THE HANDMAID’S TALE
Season 4, reviewed. Contains the word “timely”.
SHOWRUNNER Bruce Miller CAST Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski
PLOT Picking up directly after the rescue mission that closed Season 3, June (Moss) is recovering from a gunshot wound under the care of her fellow fugitive handmaids. Meanwhile, her husband Luke (O.T. Fagbenle) and best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) continue their search for June and her daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake).
THERE’S AN EERIE timeliness that comes with each new phase of The Handmaid’s Tale. Its first season premiered mere months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, which only served to bolster the show’s themes of female degradation and swelling conservatism. Fittingly, the fourth season takes a deep dive into the psyche of someone who has lived through the worst and come out the other side (or at least, appears to have). The previous three seasons have committed to building the world of Gilead, a totalitarian state created to save the population through childbearing slavery. Now, as June (Elisabeth Moss) has been established as a maverick leader and a survivor of systematic rape, the show turns inwards on its central character.
Moss has maintained a guttural and raw performance which runs wild in this most recent chapter. This season also sees her make her directorial debut, with her credit at the top of three especially weighty and varied episodes. One, entitled ‘The Testimony’, involves a gruelling, lengthy monologue from June, Moss the director drawing the best out of a challenging and intimate scene, showcasing her potential behind the camera.
Her surrounding cast are given varying spaces to play in. O.T. Fagbenle, whose character Luke has been limited to the role of helpless father and husband for much of his arc, is rewarded with some big emotional pay-offs this season. Samira Wiley equally gets to probe deeper into Moira’s survivor’s guilt. Within Gilead, Bradley Whitford’s screen time has been docked, but he offers one of the more interesting characters by far as Commander Joseph Lawrence, a key player in the state’s creation who despises its murky morals.
Much of the season otherwise sticks to the show’s established blueprint, to its disadvantage. The countless shots of June in shallow focus, or the feminist-anthem needle drops, have lost their sting after 35 episodes in spite of the scenes themselves being expertly played. The season’s pivot in narrative could have provided an opportunity to reconfigure the show’s architecture; instead, it remains as handsome yet bloated as ever.
The frequent, sterile flashbacks of sexual abuse used to emphasise June’s trauma also feel dubious. As June is able to put some distance between herself and her tormentors, reminders are needlessly dotted throughout the latter episodes, as if the horror carried in Moss’ performance isn’t quite enough.
Yet the season ends on a captivating note. Whereas the finales that have gone before tended to end on a choice for June which would only cement her status as a modern hero, this time it’s not the case. It’s this move into new terrain that ends the series on a thrilling and dangerous note and opens up June’s role into something far more unpredictable. BETH WEBB
VERDICT
Despite its increasingly familiar aesthetics, Season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale is the most rewarding since its first, and thrives on a welcome move behind the camera by Moss.