Editor’s Note: The following comprises The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 spoilers.One of The Handmaid’s Tale’s most profound achievements is the nuance with which it portrays feminine relationships. June (Elizabeth Moss) has cultivated many robust bonds with allies over the previous 5 seasons, and she has additionally made some highly effective enemies. Another distinguished feminine determine, Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) is usually proven to maintain her playing cards near her chest, so her relationships along with her supposed buddies in Gilead, or along with her husband, aren’t all the time as they seem. In this season, since her husband’s dying and subsequent relocation to Toronto, her focus has turn into extra centered round her being pregnant. June and Serena are equally haunted by their previous lives in Gilead, and their tales are riddled with hatred whilst they every begin new chapters in Canada. Even although they wish to be free of each other, their pathways proceed to overlap. Often that is marked with one recurring line of dialogue. Every time the road, “Do you understand me?” is used, it bears increasingly significance because it alludes to the various methods during which June and Serena’s relationship with each other has modified through the years.
No Matter Where They Are, Serena and June’s Relationship Remains Charged
Whether the ladies are main unbiased lives in Toronto, or reside below the identical roof within the Waterford home, Serena and June’s relationship is all the time charged by an underlying concern that the opposite has the higher hand. Early into Season 1, the viewers is afforded glimpses into how merciless Serena will be. Soon, the home is abuzz with the chance that June could be pregnant and instantly, Serena’s behaviour adjustments. Not solely is she kinder, however she is extra protecting: June is the vessel that may ship a long-awaited child into their house, however the being pregnant itself is totally separated from June as a girl. Serena is satisfied that this little one will fill the various empty voids in her life, ones that may turn into obviously obvious because the season goes on.
There is an absence of objective in Serena’s life, her marriage is devoid of affection, respect, and loyalty. When Serena later refers to June as her “miracle” for bringing her a baby, she can also be thanking her for an impending aid from all of the distress related along with her vacancy. Therefore, when June confesses that she is, in reality, not pregnant, Serena’s explosion of anger is a results of her personal helplessness. The distinction between her and June is that her privileged station as a spouse permits her to undertaking that anger onto somebody beneath her. When Serena instructions June to not depart her room and crouches right down to her place on the ground to scream “do you understand me”, it seems that June shall be eternally trapped within the hopelessness of her place as a Handmaid. The abuse she shoulders as a servant within the Waterford home has come crashing down throughout this altercation during which Serena holds all the facility and June has none.
As intensely disturbing because the supply of that line was, the complete extent of Serena’s intimidation will be noticed within the fallout. June isolates herself in her room for 2 weeks following Serena’s command. She is not stored there by a locked door, simply her personal concern on the extent of Serena’s rage. Even although she’s carried out nothing unsuitable, she is pressured to string collectively a contrived apology so she will be able to really feel protected to go away her room, get contemporary air, socialize, and be wholesome. Serena denies her and June has no selection however to leverage her budding relationship with Fred (Joseph Fiennes) to get her out of this determined state of affairs. When she efficiently sways Fred into intervening, she holds eye contact with Serena as she triumphantly leaves the property for the primary time. This is a telling gesture that June is set to degree their enjoying subject after getting a style of what little affect she has over the Waterfords.
By Season 4, Even in Canada the Tension Remains
By the time each June and Serena are in Canada in Season 4, they’ve gone a very long time with out seeing one another. June is amassing bits of data from her buddies when she arrives as a refugee and is fixated on Serena’s success. Knowing that Serena continues to be getting every little thing she desires and avoiding punishment for her crimes prevents June from discovering her personal peace. She can’t join along with her husband as a result of she will be able to’t get Serena’s being pregnant out of her thoughts. Before she acts on this anger, her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) tries to begin a dialog about how she’s coping, however June walks away, unable to search out the phrases.
When she later visits Serena, nevertheless, she has no drawback completely articulating the hatred she feels in her coronary heart. Serena’s capability to hold a baby has made her self-righteous. She presents June a performative apology as a result of she believes that God has lastly deemed her worthy of bringing life into the world and now she out of the blue strives to acquire forgiveness and purify her spirit. Now that June is free to do and say no matter she desires, she isn’t keen to play into this fantasy Serena has invented for herself. Instead, she curses Serena and her child, hoping sometime that God will ship her the identical ache and struggling that she has inflicted on numerous different ladies throughout her reign in Gilead. When June spits again at her, “do you understand me?”, she emphasizes the irony of their shifted dynamic and she or he is holding Serena’s face to pressure her to search for at her. When she is completed delivering that fateful query, June wipes the spit from her chin, turns, and leaves. She is free to go and Serena is the one who’s trapped in her room. Now, with nobody to show to and no reconciliation, Serena is compelled to show to her estranged husband Fred to assist her out of her destitute state of affairs of self-loathing and captivity.
Much to Her Dismay, June Shows Serena Warmth in Season 5
In the newest episode of Season 5, June and Serena cross paths as soon as once more at a pivotal second. Serena, after being housed by one other authoritative, God-fearing household has escaped their overwatch with June in tow. Serena’s try and strongarm a defenseless June into driving her to freedom is thwarted when Serena goes into labour. Stowing away in a barn, every of the ladies are hesitant to belief each other. Serena hasn’t forgotten June’s numerous threats towards her and her child and June, at first, revels in Serena’s agony throughout her first contractions. June tries to show her again on Serena and focus solely on getting herself again to security after being captured, however she finds herself again within the barn, a lot to Serena’s shock and aid.
June’s behaviour continues to turn into shockingly heat as she guides Serena by the delivery, doing so in a approach that enables Serena to expertise it with all the pleasure and wonderment that she’d hoped for, regardless of their predicament. The aftermath of this substantial second permits for a shared solemnity to set in, and because of this, each ladies turn into extra open. Each of them had, at one level, relied on Fred to navigate these precarious circumstances however now, with him gone, they flip to one another for assist. His presence, although, nonetheless looms closely over their encounter. Serena speaks candidly about her fears and June doesn’t reply with resentment however as an alternative makes use of it as a possibility to have Serena reckon with what she has created, each in her new son Noah and in Gilead. Here, Serena grapples for the primary time with what’s value saving and what she ought to flip her again on in an effort to fulfill God’s will. With no prospects and no future, she strips her sense of self to merely a vessel to convey her son into the world. She thinks that handing Noah over to June to boost as her personal is his finest shot at residing a significant life. She admires what June has carried out with the final little one they introduced into the world collectively, Nichole, and desires the identical happiness for her son. She topics herself to the identical concepts that Gilead makes use of to dehumanize its ladies: they’re solely instruments to convey blessings into the lives of extra worthy folks.
But June reminds Serena that not like in Gilead, she is aware of that the desires and desires of the moms are simply as vital as her little one’s. June can relate to the concern of how unsure her kids’s futures shall be and encourages Serena to be courageous and hold her son safely along with her, to struggle for a future with him the identical approach that June has carried out. Serena has nothing to cover behind anymore, not her energy, piousness, or the safety that comes along with her elite standing. Therefore, she is lastly listening to what June has to say. And June acknowledges that Serena is making an attempt to make sense of what really makes her a very good particular person and mom, making an attempt to filter out which of her beliefs poison that properly. June firmly imparts her religion in Serena when she as soon as once more holds her face to determine eye contact and punctuates her monologue with the query, “Do you understand me?”
June’s Path to Peace Comes into Clearer Focus
June’s actions point out that she was by no means able to reaching self-actualization by exacting revenge on Serena. Her compassion on this episode signifies that June’s path to peace will seemingly include releasing all ladies from the clutches of Gilead’s warped teachings. When she admits that she didn’t wish to kill Serena and says, “this is not Gilead, and I am not you,” she makes a promise to guide with empathy and humaneness; one thing she was by no means afforded earlier than. When Serena and her little one are lastly protected within the hospital, solely to have the authorities tear them aside, June has turn into simply as dangerous as her captors. With readability, she realizes that’s not her objective, however it’s too late.
June and Serena’s connection has been something however easy, however the totally different renditions of this straightforward query have been a mirrored image of their ever-changing relationship all through the years. Their shifting energy dynamics, their relationship with vengeance and forgiveness, and their tumultuous experiences with motherhood can all be encapsulated within the totally different deliveries of this one line.