Home’s not home.

That’s the gut-wrenching revelation of The Handmaid’s Tale’s latest episode. Home’s not home for June. This man, Luke, is not her husband. This giant baby, Nichole, is not her child. This house is not hers. The bed is someone else’s bed. The country is someone else’s country.

Home’s not home for June Osborne. And June’s not June. Not the same person she was before Gilead. Not the same wife or the same mother or the same friend.

The only time June feels at home this entire episode is when she confronts Serena. When Serena says that God has sent June so that Serena can make amends. It’s always all about Serena, after all. “I sent myself,” June tells her. “To tell you how much I hate you.” People like Serena don’t deserve to make amends, don’t get to find redemption. Elisabeth Moss absolutely crackles with rage as her former master kneels before her. It’s striking just how much she despises Serena. She has almost no thought for Fred.

It makes sense, of course. Serena was in many ways more cruel to June, and her cruelty was more inexplicable. All women are oppressed in Gilead. Even Serena. Even the woman who literally helped write the book on this theocracy is no longer allowed to read or write. And yet she is complicit in tearing children from their parents’ arms, in the rape of Handmaidens, in the torture and slaughter and hideous oppression.

After June’s visit to Serena in her gilded prison Serena returns to her husband. Earlier in the episode he implored her to join forces now that June had returned. Mark had urged her to play the double agent, using Fred in return. He, of course, is more interested in prosecuting the man than the woman, though June’s testimony may change that. Both the Waterfords deserve to rot in prison, of course. And Serena’s baby doesn’t deserve to die, but she should not be permitted to raise the child.

And, as June tells the American agent, Mark (Sam Jaeger) she is driven only by rage and hatred. Beneath that is an empty hollow where a soul ought to be and she’ll do anything to protect herself from her own looming emptiness. If you ever find yourself warming to her, falling for her act, June warns him, “Run. Run like hell.”

Happy Little Family

June is almost as apt to run like hell from her own husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle). Coming home to a familiar-yet-unfamiliar world is almost as terrifying and unsettling as the dangers she faced in Gilead.

It must be hard to return to “normal” life when life has been anything but for so long. When trauma and terror and survival have been the your only reality and now, suddenly, you’re thrust back into the humdrum day-to-day mundanity of it all.

Stranger still when your husband, who you haven’t seen in many years, and you’re old best friend are living together and raising your child—a child you conceived with another man you love, who’s still out there, who you still care for perhaps even more than this stranger of a husband you’ve returned to, who seems so different than you remember. Everyone is changed now, most of all you.

June doesn’t know how to adjust to any of it and you can hardly blame her. She was trapped in Gilead longer than her friends in Canada. Her trauma was extended longer. Her child, Hannah, is still in Gilead somewhere. A simple trip to the grocery store almost results in a full-blown panic attack.

No wonder she decides to throw herself back into the ring, going to confront Serena for a bit of wrathful catharsis and dishing out as much intel as she can to the American government. It’s only after her smack down of Mrs. Waterford that she can bring herself to have sex with Luke. Before this, even simple touching was too precarious a proposition. After, she’s almost animalistic in her hunger. And it’s not that she wants to make love to her husband. She wants to have sex, pure and simple, with someone she chooses to have sex with. It’s an act of defiance and agency more than anything romantic. The sex is almost an afterthought. Almost.

Earlier, when she and Luke sit on the hotel bed before returning “home” she apologizes for falling asleep and not having room service with Luke the night before. She’s slept 17 hours straight. He tells her to stop saying sorry. He’s the one who should say sorry for not rescuing her, for leaving Hannah behind. He’s carried this guilt around for years and he needs her forgiveness more than she needs his.

So she gives him hope she no longer possesses. She tells him about her meeting with Hannah—but not the most recent one. Not when they threatened her with harm. Not when she couldn’t even remember her mother and was frightened of the woman kneeling before her. She told of the previous meeting, when Hannah was angry at her for not coming to find her, when Hannah had not yet been absorbed into Gilead’s rotten core.

For Luke, it’s a mercy. For June, it’s a white lie. There is no peace to be found.

While it’s clearly a relief to be home it’s also a new kind of puzzle. Moira (Samira Wiley) and Luke have been raising her and Nick’s child and she feels almost like an imposter. A guest in a life that’s someone else’s.

Safety is unsettling. The new normal is not at all normal. When she invites Emily (Alexis Bledel) and Rita (Amanda Brugel—wow these two have strangely similar names) over for dinner it’s as much about filling her time with distractions as it is about seeing old friends. She’s nervous around Luke, not so much afraid to be alone with him as worried by it. Not so much afraid of intimacy as crippled by doubt and PTSD and myriad other complicated emotions and fears.

In other words, it’s certainly good to see June free at last, to see her reconnect with friends and loved ones and family, to be able to speak her mind to her former tormenters—but it’s bittersweet. This is not a happy reunion nor a sad one. It’s complicated. It’s hard.

And yes, I found myself quite emotional at times. When June and Luke were crying and embracing as they talked about their daughter, I got a little weepy. Then again we watched the Season 3 finale of Schitt’s Creek afterward and I got a little weepy during that also. What a great show.

Still, however bittersweet it may be for Luke and June and Moira, it’s more than welcome for we, the audience. I’ve been complaining about The Handmaid’s Tale’s lack of any forward momentum for the entire season and much of last season. This show can spin in its tracks far too long, and that’s made worse by the fact that it’s all so damn bleak and depressing. A little forward motion goes a long ways. And here we have it in spades. Freedom, however emotionally murky it may be, is still a step in the right direction both for June and the rest of the good guys and for the story as a whole. When the shock of it all wears off, I’m sure June will pick back up her boxing gloves and return to the fray—hopefully not to Gilead, but down other avenues. Toward justice, toward Hannah, toward peace.

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