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.

Glad I wasn’t the only one. The woman who plays Serena is terrific. I do hope there’s a happy ending for them.

I wonder if it’s partly about pride at this point? She told Tuello she didn’t need his help & it would hurt to have to ask for it now. But she might have to - especially if Gilead push for her to face trial for shooting Ezra or demand Fred’s son back.

Did anybody else spot the spider's Web during the labour scenes? Top right corner with the shadow of a small body hanging in space.

Amazing chemistry. The lines about the familiar smell, voice etc etc. Visceral.

As @Theredjellybean writes "......why on earth did Serena not ask for asylum as an American citizen....."

I don't understand that either.

It’s funny you mention that…I miss a lot of detail but I did clock the spiders web! I remember thinking at the time that it was so blatant that I was wondering whether I was supposed to see some significance in it…but all I came up with was it’s an old creepy barn 😂

I guess having seen the full episode, that it is foreshadowing. A spider's Web is a trap. But spiders are also helpful. Depends how you look at it. Much like how we see June choosing who to be, to be merciful or vengeful towards Serena.

She doesn't believe herself to be an American. Gilead was (in part) based on her book.

The dynamics between Serena and June make for intriguing watching. Fundamentally Serena is still expecting June to serve her. In the same way she assumed that the Martha's were friendly towards her. She doesn't see the forced servitude because she hasn't been on the receiving end of it. She's beginning to see if now.
I think that the motives in declining asylum were similar to why she ended up losing a finger. She knows the rules but still seems to think she's beyond them. There's an arrogance and privilege to Serena's life.
June is an angry, traumatised woman, grieving for her estranged child, but cannot escape her own abilities to be empathetic. She doesn't want to help her enemy but can't stop herself.
Serena must realise now there's no way back 'home' for her.
Will June keep on helping her? There's a question.

Although June is very definite in that episode (rightly) that a baby needs to be with their mother, she sent her own baby off to Canada without her!
I know Nicole wasn't a newborn, but she was pretty young still

I think having Noah taken from her will be the act that forces Serena to choose. She has spent so much energy and time ignoring the Gilead abuses, even minimising the ones that were perpetrated on her physically , intellectually and emotionally. She has somehow managed to compartmentalise what she knows about the reality of Gilead against the ideal of what she had hoped Gilead would become , and incidentally doing the same with her relationship with Fred. But she can’t have her Gilead cake and eat it anymore. To save herself and Noah she has to stand up and refute all her previous loyalty to Gilead and Fred, to admit her own guilt in the Gilead process and accept whatever this means in terms of her future life. And the only person she knows who might possibly support her is the person who her adherence to Gilead has wounded the most.

All that, post partum hormones and leaking breasts.

She was in an impossible position though. If she'd left then, she would have been choosing to leave Hannah behind, whereas she knew that Nicole would be safe with Emily. In my mind, she was making sure Nicole was safe and trying to do the same for Hannah by staying behind.

I particularly liked the hush-toned ‘they’re feeding him… formula’.

I was surprised by her bewilderment of the workings of a hospital. Surely she must remember how they operate, since she must’ve spent a reasonable period of time in once after she was shot? Has she really been in Gilead long enough to make the experience so alien?

What will happen to Hannah? I like to think Serena will work to get her out, but at the same time I don’t think it would necessarily be right to given she’s grown up with another set of parents and seems to have been radicalised.

I liked that formula line too

I took it more as her distaste for the hospital environment/medicine/science in general rather than bewilderment. In general I thought the whole episode reinforced that Serena really is a devout believer in God and religion. I've always wondered if she was just sort of going along with it or pretending to believe. But she really sounded like a zealot in this episode.

The bit where the handmaids had to stand and pray for the life of the baby and the dying handmaid just seemed so ridiculous and backwards. I'd take science over religion in any medical emergency.

@CyanCyan have you read the Testaments? That tells Hannah's story (hope that's not too much of a spoiler!)

I know it gets mixed reviews but I absolutely loved it. I found it so satisfying to read and I hope the TV series is going to align with it.

I haven’t but I keep seeing it mentioned here. Was it a sequel?

Yes! Came out a couple of years ago. The audiobook version is great - one of the actresses reading it is the lady who plays Aunt Lydia in the TV show.

I bought the Testaments a while ago but haven't been able to bring myself to read it but after reading this thread, I'll need to dig it out and read.

@CyanCyan they have to get Hannah out - radicalised or not, she needs to be free and back with her parents. With counselling, love and support, lm sure she'd be fine. They need to do this before she becomes a wife and is raped by her husband as up until now, I imagine she has been safe from physical harm.

Has Hannah been separated from June and Luke for six years ?
Has there been research done as to the effect on a child reuniting with a parent / parents at the age of 11/12 ?
Of course you have to throw in to the mix the oddity that is Gilead, despite she probably has had a reasonably privileged life there.

I don't remember anything about Hannah in the Testaments! Might need to reread

Hannah was Agnes.

Please dont make any references to things that happen or are said in The Testaments.

Second this! Thank you

I read The Testaments when it was first published but I raced through and can't remember anything of it except I was disappointed and felt MA had written it quickly to cash in on the success of The Handmaid's Tale on tv.