Sympathy for the devil: how The Handmaid's Tale finally goes too far

Even if you haven’t personally seen The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s dystopian re-imagining of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel about fertile women being forced

into sexual servitude, you are probably deeply familiar with the iconography of the show, much of which is especially riveting because of its simplicity: the Handmaids in their long red dress and white bonnets, the Wives in a deep regal blue-green, the Marthas in dull green-grey, the Aunts in faded browns.

Many of the show’s most visually striking moments focus on how, in the world of Gilead, the individual is simply less important than the group. Overhead shots of Handmaids walking two-by-two, whether to participate in some grand ceremony or to simply go shopping with their assigned partner, are oddly beautiful, serene. The Handmaids look like otherworldly creatures, like brightly colored birds, standing out against the backdrop of the rest of the world. Though they are routinely tortured, raped and forced into compliance, they spend much of their time tottering about the gorgeous homes of the commanders and their wives, each designed to look like an oddly violent and fascistic WilliamsSonoma catalogue with regal kitchens, spacious living rooms and elegant bedrooms, complete with grand marital beds where handmaids are ceremonially raped.

Shots of this kind, showing a creepy and strangely beautiful side of Gilead,

are punctured with closeup looks at June’s face, almost always grimacing. It’s odd that after so many seasons, June, who bizarrely chooses to remain in Gilead in order to try to rescue her first daughter, hasn’t perfected a convincing pretend-smile. Each time the camera homes in on one of her servile smirks, you can practically see her winking at the camera, reminding us that she hasn’t drunk the Gilead KoolAid.

You would think that learning to fake emotions might be especially useful skill in a place where female servitude is paramount, but, strangely, June’s obstinacy seems to have earned her a little fan club, with the commander and his wife each seeking out June for genuine advice throughout the first episodes of the third season. While season two disturbed viewers with its emphasis on depicting heightened violence against women in lurid detail, season three aims to be a subtler psychological examination of the leadership of Gilead, and even asks that we feel some compassion towards June’s tormentors, even as they continue to allow and encourage a terrible and brutal regime.

Certainly, many of the great TV dramas of the past 15 years have offered humane and nuanced looks at complicated characters who do bad things. Indeed, the 21st century fascination with the antihero has made cheering on bad guys a veritable hobby. But while shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Americans offer subtle examinations of morally dubious figures, the villains of The Handmaid’s Tale simply haven’t earned this tender second look. It feels like emotional whiplash to suddenly ask viewers to feel sorry for characters who have spent the majority of two seasons raping and torturing their captives. In the same way, focusing on whether or not Fred and Serena can get through marital problems, many of which stem from the commander chopping off his wife’s pinky for her insubordination in season two, is strangely centered throughout much of the new season, another departure from the show’s allegorical roots. Is there anyone out there who is actually rooting for this horrible couple and hoping that June can counsel them through tough times? Similarly, Aunt Lydia’s character, though marvelously acted by actress Ann Dowd, isn’t given enough backstory so that we actually feel sorry for her when she collapses in tears at one particularly tragic moment this season, as well as later embrace June in a tenderhearted and genuine hug before placing an even more dehumanizing piece of clothing on June, one that literally covers her mouth.

It is clear that by extending June’s stay in Gilead, the show’s writers have placed themselves in a kind of conundrum – how to extend the story without simply repeating the same violence against women over and over again? Season three of The Handmaid’s Tale attempts to go deeper into the emotional breadth of its story, but there is little the viewer needs to learn about Gilead at this juncture other than the obvious: that the regime is horrible, destructive, and deserves to be destroyed. In one scene in the middle of the season, we see a mutilated handmaid, a reminder that whatever personal growth that June has experienced is futile since she is up against a powerful regime that is so thoroughly monstrous that there is no humanity left to grapple with.

At its best, season three of The Handmaid’s Tale works as an exceptionally creepy psychological study of the delusional creators and facilitators of Gilead. In my favorite scene of the first six episodes distributed to critics, we see Fred and Serena play a game of tea party with another commander’s child. They smile warmly at each other, as Serena lifts a hand-sewn pretend pinky finger, a gift from her Martha, as if her original pinky wasn’t cruelly cut off her hand by the very husband she now plays a children’s game with.

Still, the main issue of the series is that it tends towards shocking viewers with the cruel horrors of Gilead rather than offering genuine character development. Though June repeatedly says that she is a different person after being in Gilead, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence that she is. Certainly, it’s a relief that June is as angry and resistant as ever, but I’m not sure that continuing to drag June through the physical and psychological horrors of Gilead over and over again does much to advance the plot or move us emotionally forward. At a time when we see more and more reproductive freedoms being taken away from women, a show like The Handmaid’s Tale needs to be more than a series of provocative and frightening images on repeat. June deserves a story that doesn’t necessarily give her a pat, happy ending, but that does, ultimately, give her a potential way out.

The Handmaid’s Tale is released on Hulu on Tuesdays and will premiere in the UK on Channel 4 on 9 June