The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 episode 8 recap: Two key characters finally get in the same room – and it is explosive

Last week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale was dark. So dark, apparently, that it cast a literal shadow on this week’s instalment. “Testimony” is a 56-minute game of light versus shade, of breakthroughs and setbacks. June is out of Gilead, and she – along with other survivors – is trying to pick up the pieces of her life. Her existence in Canada is a hot, inescapable mess, where each step forward is usually followed by three steps back.

This is the third episode since June left the authoritarian regime and officially became a refugee in Canada. She has been reunited with Luke, her husband, as well as her second daughter Nichole and some of the people she bonded with back in Gilead (Alexis Bledel’s Emily is particularly great in “Testimony”). So far, we’ve walked through the necessary motions – June’s first few days as a free woman, June’s first trip to the supermarket, June’s early collaboration with intelligence forces looking into Gilead. Subplots and peripheral characters were kept in the background, wisely so. We needed that breath. Watching June evolve in this entirely new environment was captivating enough anyway.

But now? Now, we’re ready for more. And “Testimony” is the definition of “more”.

One of three episodes directed by Elisabeth Moss this season, “Testimony” preoccupies itself entirely with the question of the Gilead aftermath. For three seasons, June was hurt and abused. Now, she’s angry. So angry that she struggles to sit through daily interactions. So angry that she hasn’t been able to connect emotionally with the loved ones she’s just been reunited with. So angry she has started hurting those around her.

Inside Gilead, June had a clear driving force: she wanted to get her daughter Hannah out of the republic. She wanted to get out herself. She wanted to topple the regime. But now that she’s out of Gilead, having accomplished just one of those three things, what is June supposed to do with all this anger? What is anyone – Emily, Moira, Luke, every single person whose life has been wrecked by Gilead – supposed to do with it?

Law & Order: Handmaid’s Tale

“Testimony” partially answers this question for June, in the form of a momentous courtroom scene. Her former commander, Fred Waterford, is still in custody, facing charges for some of the crimes he committed in Gilead. June, we learn early in the episode, is due to give her testimony in court, facing Waterford for the first time since her escape.

“I’m not nervous, or worried, or scared,” she tells a support group ahead of the court date. “I can’t f****** wait.”

The courtroom scene is Handmaid’s theatrics pushed to the max, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. If you’ve watched the show this far, then surely you, too, must appreciate its signature aesthetics – how the image, so dark in the episode’s first few minutes I had to watch them with the brightness setting all the way up, suddenly floods with light once June steps into the courtroom; how the camera focuses solely on her face as she details the atrocities Waterford subjected her to; how Moss switches from anger to vulnerability to flickers of emancipation. If you love Handmaid’s, you’ll love that scene.

Perhaps it’s the law school dropout in me, but I, for one, am very partial to that scene. It just feels great to hear June tell the world what Waterford did to her – while he listens. Of course, as we soon find out, the criminal justice system is by no means perfect, and June is quickly subjected to supremely rude grilling by Waterford’s defence lawyer. Yes, yes, I know everyone is entitled to counsel. But does she have to cross this many lines? (“Isn’t it true, Ms Osborne, that you chose to become a Handmaid?” she asks June, who promptly reminds her that “it was either that or get sent to the colonies”.) Anyway, that scene, of course, is designed to leave us incensed. It works. Consider me officially incensed.

And here’s to you, Mrs Waterford

The Waterfords are back in this episode, for better and mostly for worse. Serena Joy is still pregnant, and now she’s really showing. When did that happen? She barely had a bump in the last episode. I was under the impression that “Testimony” took place just a few days after last week’s action, but maybe more time has elapsed than I realised?

In any case, Serena sticks by her man (ew) as he sits in his pre-trial hearing. Can we take a few seconds to acknowledge how brilliant Joseph Fiennes is at playing this creep? There is something so wrongly righteous, so icky, in his portrayal of Fred. Scene after scene, he nails it.

Now, time for a second acknowledgment. If you’ve followed these recaps, you might recall that four episodes ego, I unfairly maligned the “Gilead works” explanation of Serena’s pregnancy (the idea being that Fred and Serena were infertile until Gilead somehow cured them). I take it all back. The “Gilead works” plot line was the perfect setup for Fred’s infuriatingly triumphant moment when he responds to June’s testimony and, referring to his wife’s pregnancy, basically argues that the ends justify the means. “The sacrifices we all made in Gilead were difficult. But where else on Earth is the birth rate rising?” he asks. “Nowhere. Only in Gilead, because it works. It works!”

Reader, it does work. Not Gilead, I mean, but that scene. A little later on, as Fred and Serena prepare to step out of some official-looking building (is it still the courtroom? I’m lost), they hear a chorus of voices outside. Protesters, they assume. But when the doors open, it turns out the protesters aren’t protesters at all: they’re supporters, cheering and holding up “Free the Waterfords” and “Praise Be Serena Joy” placards.

For all the darkness in this episode, this is the scene that broke me. It simply hadn’t occurred to me, I guess, that people outside of Gilead could still be supporting the regime. I’ll take that as a testament to The Handmaid’s Tale’s world building, and perhaps to my own naiveté.

Meanwhile in Gilead…

Aunt Lydia is struggling to regain her status. June’s escape happened under her watch, and no one is prepared to let her forget it. After she cattle-prods a Handmaid and one of her fellow Aunts, Commander Lawrence gives her a stern talking to – and a new pet project.

Remember how we never saw Janine again after she and June were caught in that bombing in Chicago? Well, Janine is alive. But she has also been captured and brought back to Gilead, where Aunt Lydia is now in charge of her. Lydia, who has everything to prove and everything to lose. “Whatever are we going to do with you?” she muses while hugging a broken Janine. This is only technically a question: whatever the answer might be, in Lydia’s mouth, those words will always amount to a threat.