The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the only shows where a massacre on the night of a wedding isn’t out of place.
During the Tuesday, May 13, episode of the hit Hulu series, Serena’s (Yvonne Strahovski) wedding to Commander Wharton (Josh Charles) set the scene for June (Elisabeth Moss), Moira (Samira Wiley) and the other members of the revolution to put their plan in motion.
Rita’s (Amanda Brugel) cake helped subdue all members of Gilead — specifically Commanders — as each person from the resistance killed them in their sleep. They first attended Serena’s wedding pretending to be handmaids, which Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) caught wind of (but more on that later).
Serena, meanwhile, celebrated her big night, but it all came crashing down when she returned home with Commander Wharton to discover a handmaid waiting for them. Commander Wharton seemed confused about why Serena wasn’t on board with them expanding their family the Gilead way, which caused her to leave the house with her son in tow.
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As for June, she was able to save Janine (Madeline Brewer) by stabbing Commander Bell (Timothy Simons) in the eye after he arrived home. June and Janine then revealed to Aunt Lydia what was about to take place — and she didn’t stop them.
It remains to be seen how successful the revolution is, but the episode ended on a hopeful note. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a dystopian future. The show is currently in its sixth and final season — with the main characters trying to take down Gilead with help from surprise allies, including D’Arcy Carden‘s Aunt Phoebe.
“There’s going to be more to the character than what you see, which is so exciting. I don’t know if I never expected to play an aunt,” Carden, 45, teased exclusively to Us Weekly earlier this month. “Also coming into the show, I could have been a villain. I could have been dead in the first scene. This is a show that moves and things happen — gigantic things happen — in every episode. So it was so exciting to see what this character would bring.”
Carden teased that there were so many “secrets,” which meant “figuring out what to reveal and when to reveal it.”
“This character is so layered that it was almost like every single line I have [I would overthink]. I would pull the director aside or the writers who are on set to just [to discuss],” she recalled. “I just love the character so much and I love getting to work with these other characters in this world that I know so well and love so much. I really wanted to rise to the occasion and also do them proud. It was such a gift of a role that I felt a lot of pressure to really deliver — a pressure I put on myself — to them.”
The actress was grateful to showrunners Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman for working with her.
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“They told me a lot, which was so generous of them. They didn’t want me to go in totally blind. That doesn’t really help the actor too much. But there were certain things that just couldn’t be revealed,” she noted. “At first it was just one episode and then another. It was sort of slow getting the episodes, but I had a good outline of what the season looked like and what my character arc was.”
As for what fans can expect from that ending? Carden seemed certain that it won’t disappoint.
“As a fan, I was so satisfied [by the ending]. But it’s hard to be satisfied in the world that they created or even the comparison to the world we live in now. But they’ve been fighting this fight for so long and we as the fans have been with them fighting and hoping that they get an inch further and an inch further,” she detailed. “I felt very strong and powerful as a fan and in this role — but I felt like there’s something about Handmaid’s Tale that I think a lot of people feel like it is almost like it’s so intense and so hard to watch that it makes them feel small or weak. For some reason it’s always made me feel really strong and powerful.”
She continued: “These women are fighting against all odds and in the most brutal situations. They continue to fight and they find new ways and they never give up and risk their lives. There’s something about that that feels really powerful to me.”
New episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale are released Tuesdays on Hulu.
