Has The Handmaids Tale Gone Too Far Why It Needs To End

Has The Handmaid’s Tale Gone Too Far? Why It Needs To End

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The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 struggles with both June’s story and its violence, suggesting it may be time for Hulu to plan a proper ending.

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Has The Handmaids Tale Gone Too Far Why It Needs To End

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Handmaid’s Tale season 4, episodes 1-3.

Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 risks going too far in terms of its violence and torture, while at the same time making its story repetitive – problems that combine to suggest it may be time for the show to end. An adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale immediately received a wave of acclaim from critics and audiences alike. While based on a novel from decades prior, the world of Gilead and the plight of June Osborne, aka Offred, was (and still is) sadly all-too-relevant in the modern day, but that made for powerful storytelling and messaging.

The Handmaid’s Tale has long since blown past where June’s story ends in the book, which was covered in its entirety – save for the future-set epilogue – in season 1. This was a risky gambit, but an understandable one; it felt like there was more of June’s story to tell, and more of Gilead to be seen. Atwood’s story wraps things up with a conference looking back on these times, and while the book’s ending is one The Handmaid’s Tale could (and arguably should) still use, it made sense from an onscreen perspective to show what comes next. It made even more sense for Hulu, because The Handmaid’s Tale was its one true breakout hit, which is as true in 2021 as it was in 2017.

After an absence of almost two years, The Handmaid’s Tale returned to Hulu for season 4 in April 2021. It finds itself in a world where everything and nothing has changed from when it was last on air, but in-universe things are very much the same as ever. Therein lies the problem.

The Handmaid’s Tale’s Story Is Too Repetitive

Has The Handmaids Tale Gone Too Far Why It Needs To End

The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 picks up, unsurprisingly, with the salvation of June. Following on from the dramatic ending to The Handmaid’s Tale season 3, which saw June shot after helping several Marthas and 86 children escape Gilead for Canada, June is in dire straits. Luckily, her fellow Handmaids have the right combination of tools and skills to stitch her back together; she’s not exactly good as new, but it’s enough to get her back on her feet and ready to rage against the machine some more. Such plot contrivances are a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things, and certainly nothing new for The Handmaid’s Tale or other prestige shows; they’re somewhat necessary in order to move things along, because June obviously had to survive. It’s what comes after that presents more of an issue.

While the time at the farm of Commander Keyes presents some new storytelling avenues and new Handmaid’s Tale characters – including the (understandably) murderous 14-year-old Wife, Esther – it isn’t long before it’s back on familiar ground, with June being captured by Gilead’s forces, and tortured for information. And it’s not long after that (within the same episode, even) that June is breaking free once more. This is a cycle The Handmaid’s Tale has been engaged in since the very beginning: June is caught by Gilead, put through hell, and then escapes to rally, lead, and fight, only to end up – by force or by choice – back in those same evil clutches. The struggle is, in a sense, inherent to her character, because June can’t truly leave Gilead without her daughter, Hannah. But at the same time it now feels as though the story has been going around in circles, with no true direction; that struggle is a push and pull where nothing gives, so things stay still.

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June wants to bring Gilead down, but she needs to save her daughter first. At the same time, she is both public enemy number 1 and a mythic figure of inspiration and insurrection; the Che Guevara of Gilead. But symbols don’t necessarily make for great characters, or at least, not in the way The Handmaid’s Tale has built June into one as she survives more than would ever seem possible. Her can’t leave/won’t leave battle, and the will they/won’t they romance with Nick, both seem never ending. It could even be argued at this stage that the show has outgrown June, that it would be better to use her as a figurehead for other characters to follow; and yet, The Handmaid’s Tale season 4, episode 3 kills off several characters, including Alma, one such possibility. The Handmaid’s Tale is caught in its cycle of June’s story (and misery), given it a sense of being trapped, not unlike The Walking Dead was for so many years, and that means a story that once felt so incredibly powerful and purposeful has lost some of both elements.

Handmaid’s Tale’s Violence & Torture Have Become A Problem

Has The Handmaids Tale Gone Too Far Why It Needs To End

Since its very beginning, The Handmaid’s Tale has always been a graphic show. Given the story and themes it’s working with, then the series in a sense has to be harrowing; it has (or at least, had) a duty to be honest and true to the stories and struggles that inspired it, both in the past and the present, and those that will inevitably come in the future. It reflected a dark mirror to the real world, and that’s remained true across the show as powerful men have held control over female bodies, women have been subject to countless forms of system abuse, and the government separated children from their parents. The gruesome sequences on display often felt as though they were keeping with the idea that this was either very real today or the worst-case scenario of where things might’ve been headed, but that’s something that’s shifted as June’s story has gone on.

Over time, following on from its initial buzz (and success that came, in part, because of its shocking nature), that has taken over more and more of the show, with increasingly graphic, horrifying scenes that many viewers may have found distressing or even just too much altogether. The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 has continued further down this road. In episode 1, “Pigs,” June serves as something like the Aunt Lydia, commanding the Handmaid’s to tear at a captured Guardian, and then she hands the cleaver to a 14-year-old girl to deliver the killing blow. Worse comes in episode 3, “The Crossing,” where June is physically, mentally, and emotionally tortured by Gilead. Not only is she waterboarded and locked in a tiny box, but she has to witness as Marthas are killed – by being pushed off a building – and have the threat of what could happen to Hannah hanging over her.

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All of these scenes, combined with the storytelling problems, mean that the violence has become not only the defining aesthetic of the show, but almost feels like it’s the point. Where the violence and torture are the story, rather than what helps drive the plot and the emotional response. There’s a feeling that it’s focusing too much on shock value, whereas at its best these sequences amplify what’s around it. It isn’t helped by June’s continued survival, where she has become seemingly unkillable, while countless other (often nameless) women die around her. This is a fine line The Handmaid’s Tale has to balance, because its story demands that it does show the horrors of the real world and what women living in it have experienced, but at this point, at least, it feels as though it has gone too far into the “torture porn” feeling that pushes that over its actual narrative and meaning.

The Handmaid’s Tale Needs To Build To An Ending

When The Handmaid’s Tale decided to carry on beyond the book, it was unclear what exactly that meant. There’s enough time between that story and the epilogue, after all, to tell the entire life of June Osborne, so the show could feasibly run and run and run, since it’ll be so long before Gilead is brought to its knees. That might well happen. The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for season 5 already, but showrunner Bruce Miller doesn’t envisage that being the end, as things stand. Speaking to THR, he said that he doesn’t have a number of seasons in mind, and re-iterated that he “will do the show as long as Lizzy [Elizabeth Moss] wants to.” That means the comparison to The Walking Dead becomes even more apt, as the show drags things out further and further, and plunges into more violence at the same time.

What The Handmaid’s Tale needs, then, is that sense of ending, that it is truly building towards something with real purpose, which is what feels so lost now compared to its stunning first season. It needs to find a way of bringing June’s story to a satisfying close – whether that is with her death or, as is perhaps more likely, something open-ended that feeds into The Testaments, Atwood’s sequel book that is expected to get its own TV adaptation eventually. For June, that would perhaps mean an escape into Canada, but still with enough ambiguity as to what her future will hold. There might be plenty of time before Gilead falls, but The Handmaid’s Tale needs to get to a place where it feels like something is going to happen.

With that, too, can come more hope, and more of June being free from the torture and violence of Gilead; the show focusing more time on the work being done in Canada, for example, would be a good way to solve both issues: reducing the excessive violence and moving to the future, while staying true to its core narrative. The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t necessarily need to end with season 5, but to have a defined goal in sight – and known – will make everything feel more palatable, and know that there likely is reason to it, rather than the wheel spinning it’s currently suffering from.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/handmaids-tale-violence-torture-story-disappointing-bad-end/

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