Watch out: you’ll find some spoilers here
With an extraordinary storyline on season 2, it’s no surprise that The Handmaid’s Tale received twenty Emmy Awards nominations the next day the last episode was aired, on July 11th. The second season of the show raises the stakes even higher for an already amazing series.
We begin the second season with a lot of shocking scenes that opened up a debate about free violence. Because the show presents different forms of exploitation on all women in the Gilead regime, this season made the public comprehend that wasn’t just the Handmaids that were suffering, showing the reality of every woman and her daily struggle.
Image Source: IMDb
Even with critics in portals like The Guardian talking about the possibility of “torture porn” in this season, using blood and aggression without being useful to the storyline, the elapse of thirteen episodes proved that to be untrue. The tougher scenes with more explicit violence were there to guide us through this world that sometimes we think it’s so far away, while the oppression comes over women day by day in our reality.
This whole season showed us a little bit more of how Gilead works, internally and internationally. But motherhood, the plot of the show previewed in another article of HerCampus, was mainly approached. The different types of how to be a mother and difficulties that Gilead presented to both Wives and Handmaids introduced us into a new universe with new plots.
But instead of just showing how terrible this system works for women, the season proved how adverse situations can give strength to each woman. From the strength to have her baby alone, for June, to the strength of letting that baby goes to a better life, for Serena.
Image Source: IMDb
Talking about Serena, her character awakened a lot of emotions on the viewers: anger, pity, compassion, and anger again. With the evolution of her character and more screen time, we understood better of her distress on being a Wife with a rebellious pregnant Handmaid and her moments of questioning the system that she helped to implement. And for that reason and her amazing performance as an actress in the whole season, Yvonne Strahovski needs to win her Emmy nominee.
And between the ups and downs, the hopes and frustrations in this season, The Marthas were a big part of the final twist to the show. Their accomplishment was so interesting and empowering since they are the quite social group, but with an order of sorority so beautiful to see, especially when this topic is hotter than ever in our own society.
Image Source: IMDb
However, this twist was unexpected and didn’t work this season, so we hope to see if season three shows if and how they are part of the resistance, because one thing we can be sure after finishing the last episode: when the oppressed unite, the voice gets much higher.