Season four of the drama based on Margaret Atwood’s novel has seen Elisabeth Moss’s June in near-constant peril. However, it seems her latent rage could be the thing that sets her free
I find myself wondering why I am still so invested in The Handmaid’s Tale on a weekly basis, as the camera slowly closes in on Elisabeth Moss’s face, her character June pained and broken by cruelty after cruelty. The apocalyptic drama is coming to the end of its fourth run, and when this season began, it found itself boxed into an inevitable corner. How could it sustain the story far beyond Margaret Atwood’s novel, without keeping its characters in a cage, and becoming an unrewarding display of relentless misery?
It had begun to go around in circles. June would defy the rules, escape the authorities, get captured, undergo torture, and then begin the whole cycle again. It made it hard for viewers to feel satisfaction in her victories. What was the point in rooting for her, if she would inevitably end up back at the start?