments of the faux-hanging that opened the season. It’s off-putting, to say the least, that this content tied so inextricably to female pain rests on the shoulders of men.
Elisabeth Moss continues to stun in the role of June, but it’s hard to watch season two as each episode becomes a contest to see how many ways Gilead can break her spirit. June may have reached the end of the season in tact, but it’s a question of when, not if, the cruelty of Gilead will catch up to her next. Women already live in a hostile world that would see many of us bowed and bent. The Handmaid’s Tale may once have felt like a necessary story, but season two is despairing and inhospitable, a world of endless cruelty and violence against women, a world built by men. Maybe Gilead still has worthy stories to tell, but for me, personally – I don’t want to live in Gilead anymore.