C4 / UK pace: No Spoilers Please - Handmaids Tale returns anyone else excited?

[Ladybird69]

YEY. just seen the new season is starting 23 October. I binge watched the others earlier in the month so can’t wait for it to start again. The ending was a shocker that I didn’t see coming. I can’t wait to see where they’re taking it. Will serena joy get let go because she was under his orders AND she’s having a baby. Or will she get put into jail and baby taken away when he’s born.

Great episode. Someone mentioned that they didn't think Canada would put the funeral on it's tv but I think that the rest of the world would have a morbid fascination with Gilead and so it would make great ratings to air it.

Omg Hannah touché serena ! Junes coming for you

@Topgub no... I don't want to see any of the characters getting raped but I'd like to see how Esther gets her revenge on Gilead.

how is Gilead funded
do they have an economy
not sure how money wise Gilead works

They addressed it a little bit in earlier series when the Mexican diplomat visited Gilead.

a) they don't have much money; previously having made what they could off the land and trading that, which is drying up
b) they were negotiating to sell handmaids (as Mexico also struggling with low birth rate)
c) I suspect they got a fair amount of initial money from confiscating money and valubale goods from traitors to the State

I agree @Topgub - I hope they're both dead as I can't watch them suffer anymore, especially Janine. The trauma is just too much and whilst it would be great to see them get revenge, what they'd have to go through before they got to that point is too much for me to endure!

Thanks for your thoughts @StrongCoffeeAvalanche - that's why I love these threads as people on here make me see / think about things that I wouldn't necessarily consider.

Appreciate you responding to me @Tillow4ever

I loved the episode last night
I thought it was really well done
What will next week bring I wonder?

I found the idea of Serena being able to give Hannah a central role in the funeral unrealistic. The commanders are going to know that Hannah was her handmaid’s daughter and realise that this will make relations with Canada uncomfortable (or at least Nick will).

I did like that June is pissing off so many people - that is realistic.

Esther might be dead but Janine is a really central character. I’m getting cross that so many terrible things happen to Janine and not June.

Where have you seen the second episode? I cant find it on the planner.

ive never thought of this before but completely agree with this

It's only recently that Janine has started to 'play the game'. Previously she was very rebellious and then also lost her head after Angela was born. Whereas June has always been more aware of what to do to survive and been much better at pretending.

Serena orchestrated the guest list with Cmndr Lawrence in the sitting room. She’ll have asked for the girls (Hannah) to be there at the big ol’ state funeral.

‘You might be ‘free’ Junie but I got your girl. Not so free now, are you, you finger chopping bitch’

SJ 1. June 0.

June gonna be digging that gun back up and Nick (who’s turned spy) gonna be helping.

They've bought Janine back from the dead before, when she jumped from the bridge. It seems pointless and early in the season for them to kill Janine and Esther off now surely?

I agree @RosalindsAFuckingNightmare but I'm living in hope that they're dead (sadly!)

That's state funeral coverage in Canada was ridiculous. I can't imagine in this country they would show anything more than a few highlights on the news. As far as I know it's only our own state funerals that ever get televised like that.

Also, I can't see Janine and Esther dying, they are the only characters keeping aunt Lydia in this show, if they kill them off then that whole side show is kind of redundant. Unless they're using it to start a new storyline for aunt Lydia.

Yes I wondered that. Maybe her husband is now the boss and so she wishes to differentiate herself from the other wives.

That's state funeral coverage in Canada was ridiculous. I can't imagine in this country they would show anything more than a few highlights on the news. As far as I know it's only our own state funerals that ever get televised like that.

I thought it was highlights as shown on the news, or similar? Though they were extensive highlights, presumably to allow for the emotional scene of Luke and June seeing Hannah.

I might have been wrong, though.

I loved it despite the implausible things ... so all that was to get back at June. Brilliant. What a hard faced bitch SJ is. Hard to believe Gilead went along with it though as Fred was clearly a traitor. Can't imagine she would want to return to live in Gilead again though as she has now tasted freedom, even though in her luxurious 'cell', and seems to think she will be freed in Canada once all the formalities are over. I liked seeing Tuello there, he's a great character, but yes lets his mask slip at times as he did when he told June she'd done a good thing in getting rid of Fred.

I assumed that the thing on her ear was an ear cuff that she wore to cover the hole where she had ripped the tag off?

Ah, but we know Serena doesn't want freedom: she already sacrificed it once for the power of being a Gilead wife by pushing the creation of such a State.

She values power far more highly than she values freedom.

What remains to be seen is how high she places the value on her own child's happiness.

You might be right, hence the tickertape headline at the bottom. They just seemed to show a lot of detail for a news report but then thinking about it seeing children in Gilead would be significant and newsworthy.
I did enjoy the episode though and was impressed with Serena's plan even though I don't like her as a character and don't care that her husband was killed. Whereas June is becoming more unlikeable. I wonder if we will see any more one upmanship between them.

I actually like that June is becoming unlikeable. A series that started out seeming to really try and extract the different elements and viewpoints of motherhood now seems to be really looking at what happens to people post trauma. How it changes them, how it can make some people deeply unlikeable because of the way the damage has been wrought. And perhaps than questioning to what extent they are responsible for the damage they cause themselves, in reaction to that pain; and to what degree that responsibility for that damage lies on the original perpertrator.

I am enjoying the process of unpacking that.

I do wish there was more to the background on the colonies/Gileads economy and the rest of the world's situation, it would help to 'ground' the storyline a little more of how Gilead remains able to run itself.

Tuello clearly has hots for Serena, I wonder if he'll look to make a move when the time is right and convince her to abandon the Gilead principles.

There's going to come a time when June has to choose between Nick and Luke and I hope she chooses Nick! Luke doesn't 'get' her from what I can see & Nick has always come good.

@DesignerRecliner

Yes, I've really enjoyed the flash back episodes to pre gilead

Wish they'd have more of them although I accept it wasn't really explained in the book either

In some ways it would be more interesting if they stopped following June and started following Hannah instead. The risk with following June is that it gets more implausible as the series go on.