What to remember ahead of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 4

The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 is almost here. Yeah, we can’t believe it either.

For one thing, the dystopian drama was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a nearly two-year gap between seasons and a whole lot of forgetfulness among audiences. But there’s more to the strangeness of this series’ return than just fuzzy plot details. 

It’s 2021, and The Handmaid’s Tale will hit different. 

Forged in the embers of post-2016 election rage, the Margaret Atwood adaptation-turned-survival thriller is poised to take on its biggest challenge yet in Season 4 — airing new episodes to a world fundamentally changed by current crises. Yes, The Handmaid’s Tale has been a lightning rod for controversy in the past. It’s been criticized for the symbolic role it has played in the national battle for reproductive rights, as well as for fridging Black characters, using gratuitous sexual violence, and otherwise misjudging when going “there” becomes going too far. 

But in these next ten episodes The Handmaid’s Tale is positioned to finally clarify — or at the very least heavily hint at — what ultimate message Gilead’s impending downfall is meant to carry for weary fans who’ve watched this show since Donald Trump entered the White House. 

TL;DR: It’s 2021, and The Handmaid’s Tale will hit different. 

Critics’ reviews haven’t dropped yet, but the Season 4 trailer teases even more gritty sex slavery sadness (if that’s what you even call it?), putting lots of simulated torture and otherwise graphic violence in the series’ near future. Assessing whether that continued cranking of intensity will benefit the show poses a number of other intriguing questions.

Will audiences keep investing in this series if things never get better? Conversely, might they disengage when June’s situation finally does improve? Are we watching this show because the keen insight it provides through this horrific vision of the future, or because it’s continually leaned into it worst instincts? Will the colossal way our reality has changed since we last entered Gilead make us hungry for more suffering? Less? What will The Handmaid’s Tale say about us?

With that combination of ideas in mind, we combed back through Seasons 1 through 3 looking not only for the plot reminders we need but for the controversial storylines still hanging in the balance. If it helps, think of this refresher as more of a “what to worry about” if you, like us, are holding out hope that this seemingly never-ending tragedy could still be building to a valuable insight.

Where did June leave off?

Flailing feminist June Osborne began last season with a lot to address. 

After giving birth alone in a freezing house just hours after seeing her boyfriend get abducted and then fending off a pack of wolves (remember the wolves?), the de facto rebel leader had her newborn daughter smuggled out of Gilead by Rita and a network of Marthas. Of course, June was supposed to be smuggled out as well, but she chose to stay behind to be the hero Hulu paid for. That was the whole Season 2 finale controversy. 

Fast forward a bit to the end of Season 3, as June realizes she must sacrifice herself to help a plane’s worth of children escape to Canada. (FWIW, there was a whole bunch of other nonsense before that, with June being tortured at the Red Center, then reassigned to Commander Lawrence, and dragged to DC for that press tour, but the plane heist was the main focus of her arc and is  likely all we need to remember heading into Season 4.) It’s at this point June finally gets the opportunity at martyrdom she’s been angling for, ready to be a distraction so others can flee.

 You can’t think The Handmaid’s Tale without also thinking, “June, just sit the fuck down.”

But June’s fellow handmaids decide they’re gonna sacrifice themselves for her, and all hell breaks loose. June gets shot; then she shoots an unnamed Eye; then the handmaids stone a dude driving a van and disappear into the woods carrying June’s limp body while she recites Bible verses in voiceover. Yeah, that final scene really is a lot to take in — and is, to put it extraordinarily mildly, problematic. 

June is an unforgivably imperfect hero, who just last season let Mrs. Lawrence, an explicitly mentally ill character, die by suicide. Yeah, remember that shit show? She also held a gun on a 10-year-old girl and stabbed guest star Christopher Meloni to death with a pen before asking a bunch of strangers to get rid of the body for her so she could once again embark on a terrible (but new!) plan that again put a whole lot of people in danger.

We could go on about June’s failings at length — and have. Suffice to say, you can’t think The Handmaid’s Tale without also thinking, “June, just sit the fuck down and soothe your quivering upper lip, you monstrous megalomaniac. You’re getting everyone killed for the wrong reasons.” 

Her reckoning needs to come, and soon. Even delaying it to the latter half of Season 4 could burn audiences when you consider the overtly positive symbolism of where we left off. 

Is Gilead going to get any more believable?

Between Janine ping-ponging to and from the colonies and handmaids getting their lips sewn shut in the nation’s capital, The Handmaid’s Tale‘s believability problem has been well-established. But as we head into this next season, its consequences could be more narratively costly than ever.

It is essential that The Handmaid’s Tale identify what allowed this violent theocracy to flourish.

With Luke, Moira, Emily, and, as revealed in the Season 3 finale, Rita now in Canada, and both Waterfords standing trial before the globe — remember, Fred reported Serena to the Canadian feds for making June have sex with Nick and Serena got cuffed in the last episode — there are ample players for the international stage to become a viable road for The Handmaid’s Tale to go down. 

That’s the logical next step for this narrative. But we live in a post-pandemic era, and effectively depicting a time of crisis while we’re still in one seems challenging based on this story’s history. 

See, all the way back in Season 1, a visit from the Mexican ambassador to Gilead let June make indirect contact with the international stage. Upon June secretly confiding in the dignitary, however, the ambassador callously told June Mexico would not help. They needed the uteruses.

By Season 3, alternatively, a sexy white Canadian man was arresting Serena on charges of rape, alleged by a woman in another country, heroically outside of his jurisdiction…but also using a human baby as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Serena’s war criminal husband?

So far, The Handmaid’s Tale‘s presentation of their universe’s international community has been confusing, inconsistent, and, frankly, racist. That will make these next episodes much trickier to land. Because, as we mentioned in our debrief for Season 3 (were we ever so young?), it is essential that The Handmaid’s Tale identify what allowed this violent theocracy to flourish: 

“Is it nuclear weapons? Control of the world economy? An embarrassing snapshot of SpongeBob at the Christmas party? We need answers. Without them, Handmaid’s will struggle to maintain any believability or self-awareness — and can forget about achieving greater meaning outside the western hemisphere.”

What’s more, if we cannot rightly position June as a hero — again, she’s not a good person! — someone else will need to step into that role for the show to reach a victorious conclusion. (That’s, of course, not to say The Handmaid’s Tale can’t end with everyone being irrevocably screwed; that type of pessimism just isn’t what we’ve come to expect of this show.) 

And right now, there’s not an avenue by which that new hero could even arrive.

All those (praise) B plots to remember

As if needing to dramatically redefine your hero and the universe they exist in wasn’t enough to contend with, The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 has plenty of other dangling matters to address.

The Martha network got up to all kinds of muffin-centric espionage that could land them in big trouble with a limited safety net. The Lawrences also got strong-armed into “the ceremony” with June, and then Mrs. Lawrence died, so Commander Lawrence is ready to raise hell. 

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum?

Nick kept doing his ambivalent agent of a violent totalitarian patriarchal theocracy thing — but we’re apparently forgiving him because he’s so excited to be a daddy? Aunt Lydia had that completely nonsensical origin story episode. Janine’s son died but June didn’t tell her. Moira is trying to keep Luke from completely losing it, pretty much 24/7.

And then there’s Serena, Fred, Canadian diplomacy, and the fight for baby Nichole. 

Considering Season 4 has all that to untangle and everything else to retcon, The Handmaid’s Tale‘s new episodes promise to be a make-or-break outing for the Golden Globe-winning series. With top-notch production values and talent to spare, the popular show could turn things around before it comes to a close — but wow, does that look tough. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum?

The Handmaid’s Tale returns with Season 4 April 28 on Hulu.