Among other themes, such as helplessness, fear, and revenge,The Handmaid’s Tale’strademark is intensity. In its premise, settings, and character drama. It can be a hard watch at times; we wouldn’t blame bingers for taking a weekend off from the series. That signature anxiety is ratcheted up to a series high with season five’s fourth episode titled “Dear Offred.”
The episode explores the ever-rising tensions betweenJune Osborn and Serena Joy Waterfordand mirrors the conflict going on within Gilead itself as it attempts to spread its word and ways to the world at large. “Dear Offred” essentially grabs you by the throat in the first minute and refuses to let go until the credits roll.
June’s State of Mind
The episode starts with an innocent image of June pushing her toddler daughter Nichole on a swing in the park. A passerby compliments Nichole and gets a little too close before she starts ranting about the joys and accomplishments of Gilead. This gets her slammed up against the swing set by June, setting the tone for the rest of the episode.
We begin to see June become truly unhinged in her hatred for Serena Joy and Gilead; she’s consumed with revenge against her former captor. She brutally murdered Serena Joy’s husband, Fred Waterford, at the end of season four, but she’s still not done. That murder, while it satiated her at the time, is now a half measure since Serena Joy is still out there. Factor in June’s hopeless yearning forher daughter Hannah, who is still within Gilead’s borders with a new adopted family, and she’s a walking time bomb.
June snaps and decides she’s going after Serena, digging up the pistol she had buried in the snow previously. The gun jams and June can only look on helplessly as Serena Joy basks in support of pro-Gilead crowds outside her window. June has to settle for getting out of the car and giving Serena a cold stare-down before she leaves and is talked down by her husband, Luke. Luke wants to try to dismantle Gilead’s presence in the refugee town of Toronto with activism, while June wants to settle her score with a bullet.
Kicked Out of Gilead
Serena has been effectively exiled from Gilead, as seen inepisode four, “Border.“The Gilead High Council sugar-coated the banishment with the assignment of Gilead’s ambassador to the rest of the world. In this task, Serena Joy is given new digs of a freshly constructed Gilead “information center” in Toronto, essentially an embassy and extension of Gilead.
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Among her first duties is creating a mass invitation to the center, with one card targeted at June’s mailbox. The card is addressed to Offred, Serena suggesting that she still owns June even if she’s living in physical freedom. “She is going to bring it here,” laments a frantic June, fearing that Gilead will spread beyond its current borders. The dread is palpable to June and us. Shejustfreed herself from that hell, and now it’s coming up through the ground for the rest of us. June’s tirade continues as she wonders aloud if she is now just an automated revenge machine, fully consumed by the need to take down Serena.
In the wake of the letter, Luke drops in on Serena, threatens her with numerous building code violations, and threatens a shutdown of the center unless she helps them get their daughter back from Gilead. Serena taunts Luke with images of Hannah being better off, with a “godly” family instead of the degenerates she suggests he and June to be.
She hits a nerve, and Luke threatens to kill her himself if she doesn’t stay away from his family. It’s here we see Luke’s bottled rage seep out through the cool and rational demeanor he’s maintained since Gilead took over and enslaved his wife and “resettled” his daughter.
Aunt Lydia Keeping Her Word
Back in Gilead, Janine is slowly getting her legs back after being poisoned by fellow handmaid Esther. Lydia is spouting her usual about God’s way and his intentions, but Janine is not the good soldier she was before her near death and questions the entire purpose of handmaids.
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Trying to make good on her prayed promise, Lydia visits Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) to propose changes to the handmaid “system.” Lawrence shoots her down, saying, “Gilead is opening its door a crack,” and everything must appear in order. As Gilead becomes more brazen and its adverse effects are piling up, Lydia seems to be pulling back. Lydia is a true believer, not enveloped in the politics that Gilead is increasingly playing. There are strong odds that she will turn on her nation of God before the series concludes with theforthcoming season six.
The Protest
The episode concludes with an intense protest/counterprotest scene outside the Gilead center. Toronto’s pious scream that protesters will be on their knees begging for God’s forgiveness. Anti-Gilead activists scream back the horrors of the totalitarian nation. Enter an armed and on-edge June. A male protester punches Moira (Samira Wiley), and June cracks, firing the gun in the air before pointing it at the aggressor.
As Luke ushers June away, they run into a fleeing Serena Joy and her bodyguard. The camera shifts from June’s enraged face to the gun in the back of her waistband and finally to Serena Joy’s heavily pregnant body. June’s grip on the gun loosens, and Serena flees to a mysterious mansion in the woods run by Gilead loyalists. The episode ends with June dropping the card from Serena into a fire, the embossed symbol of Gilead slowly burning away.
The season so far has been heavily focused on the micro of the power struggle between June and Serena Joy but appears to be inching toward the macro that is thefight against Gileaditself.
