The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Vessels

Until Serena believed that giving birth to Noah was going to be her last act on this Earth, she never really saw herself as merely a vessel. That was what Handmaids were for. Like all great purveyors of internalized misogyny, Serena never reckoned with her own hypocrisy. How does one, as a woman, write a book arguing that it is not a woman’s place to do things like write books? But that’s a question for the likes of Phyllis Schlafly or Justice Amy Coney Barrett. June Osbourne no longer has patience for this, and she’s sure as hell not about to let Serena die of sepsis just so she can martyr herself on the altar of womanhood.

Hello again girls, gentlemen, gender traitors, unwomen, and any and all other Gilead misfits. It is the June-Delivers-Serena’s-Baby episode. Sure, June probably wasn’t on the list of people Serena would have liked to help her through labor and delivery, but she is pretty desperately short on alternatives. And anyway, who would she prefer? Dr. Handsy? Aunt Lydia? Serena should be grateful, to be honest, because not only has June actually given birth herself (once in the middle of nowhere and all on her own), she’s also delivered plenty of babies au naturel back in Gilead as a Handmaid, as Serena well knows. Plus, it gives these eternal frenemies several hours of bonding time, which is what “No Man’s Land” is all about.

As soon as June realizes that Serena is in literal labor, she takes it as a given that she’s going to have to deliver this bitch’s freakin’ baby because she just cannot catch a damn break. A woman’s work is never done, forreal. “Are you in fucking labor?” she demands of Serena, who is still shakily pointing a gun at her. “Has your water broken? How far apart are your contractions?” Serena only groans and says she can’t go to a hospital because “they’ll find me there.”

So June hauls a moaning, recalcitrant Serena to an abandoned barn that looks promising — “Maybe there’ll be a manger” — but as soon as she tries to check Serena’s cervical progress, Serena freaks out. She thinks June is trying to murder her son, which is not that unreasonable a fear. But if June really wanted to kill Serena and child, all she’d have to do would be to drive off and leave them there, which she momentarily stomps off and considers doing. She doesn’t, of course, even if whether Serena would have done the same for her remains an open question. But simply having returned when she easily could have left is enough to convince Serena that June doesn’t have homicide on the brain this time.

In between deep breaths, Serena and June are also sharing moments of connection in flashbacks. Their relationship didn’t start out wholly hostile, apparently. Or at least Serena wasn’t yet too resentful to flash June a commiserating side-eye during one of those creepy Gilead birthing ceremonies. While the Handmaid in labor breathes heavily through real contractions, her mistress straddles her from behind and theatrically cries out in pretend agony at the same time. Serena catches June’s glance and rolls her eyes in acknowledgement of their shared understanding that this is nonsense.

The jokes end when the delivery has complications. The Wives are hustled away, but the Handmaids are forced to watch the emergency C-section that saves the baby but leaves Ofclarence dead. Aunt Lydia tells the girls Ofclarence had fulfilled her purpose and so was sacrificed to please God, but Serena has an actual human moment. While the Wives coo happily over the baby, Serena alone gazes sorrowfully outside the glass doors where the Handmaids are passing. June notices and pauses to shake her head sadly — Ofclarence didn’t survive.

On the upside, thanks to all of those horrifying baby-delivery ordeals that Serena & Co. forced her to endure, June is no slouch when it comes to midwifery. Heroically, she coaches Serena through the process of pushing her baby out of her body, gathering the newborn in her arms and ensuring his safe entry into the terrible world his mother created for him. Serena names him Noah, after “the savior of humanity.”

June asks if it was worth it. Serena answers honestly that, at this moment, yes, it is. But June seems to get that. She tells Serena about Hannah — her difficulty breastfeeding, Hannah’s colds, wishing she didn’t have to stay home from work to care for her sometimes. As long as we’re being honest, why didn’t June kill Serena when she had the chance? “Why Fred and not me?” June says she didn’t want to. For these two, this is basically a declaration of love, but June isn’t going to let Serena off without a reprimand. How Noah turns out, she warns, depends on what Serena teaches him is “his to take.”

After a few hours of rest and lactation, it’s time to go. But where? Serena is now very much a woman without a country. She can’t go back to Gilead for obvious reasons. But she doesn’t want to go to Canada, either, for fear of the Wheelers finding her. When June points out that if she just stays here she and Noah will both die, Serena decides maybe she is only a vessel. Maybe June was meant to be the mother and Serena was the one who was only put here to give birth. As Handmaids do, she tries to give June her baby. And she makes some solid arguments. She knows Noah would be safe with June, for one. For two, she knows June’s husband is a good man who could teach Noah to be someone who would never do the things she and Fred did. Her pitch goes slightly downhill, though, when she starts comparing June to an avenging angel.

Two problems here. One: June is a person, not an angel with a sword. Two: June obviously isn’t going to just let Serena die. She has had so many opportunities! June is incapable of letting Serena die. So she starts speaking Serena: “Look at your baby. You are the only person in the whole world that he knows. You are the only familiar smell. You are the only voice he recognizes.” Babies are not stray puppies, ya know. “That is God’s will.” Attagirl.

They go back to Canada and get Serena into the hospital. She doesn’t like that the doctors put her on antibiotics, and she’s suspicious of the NICU, but everything seems like it might be okay. June has even gotten in touch with Luke, who immediately races to the hospital to come and get her. But before June can tell him about bonding with Serena (pulling an infant from another woman’s birth canal with your bare hands tends to do that), Luke reveals that he has once again harnessed the power of local government. He’s arranged for Serena to get detained by immigration while child protection takes her baby.

I don’t know how any of you folks feel about this moment, but June and I are, to our surprise, a little horrified.

Other Gileadditions:

• Serena’s line to June, “It’s like I’m their Handmaid. It’s like I’m you,” is all the retribution for this woman I think I need, to be honest.

• Luke is not only safe, he’s also gotten that USB with all the Hannah information on it to Tuello, who is “working on it.”

• How is June going to convince Luke and Moira that they should take care of Noah until Serena gets out of jail? Because that’s definitely where this is going, right?

• I’m noticing an overall theme this season of women, even the evil ones, coming together, and I’m not against it.