The Handmaid’s Tale returned for its fourth season with “Pigs” written by Bruce Miller and directed by Colin Watkinson. The show picks up right where it left off after June (Elisabeth Moss) was shot. I will be reviewing each episode separately – even though they dropped 3/1 or 2/2 depending on where you are watching. My apologies for getting these up a bit late, but it’s never too late to discuss this brilliant show, and we all know what “real” life can be like these days! The show remains as brilliant as ever with gorgeous cinematography and musical choices. “I’ll Say A Little Prayer for You” plays over a montage of the handmaid’s carrying a wounded June, trying to save her life as she bleeds alarmingly from her bullet wound. White and red mix and blur. This is her sacrifice and her punishment for getting the children out. Staying itself is also a metaphorical wound.
The Handmaid’s Tale, “Milk” below.
When Rita (Amanda Brugel) steps off the plane and into Canada at the end of
The Handmaid s Tale season 3, it’s one of the show’s rare moments of relief. Finally, a character who is good and kind as we slowly but surely come to discover makes it to safety. But with a two-year stretch before season 4, fans were left wondering: What will Rita do next?
Now, just four episodes into the new season, we come to find it’s a question the former Martha is wrestling with herself. “I think Rita is grateful to be free and in Canada,” Brugel tells ELLE.com. “But I truly believed, or at least I played it like that this season, that she missed Gilead. She misses the routine and the structure and the strange home dynamic that was in the Waterford house. Suddenly she’s in Canada and has no family. She’s by herself and has no purpose every day.” But as Fred (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) attempt to slither back into her
He notes that his interest in seeing religious communities which feature a big “age difference between the husbands and wives” was mirrored in
Margaret Atwood‘s novel.
“That seemed kind of ripe in a way that I liked for the show. You know, it’s openly reprehensible and they’re doing it openly,” he told TheWrap.
He added that after casting
Mckenna, she truly brought Esther to life.
Bruce describes Esther as “an adolescent with a gun, you know, a child soldier, possibly dangerous character, and I think, with [Moss’] help and and Colin Watkinson, who directed the first two episodes, you really do feel, it’s just remarkable, how terrifying she can be.”
Originally planned to release on April 28, the first three episodes of the fourth season “Pigs,” “Nightshade” and “The Crossing” are now available to stream on Hulu. The rest of the 10-episode season will be released weekly on the streaming service, episode by episode.