Season five’s tagline was “Some sins can’t be washed away”, but it could have been the words June delivered in this finale: “America wasn’t Gilead until it was, and then it was too fucking late.” That was this season’s warning, and its justification for telling a story so bleak that our hero just got chased out of the sanctuary, and away from the husband, she’d spent four seasons striving to reach.
If this show wasn’t making such a valid and timely protest with June’s storyline, it’d be pure sadism by this point. June’s more than earned a happy ending, but the potential of using her character to dramatize the asylum experience was too great to let her rest yet. Thus, the Handmaid’s tale becomes the refugee’s tale; June’s story now mirroring those of real displaced people who thought they’d stepped onto solid ground only to discover it was quicksand.
Remember Emily being clapped by strangers as she walked into that Toronto hospital? It didn’t take long for that applause to become jeers, and for those jeers to become violence. Little by little, The Handmaid’s Tale has turned up the temperature on Canada’s intolerance, and with Gilead’s help, June’s been forced out before it reaches boiling point. First came the Waterfords’ fan club, then the Wheelers (proof that no society should let an individual get rich enough to fund their own personal army), then the street harassment, and then the angry men with guns. Canada’s not Gilead now, said season five, but it could be, and so could anywhere. It’s a dismal but grimly realistic conclusion to draw.
