The Handmaid’s Tale Sea­son Two gets off to a har­row­ing start

Sea­son one of The Handmaid’s Tale end­ed on just a slight glim­mer of despon­dent hope, but in the world of Gilead any small sense of relief is always short-lived. After being forced to trust an Eye blind­ly in the sea­son finale, Offred (Elis­a­beth Moss) now finds her­self shack­led in the back of a truck, en route to yet anoth­er unknown des­ti­na­tion. As she sits await­ing her fate with noth­ing but the sound of tyres screech­ing and two loose bul­lets clank­ing on the floor beneath her, she tries to steady her anx­ious breath, men­tal­ly prepar­ing for what­ev­er the Lord – her sup­posed sav­iour – has in store for her next.

The sound of muf­fled scream­ing and fran­tic dog bark­ing ris­es as the truck comes to an abrupt halt. The back door opens and Offred is pushed out of the truck and imme­di­ate­ly fit­ted with a muz­zle, only to be pushed into a sea of Hand­maids clad in red, their eyes wide with ter­ror, their hearts beat­ing out of their chest, fear­ing for their lives. Men dressed in black hoard them down a long, dark tun­nel, like lambs to the slaugh­ter, their pained cries and pet­ri­fied whim­pers grow­ing by the sec­ond. When they final­ly reach the end, they are all too aware that the cracks of light shin­ing through from above are in no way metaphor­ic. There is no light at the end of this tun­nel. Only darkness.

Find­ing her bear­ings, Offred recog­nis­es her new envi­ron­ment as Fen­way Park sta­di­um. Eeri­ly flood­lit, this for­mer sport­ing the­atre has mor­phed into a makeshift funer­al ground – hangman’s noos­es await the Hand­maids here. Their life’s pur­pos­es may not have been served, but clear­ly, Gilead can­not excuse their acts of defi­ance. Their heads are slipped through the noos­es, motors start whirring and sud­den­ly their deaf­en­ing fear is accom­pa­nied by the strange­ly sooth­ing words of Kate Bush’s ​‘This Woman’s Work’ – yes, it looks as though now begins the craft of the Father.

Offred’s eyes look sky­ward, her hands com­ing togeth­er in reluc­tant prayer while the urine trick­les from the skirt of the name­less maid beside her. And even in these seem­ing­ly final moments, their com­pas­sion for one anoth­er is as strong as ever. It can­not be demon­strat­ed but it can be felt through silent glances and grip­ping hands. ​“By his hand” the lever is pulled and the Hand­maids fall – to sol­id ground. The women gasp for the air they thought they’d nev­er breathe again as Aunt Lydia’s warns them of the pain of His judge­ment, hav­ing just demon­strat­ed the con­se­quences of dis­obey­ing His word and the word of his ser­vants here on this hell­ish Earth.

Sea­son two’s pre­mière episode, ​‘June’, is a shock to the sys­tem that will leave you breath­less, rid­den with the kind of anx­i­ety you can’t sim­ply walk off or dis­tract your­self from with an all-is-well-in-the-world sit­com. The images, music and grief over the loss of per­son­al free­dom will leave you reel­ing and, if you hap­pen to find your­self on US grounds, the real­i­sa­tion of just how quick­ly these dras­tic changes can take effect may be over­whelm­ing. The episode’s flash­backs show June and her hus­band on the very day they were forced to part with life as they knew it, gid­di­ly agree­ing to try for a sec­ond baby. The gov­ern­ment has already put the patri­archy in charge of women’s repro­duc­tive choic­es, but how much worse could it get?

While June is par­doned from extreme pun­ish­ment due to her cur­rent con­di­tion, she still hasn’t lost the courage to rebel. Short­ly after hav­ing under­gone her first gynae­co­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tion to con­firm her preg­nan­cy, a key plant­ed into her boot leads her down anoth­er dark tun­nel and, this time, it seems to be lead­ing to some form of twist­ed free­dom from the total­i­tar­i­an, Chris­t­ian theo­nom­ic régime. Tak­en to an aban­doned build­ing by ways of a slaugh­ter­house truck organ­ised by the Eye Nick (Max Minghel­la), June can final­ly shed Offred, dump­ing the red gar­ments that have stripped her off her free­dom and inde­pen­dent wom­an­hood into an incinerator.

‘I am free’, she writes to the mil­lions of dis­tant hand­maids kept cap­tive across the coun­try. The ques­tion is: is she freed from Gilead or free to exist?