The Handmaid’s Tale season 4, episode 7 recap: Intensity grows in latest moving instalment

There is a scene in Room, the 2015 film adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel, that remains one of the most powerful pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen. In it, Brie Larson’s character, Joy, springs out of the shed where she has been held captive for seven years. Caught between panic and utter disbelief, she rushes towards a parked car, waiting to clutch her young son Jack. It’s a “free at last” moment – one that captures all the complexity of what happens when someone kept away from the world for years gets to re-enter it, suddenly and after extensive trauma.

This week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, “Home”, is that Room scene stretched out over 47 minutes. As of last week, June had finally left Gilead and taken her first step on Canadian soil. Liberations like June’s and Joy’s are interesting, storytelling-wise, because they defy expectations. They should be an end, the final period to a litany of hurdles, but they’re not. They’re the beginning of a brand new struggle. June, much like Joy, must at once learn how to live as a free woman again, process the trauma of her Gilead years, and reconnect with her loved ones, all while wrestling with copious amounts of guilt.

That process begins in “Home” with two sentences, 22 words spoken by June to the US delegation in Canada: “My name is June Osborne. I am a citizen of the United States and I seek asylum in the country of Canada.” If you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale since the first episode, you know the significance of these words. Handmaids were stripped of their names, and June became Offred (because she was assigned to Commander Fred Waterford), then Ofjoseph (commander Joseph Lawrence). With these 22 words, June is officially June again. This has been a long time coming, and the show knows it, rewarding us with a cheeky (and perfect) excerpt from Etta James’s “At Last!”.

Searching for Luke

Looming over “Home” is the spectre of the picture-perfect liberation that we know not to expect but still hope for on some level. You know, the scenario in which June finds healthy outlets for her trauma, rekindles her relationship with Luke, takes care of her daughter Nichole (whom she got out of Gilead in season three), and topples Gilead from Canada.

Of course, none of this happens. (It would be bad for the show if it did.) Instead, June’s reunion with Luke grows increasingly uncomfortable. They have so many things to say to each other, most of them left unsaid. Their interactions are full of painful near misses. Once Luke and June are set up in a swanky hotel suite, Luke awkwardly runs her through a list of possible activities, orders room service, and waits for her to come share a meal with him – only to find out she has begun what turns out to be a 17-hour nap. They then go “home”, ie, the house where Luke and Moira have been sharing in Canada, which only adds to June’s sense of displacement. When June decides to go grocery-shopping with Luke and Moira, she’s overcome by a panic attack while they smoothly co-parent her baby daughter.

June, it becomes increasingly apparent, doesn’t want to be alone with Luke. It’s not hard to imagine why, although the show doesn’t spell it out for us: she still feels guilty for not managing to save Hannah, she hasn’t begun to tell him even a tenth of what happened to her in Gilead, and there’s the small matter of Nichole, the child June conceived (almost certainly) with Nick in the authoritarian republic. Nick, for whom she seemed to develop genuine feelings during her captivity. Of course, it would be absurd to blame June for finding somebody to love when she needed to. But she and Luke need to (in the words of Moira) “have the fight”, and so far, they’re not having it.

Re-entering the world

“Home” wisely forsakes plotty hijinks, focusing instead on letting things fall into place. This is the right decision: June is in such a tormented place right now that I would happily watch her shop for groceries for 45 minutes straight, knowing that every small action is rife with meaning. (“What happened to potato chips in the last seven years?” she ponders, bewildered, in front of an array of dietary snacks.)

In Canada, June reconvenes with familiar faces, among them her former fellow Handmaid Emily and Rita, a former Martha. Along with Moira, they have what begins as casual drinks and ends with the weighty revelation of Serena Waterford’s pregnancy. The show plants the idea into our brains: watching June be reunited with the people she liked and loved is one thing, but what about the ones she understandably despises? A few scenes later, the June-Senera reunion happens, and boy, does it deliver.

Serena tries to appeal to June’s faith to obtain her forgiveness, to no avail. “Do you know why God made you pregnant?” June, towering over a kneeling Serena. “So that when he kills that baby inside your womb, you will feel a fraction of the pain that you caused us when you tore our children from our arms.”

Elisabeth Moss is fury personified in that moment, her blue eyes watering with rage, her shaky voice turning to a growl on the “frrrraction”. She sounds like she’s putting a curse on Serena – as if she can actually yell the events she’s describing into being. It’s so interesting to finally see June confront Serena in a world where they both exist as equals, after three seasons of watching them on uneven planes, Serena bolstered by the dystopia she helped build. Outside of Gilead, Serena can’t hide anymore. All she can do is cling to her last possible ally, the one she attempted to repudiate a few scenes ago: her husband Fred, who like Serena, remains in hot water with Canadian authorities over the many crimes he committed in Gilead. Guess these two won’t be testifying against each other after all.

It’s always about June

June returns from her meeting with Serena to find Luke sleeping in bed. She kisses him, then starts having sex with him. And here comes the most uncomfortable thing in this episode: Luke tells June to wait, and she doesn’t. Instead, she covers his mouth with her hand. There is a lot to unpack here, but there is also one simple truth: in that moment, Luke doesn’t consent to any of this. What happens to him is rape.

June seems to know this, at least on one level. Towards the end of the episode, she tells a member of the US delegation, ostensibly about Serena: “She’ll do anything to get what she wants. Lie to you. Hurt you. Rape you. So if you feel yourself getting sucked in by her, run. Run for your life.” On the surface, June is testifying about her former tormentor, but as she speaks, the screen shifts from shots of Fred and Serena reuniting to scenes of June playing with Nichole while Luke watches in the background. Who is June really talking about? The person she’s describing is Serena, sure, but the qualities she’s describing could just as well serve as a summary of how she perceives herself.

The Handmaid’s Tale has always been about June, but the story of her liberation will be that of Luke’s suffering too.