'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 3 finale recap: A gorgeous and completely nonsensical ending
Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Season 3 finale of "The Handmaid's Tale," "Mayday."
There's hope for the future of Gilead at the conclusion of Season 3 of "The Handmaid's Tale," but the future of Hulu's Emmy-winning drama looks far more precarious than the dystopian hellscape it depicts.
The third season of "Handmaid's" started off strong but wavered in the middle, ballooning to stretch across 13 episodes it didn't really need. Many of the plots this year felt like short stories the writers wanted to tell about life in Gilead without much regard for the characters. So we saw big swings and nonsensical choices from June (Elisabeth Moss), Fred (Joseph Fiennes) and Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), among others, to keep things moving in Gilead.
On top of that, the writers stretched the limits of logic and coincidence to put disparate characters in the same room and push the plot forward, especially in later episodes. Is Fred really so idiotic as to let himself be led onto Canadian soil blindly? Would Serena really have let June off the hook for slashing her with a scalpel? Did no one but June ever think of trying to smuggle children out of Gilead?
As a result, the victorious finale – in which June successfully rescues more than 50 children and Rita (Amanda Brugel) into Canada and Serena is arrested for her Gilead crimes – was cathartic but unearned, and not entirely convincing.
"Handmaid's" has struggled since exhausting the material from Margaret Atwood's novel in Season 1, yet the writers still try to make meaningful points about the patriarchy, women's rights, fascism and religion. The series has been treading water for two years, and especially after this tidy finale, it's running out of room to swim.
"Mayday" begins with a flashback to remind us where the series began, with a terrified and confused June in the hours after she was initially captured while she, Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and their daughter Hannah try to flee to Canada. She's herded through cages and pens, along with other handmaids from the district.
Back in the present, those women have far more power, even if their captors don't know it. On her way to the grocery store, June collects supplies from the other handmaids for her plan to smuggle the children out of Gilead, and even delivers a few snarky comments to a clearly suspicious Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd).
At the Lawrence home, everyone's preparing food and sealing off the house when a rogue Martha brings a little girl there too early, jeopardizing the rescue plans by alerting local authorities. Lawrence wants to call it off, but June, who's on the brink of a nervous breakdown and holding onto the gun Lawrence had given her, informs him he's no longer in charge. Unfortunately, the writers don't let the symbolism of this moment stand on its own, and instead give June a mouthy speech about men, women and power that undercuts the whole scene.
June and the Marthas form a plan to circumvent the additional security by shepherding the kids to the airport through the dark woods, and soon the kids start arriving. Lawrence is on board, entertaining the waiting tykes by reading an apt passage of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island."
When it's time to go, Lawrence stays behind to honor his dead wife and try to fix Gilead from within (good luck, sir, especially after your whole household shows themselves to be treasonous). June leads the pack to the airport in a beautiful, quiet sequence that echoes her near-escape at the end of Season 2. But once they reach the runway, they see a single guardian watching the plane. June tells the group to go on without her, so she can distract him. But the Marthas and handmaids join her to throw rocks at the guardian while Rita sneaks away with the kids.
June eventually leads the guardian away from the others, and he chases her through the woods just as she was chased when she was first captured in the series premiere. He shoots her, but she clips him with Lawrence's gun. She forces him to radio the other authorities that everything is OK before she kills him. She watches the plane take off, and in the dawn light, the other handmaids find her and carry her away, somewhere.
It was nice to see all those kids land in Canada, but are we really supposed to believe that the father of the little girl June worked so hard to save just happened to be a volunteer working in the airport hanger? Are Moira (Samira Wiley), Luke and Emily (Alexis Bledel) at the center of every major national emergency in Canada, just so they can meet every person June ever talked to in Gilead? And who was even flying that plane?
Elsewhere, Serena and Fred are still enjoying their resort-style prison. And Serena is on the verge of being able to leave and start a new life when Fred tattles on her, informing Tuello (Sam Jaeger) of crimes Serena conveniently left out of her initial testimony, such as forcing Nick and June to have sex in Season 1. It's a decent ending to the season's worst storyline, although it means the Waterfords will still be around, if jailed, to drag down Season 4.
As much as the season stumbled creatively, "Handmaid's" remains the most gorgeously filmed show on television. The series has never struggled with direction or aesthetics, and the visual of June being carried away, pallbearer-style, by her handmaid sisters after sacrificing everything is haunting.
It could be a conclusion to the whole story, but, sadly, the series is still chugging onward, and probably will be for a while.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 3 finale recap: 'Mayday'