When The Handmaid’s Tale first aired, it felt sharp, terrifying, and painfully necessary. I wrote about the first season as a dark and brilliant adaptation, one that used restraint, symbolism, and dread to tell its story. Now that I've finished the third season, my opinion has shifted — not wholly, but noticeably.
The show is still good. Sometimes very good. But it also became frustrating, uneven, and less powerful than it could have been.
June Osborne: From Survivor to Exhaustion
Let’s talk about June (Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men).
I understand the idea behind her arc. She was meant to evolve — to become more confident, more assertive, more dangerous. A woman shaped by trauma who stops surviving and starts fighting back. On paper, it makes sense.
On screen, however, it often doesn’t work.
June becomes reckless to the point of irresponsibility. She repeatedly puts others in danger without seeming to fully care about who might be caught in the crossfire. Her actions feel impulsive rather than strategic, driven more by rage than by purpose. And worst of all — she becomes annoying.
Not because she’s angry. Not because she’s broken. But because the show insists on framing her as always right, always justified, even when her choices are questionable at best. The complexity that once defined her slowly disappears, replaced by endless close-ups, speeches, and repeated cycles of defiance and punishment.
Her transformation was meant to be empowering. Instead, it often feels poorly translated and emotionally exhausting.
Commander Lawrence: A Necessary Shade of Grey
One of the strongest later additions to the show is Commander Lawrence — and, surprisingly, his wife.
They represent something the series desperately needed: someone inside the system who understands how far it has gone. Lawrence is not a hero, but he is intelligent, conflicted, and painfully aware of the monster he helped create. His presence brings back moral ambiguity, something the show slowly lost as it became more focused on spectacle.
His wife, fragile and kind, offers a rare glimpse of humanity inside Gilead’s cruelty. Together, they provide a small but meaningful sense of hope — not redemption, but awareness.
The Waterfords — And the Horror Beyond Them
Watching the fall of the Waterfords is undeniably satisfying. Their unraveling feels earned, and their hypocrisy is fully exposed.
And yet — it also feels insufficient.
Not because they deserved more punishment, but because the show makes it clear that they were never the worst. When June travels to Washington, we see a version of Gilead that is even more brutal, more extreme, more terrifying. The Waterfords become symbols, not the core of the evil.
This is effective world-building, but it also highlights a problem: the show opens doors it never fully walks through.
The “Master Plan”: Powerful, But Morally Empty
The plan to steal the children from Gilead is presented as a triumph. Emotionally, it works — the coordination, the Marthas, the risk, the final arrival in Canada are genuinely moving moments.
But the idea itself is deeply flawed.
June takes children away from everything they know, unsure whether they will be safer, happier, or loved. They are sent to strangers. The show tries to reassure us by showing a little girl reunited with her father — a clear emotional cue meant to tell the audience this was right.
But it’s not enough.
The act feels less like a rescue and more like a statement of power. A symbolic victory rather than a thoughtful solution. The show doesn’t linger on the trauma of displacement, or on the moral cost of deciding for others. Once again, complexity is sacrificed for emotional payoff.
What Still Works
Despite all this, the show has moments of real strength.
The collective effort — the Marthas, the resistance, the quiet bravery of ordinary people — is compelling. The scene of the children arriving in Canada is one of the most emotional moments in the series, not because of June, but because of everyone else.
When the show focuses on the community rather than its main character, it shines.
A Story That Ends Too Soon — Or Too Safely
By the end, The Handmaid’s Tale leaves us wanting more — not in a good way.
We want consequences. We want a strategy. We want to see Gilead fall, or at least crack in a meaningful way. Instead, the series stops short, as if afraid to commit fully to the destruction it promised for years.
It feels like a story that could have been sharper, braver, and more complete.
Looking Ahead: Hannah and The Testaments
That said, the story isn’t truly over. Yes, I still have 2 seasons to watch, but that's not what I'm talking about.
We know the upcoming spin-off, based on The Testaments, will follow Hannah’s life inside Gilead. This alone is enough to spark curiosity. Seeing the world from the perspective of a child raised within the system has the potential to restore what the original series slowly lost: perspective, restraint, and fresh horror.
Despite its flaws, The Handmaid’s Tale still built a world worth exploring — and I will be watching what comes next.
If you liked the show, consider taking a look at the book that served as the basis for this story.
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