Spoilers ahead for thefirst three episodesofThe Handmaid’s Taleseason 3.
Read through when you’ve finished Wednesday’s premiere event.
They struggle across the border after being taken as far as possible and ultimately make it to Canada.
Credit: Elly Dassas/Hulu
Emily arrives with newfound freedom but is utterly shell-shocked and traumatized.
This, of course, gives Luke and Moira plenty of complicated new information to grapple with.
She doesn’t spout the Gilead BS.
She doesn’t come off as purely self-interested, ignoring June’s role as her birth mother.
“Stop,” Landecker’s character repeats.
June is affected by this.
So to go back to the way things were?
There’s simply no way.
She sets fire to the bed and watches it burn.
Engulfed in flames, Serena just sits, peacefully.
From another room, June smells the smoke and feels the heat.
She finds Serena surrounded by fire and they stare at each other.
June smiles, slightlyrecognizing, after a beat, the significance of this destructive moment.
She guides Serena out of the room and the house and eventually watches it come crashing down from outside.
Strangely if appropriately, it’s as gleeful a moment asHandmaid’stends to offer.
June moves in with Commander Lawrence:The Waterford home burns down.
He’s as menacingly peculiar as ever, keeping June off-balance.
June notices his wife is not well.
When a recovering Aunt Lydiahaving survived Emily’s push from last seasonstops by, she hints at great dysfunction.
And yet Lawrence leaves June the space to continue her turn toward radicalization.
(This includes her first-ever trip to a laundry.)
Here we see the roots of Serena’s inner-turmoil.
“She can never quite get through to her.
She makes her feel small, she [feels] controlled.”
Of course, Serena eventually returns home to speak with Junemore on that in a minute.
June’s fateful decision:In episode 3, Lawrence and June’s twisted dynamic deepens.
Again, his motives are hard to gauge.
Is he just trolling her?
Trying to make her feel terrible?
Actually seeing her as an ally in undoing some of what he created?
For which is she more directly responsible?
Initially she angrily rejects his pitch, saying she won’t play along.
And she succumbsa major moment in her radicalization, andher development as a fighter this season.
June and Serena reunite:This three-episode opener ends between June and Serena.
Serena is, inevitably, resistant.
But the final image of the episode, of her in the water, indicates a kind of rebirth.
Might we see a change in Serena beyond what’s already taken place?
It’ll be a long road, but stranger things have happened.
