The Handmaid’s Tale Season-Finale Recap: They Never Let Anyone Get Away

For all its faults — plot lines that spin out of control, inconsistent world-building, an overreliance on Elisabeth Moss’s eyebrows — I do love this show. Which is why I will be attempting to decode June and Serena’s expressions at the episode’s close until The Handmaid’s Tale’s sixth and final season premieres. Does June seem happy to see her once mortal enemy? Exasperated? Fearful? I’m still not sure. Less difficult to decipher is the flash of a snarl across Aunt Lydia’s face watching Janine be carted off to her probable execution. The immediate future looks especially grim for Janine, but by the end of “Safe,” all of our heroes have landed on totally new trajectories and none of them appear safe at all. Except Moira, who I presume will continue her relatively placid life working at the refugee center in Toronto and sabotaging all of her relationships.

The conductor on this trash-fire express is the formerly inscrutable Commander Lawrence — who has denied any wrongdoing, of course. I did wonder if Lawrence arranged the memorial shooting at the end of last week, which now appears to have been a failed assassination attempt. When confronted, Lawrence tells Nick he did not order a hit on June, thus convincing both Nick and myself that he absolutely did. And the attempts on June’s life are only getting more deadly. Gilead generally operates with the subtlety of a bright-red pickup truck plowing into a pedestrian in the middle of a sleepy suburban street in broad daylight, so naturally this is their next method of attack against June. It is this attempted murder-by-four-door that causes Luke, Nick, and Janine to finally snap, each in their own way and with varying degrees of severity, eventually landing all three of them on the wrong side of the law.

It would be tempting to blame June for the fates of her most stalwart defenders (plus Nick), as she herself almost certainly will, but not only would this be the very definition of victim-blaming; we would also be overlooking the larger and more sinister issues at play. The arm of Gilead is long and getting longer — as the Martha who tells Janine the news says, “They never let anyone get away. Fuckers.” Right now, June and Luke are being squeezed between increasing hostility toward American refugees in Canada on one side and the encroaching influence of Gilead on the other, putting them in greater danger by the day. For Nick, June’s near murder proves the limits of his influence in Gilead, hence his extremely late decision to turn double agent and start throwing hands. For Janine, the news inflames a deep well of personal anger, obviously, but perhaps it also carries a message of futility. If Gilead can murder June in Toronto, where she’s supposed to be safe, what the hell is the point in trying to be a “good girl” here in Gilead? In any case, Janine is done.

Since Aunt Lydia will no longer be allowed to keep her favorite girl from being posted again, she decides the next best thing is to post Janine with the new Mrs. Lawrence, and she deploys all of her most biting manipulative verbal tricks to achieve it. Posting Janine in her household will be good for PR, Lydia tells the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Putnam, which is a priority for Commander Lawrence. For good measure, she sprinkles in some threatening subtext about women who know their roles and are treated with respect and grace in return. So on the day of her wedding to Lawrence, Mrs. Putnam (Naomi. Darling.) offers Janine the Handmaid post on a trial basis, on the understanding that there be no confusion about who Angela’s real mother is. Janine’s meek first response makes Aunt Lydia tear up with pride, but after hearing about June, Janine lets the Handmaid mask drop completely. “I hate you, Naomi,” she tells her. “How can you not know that?” For this deeply cathartic moment, Janine is later clapped in shackles and thrown into the back of a van. In a direct callback to Emily from season one, our last image of Janine has her clasping the hands of the similarly shackled Martha seated opposite her. My only hope is that Lydia has now been sufficiently pilled to bust Janine out of prison and that this callback doesn’t foreshadow what I think it does.

The penalty for Janine’s backtalk (ordered by Lawrence) could be anything from genital mutilation to hanging. Meanwhile, Nick’s dramatic emotional outbursts are also disproportionate to their usefulness and consequences, only in the other direction. In exchange for being allowed to kiss June’s forehead in the hospital, Nick finally agrees to work for Tuello against Gilead. He also storms into Lawrence’s wedding for the purpose of punching him in the face. Great work, Nick Blaine. I hope it was worth it because this little display of fragile masculinity has aroused the suspicion of Commander Mackenzie, potentially nullifying whatever use he’d be to Tuello, while also pissing off his wife to such a degree that she says she doesn’t want to be married anymore (which means nothing because it’s not like she’d be allowed to get divorced). The only person more tired of Nick than me right now is Nick.

Now, the reason Luke’s response to watching June get hit by a pickup truck could be termed a “snap,” and not just a reasonable effort to stop a guy from killing your wife, is that he apparently beats the driver all the way to death. The scene is shot from June’s very fuzzy perspective, so we don’t see the full beatdown, only their feet, but shouldn’t it take more than 15 seconds to beat a man to death? I’m definitely not an expert in this area, so I’m genuinely asking. Realistic or not, the driver dies, and within minutes Canada has issued a warrant for Luke’s arrest, flagged their refugee cards to keep them from fleeing, and set up law-enforcement patrols at the airport and train station to intercept him.

If the police are charging Luke with murder rather than self-defense, clearly public sentiment against Americans has reached Justice Department–level bad, which is June’s cue to get the hell out. Tuello, who has conveniently just pulled up, sends them to the train station, where he has set up an evacuation train for all the American refugees in Toronto. Unfortunately, the cops are already two steps ahead and passing out wanted posters with Luke’s face on them. The good news is that Luke has been dying for a martyr moment all season long. He shoves June and Nichole in front of him in line, and she is about to board the train when she realizes Luke never planned on getting on the train with them at all.

But you know who did get on the refugee train? Serena Joy Waterford. Got any diapers?

Other Gileadditions

• Place your bets now for who among Janine, Luke, and Nick gets out of prison and who gets a life sentence.

• Will we ever hear from Esther again?

• Will we ever hear from the Wheelers again?

• Do we trust Tuello or nah? I’m leaning nah.

• Thank you, show, for allowing me to maintain my well-earned hatred of Naomi Putnam Lawrence.