The Handmaid’s Tale Recap: Boomerang

For years, we watched the women of The Handmaid’s Tale claw their way out of hell. Moira escaped Jezebels. June and Rita escaped the Waterfords. Serena Waterford escaped Gilead and then the Wheelers. Now, we’re watching them all willingly head back in. Ambassador Serena Joy chauffeured in a brand-new foreign car. Rita on an honest-to-God New Bethlehem tour bus. June on a preposterous mission to warn Janine that being a sex slave inside an authoritarian, patriarchal state might sometimes be a little dangerous, so keep your head down, and Moira to recon the brothel where she was imprisoned for years. I should be stirred to see the series’ major players converging on a single explosive map dot, and, to some extent, I suppose I am.

I’m also frustrated. It’s been a while since I found the patterns of The Handmaid’s Tale pleasurable. I know what follows from June’s icy stare: usually, a thwarted act of rebellion that’s met with devastating punishment. We’ve been on the verge of war for the soul of America since the show debuted in 2017 without very much progress except for the fact that this handful of women had escaped. Suddenly, they haven’t.

What’s more is that “Promotion,” which sees the women we’ve rooted for (save Serena) heading into harm’s way, is mostly an episode about the fragile psyches of men. “We’re gonna blow some shit up,” Luke boasts back at Mayday’s derelict HQ, oddly smug considering he’s never blown any shit up before. He’s a father desperate to save his Hannah, yes, but O-T Fagbenle’s nervy performance does not shy away from his character’s more crude desire: to prove he has his wife’s mettle. The result is that Luke comes off like a kid playing a made-up game of rebel soldiers. I guffawed to see him give June the “just a minute” sign as he reviewed building schematics, which I assume are just sheets of printer paper his dad specifically said not to touch, scribbled over with crayons. The audacity of it.

I can’t tell if she’s being obstinate or simply obtuse, but June is unwilling to massage Luke’s ego. When Mark announces that Canada has dropped her husband’s charges, she behaves like it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll abandon his plan to save his daughter to move to Alaska and raise someone else’s. Instead, June tells him the plan is too dangerous — that the Mayday operatives he’s been embedded with for months are amateurs. But it wasn’t too dangerous for June to take on Gilead again and again? Later, he’ll accuse his wife of being infantilizing, but the truth of why Luke’s so offended is uglier: He’s emasculated.

“They derive their sense of power from their virility,” Naomi tells her husband, who is about to be promoted to High Commander Lawrence. She’s talking about the men who run Gilead, but really she’s just talking about men. Their sense of their own strength. The mark they make on the world when they sire their sons or detonate their bombs. Naomi’s daffy — even as she delivers the episode’s most incisive line, she natters on about the jewelry available to the women lucky enough to live in New Bethlehem. But occasionally, she lets slip a shrewder side to her supposedly clueless housewife. Today, Joseph will have his promotion ceremony — a ridiculous piece of fascism theater that 100 percent seems like what little boys would come up with if they were playing a game of “let’s be rulers.” There’s even a sword involved. And Naomi knows that after the ritual, the men will retire to Jezebels. If Joseph doesn’t go, they won’t trust him. There’s more to playing the part of high commander than wearing the right color scarf.

The ceremony is emceed by Wharton, but Jonah from Veep is in charge of planning the afters. That’s right, Timothy Simons shows up in New Bethlehem as a nepo baby — the buffoonish son of a powerful high commander in D.C. He’s lavishing gold watches on his fellow commanders and telling everyone to get in the limo, like, yesterday because, ready or not, this party bus is leaving the station. Joseph Lawrence, whose adoration of his first wife blinds him to all other women, is getting dragged to the strip club.

There, they run into Janine because even though Gilead is almost the size of America, it’s really a lot like a small town. Jonah insists that Joseph take a turn with her, which Joseph graciously accepts, perhaps with his second wife’s words of warning rattling around his head. To me, this feels like a (relatively) good outcome for Janine, who will be spared Jonah’s awful company. She can also pepper Joseph with infinite questions about her daughter, Angela. But Janine is so afraid of Joseph, who immediately releases her from the obligation of sex, that she can hardly speak.

Lawrence has no use for his new wife, but Angela has awoken some long-buried nurturing instinct. Earlier in the morning, he pocketed a drawing she made — “I can see you’ve been influenced by Helen Frankenthaler,” he says, simultaneously mocking and fatherly — which he presents to Janine at Jezebels. He swears to keep her girl as safe as he can for as long as he can, and he means it. Later, he’ll put Angela on his knee and read The Little Princess to her with tears in his eyes. They derive their sense of power from their virility. I guess the subtext here is, Not all men.

But most men. It’s not a coincidence that when Mayday sends in the assassins to take out the most radical commanders, their plan is to hit Jezebels. That’s where the most powerful men in Gilead let their guards down. “First, we kill the commanders at Jezebels,” the Mayday leader tells her soldiers at a town hall. “Then our bombs go off, then the military rolls in.” She’s greeted with mostly cheers but one jeer. “You’re not going to get past the first step,” June calls out loudly, even though the floor isn’t actually open for comments or inconvenient questions — like, what about the handmaids who work at Jezebels when the bullets start flying?

In a sense, it’s June’s fault that Moira volunteers to infiltrate Jezebels to recon the location and warn the handmaids what’s coming. And just like June objected to Luke’s boots-on-the-ground involvement with Mayday’s haphazard schemes, she objects to Moira’s. Samira Wiley has consistently played Moira with a shaky voice and pools of water behind her eyes — the idea that she might have a panic attack when she revisits the site where she was abused for years doesn’t sound impossible. But again, it’s June’s delivery that sucks. “You will not survive in there,” June tells Moira and Luke, who at the point could be forgiven if “wanting to prove June wrong” catapulted to their list of priorities.

But Moira has another reason, too. June wants the three of them to keep playing big, happy family in Alaska, but Moira doesn’t want to live June’s life anymore. She’s lived with Luke. She’s raised Nichole. She’s become family with Rita. In a script-flipping moment, June takes on Moira’s fight instead. After learning that Janine is at Jezebels, she insists that Ellen send her into Gilead instead, which is insane. Moira may be susceptible to PTSD, but June Osborne is the most recognizable handmaid in the world.

Ellen agrees, though, because June reminds her she has a Gilead hall pass. Nick will help her if she gets caught. But this season has persistently raised doubts about Nick’s loyalties and his influence. Holly reminds June that just because he’s her Nazi doesn’t make him any less of a Nazi. Nick goes dark on Mark Tuello in a moment of crisis. In the most staggering of C-plots, Rita agrees to move back to Gilead to be reunited with her family in New Bethlehem, after Nick assures her that he will get them all out of here for good. It will only take him a few years.

I think Nick means it, and yet it’s hard to imagine Gilead letting the same woman escape twice. When Rita disbelieves that the boy who used to drive around the Waterfords’ G-Wagon is now a commander, he tells her plainly: “It’s the safest thing to be.” Joseph thinks he’s protected because the other commanders welcome his reforms, but it’s actually Nick who has been the most adept at surviving this world without arousing suspicion. He may not be a true believer, but he’s a survivor. He knows that there’s no room for Nick Blaine in a world with no Gilead. He doesn’t get to marry June Osborne. He doesn’t get to move to Hawaii with his wife and daughter, like they daydreamed about all the way back in season two. In Gilead, he’s an operator. In a world without it, he’s a war criminal.

Luke is by far the best of the men we know. He even patches things up with June by the end of “Promotion,” as they agree to fight for Hannah together. June wants him to promise that he understands that even if these slipshod Mayday ops are miraculously a success, that doesn’t mean they’ll get Hannah. She’s been down this particular road to nowhere before.

But he’s been on his own road for the last few years, and his perspective is no less valid. Moira came back to him. Emily brought baby Nichole to him. Luke’s wife was enslaved in Gilead, and now they’re standing next to each other. He knows that sometimes, even in this dark and terrible world, you can get back to the people you love.