The Handmaid's Tale returns for Season 3 stuck in a paradox, thanks to airing during the Trump era

The Atlantic

The Hulu series "continually asserts how empowering it can be, straining all the while to keep its central character in complete subjugation," says Sophie Gilbert. "In some ways," she adds, "The Handmaid’s Tale feels like it’s suffered from its uncanny timing over the past two seasons rather than benefited from it. Here we are, in this entirely strange moment when feminism is more culturally popular than ever and women’s bodily autonomy more gravely imperiled than it has been since the ’70s; and here Bruce Miller’s series is, an adaptation of a novel about a regime so repressive that it reduces women to hooded wombs. It’s a TV show about children being forcibly taken from their mother, coinciding with a presidential administration that forcibly takes children from their mother. It’s a drama that frequently and unabashedly uses the word resistance. But it’s also a series that scooped up so many awards during its debut season, and so much critical praise, that Hulu seems unlikely to let it start wrapping up any time soon. Hence the catch: Empowerment is crackling through the zeitgeist, and The Handmaid’s Tale wants to deliver it, but its continuation also depends on June being a prisoner of Gilead for a good while longer. This inertia is frustrating, because when the show breaks out of its self-imposed loops, it’s extraordinarily moving."

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• Relevance ruined The Handmaid's Tale: "Watching the first episodes of the new season, what strikes me is that the set of symbols that the show unleashed has far outpaced what the show actually provides," says Rachel Syme. "The striking metaphors The Handmaid’s Tale birthed all belong to the book and to the show’s first season, in which the horrifying vision of a patriarchal fascist state and all its paraphernalia becomes clear. The Hulu show has since become a long-running soap opera about women’s trauma, and like any good soap, it needs the drama to continue endlessly, and to raise the stakes continuously."
• It's easy to get frustrated, but The Handmaid's Tale has become something more than a TV show:  "The third season is about June fighting back against a system designed to break her spirit, something a lot of us can identify with right now," says Beth Elderkin. "She’s stronger, she’s smarter, and, yes, she’s more reckless. But she has to be in order to do what needs to be done and keep the spirit of resistance alive. To give June the space she needs to be the heroine we need, Gilead in turn has to be a bit more flexible, even if it bends the rules of its established world."
• The Handmaid’s Tale would benefit from the urgency of a series finale date: "There’s still enough going on in The Handmaid’s Tale to keep it reasonably compelling, even though it’s harder to ignore the sound of the ticking clock that strongly suggests this narrative needs to turn harder in some new directions, and soon," says Jen Chaney. "Since there are 13 episodes in this season and critics have only seen not quite half of them, perhaps those new directions will come in the season’s later episodes. But that hope also speaks to another issue with The Handmaid’s Tale, namely that it would benefit from some concision. Knowing that this was a ten-episode season might reduce my impatience with the more drawn-out moments, not to mention force showrunner Bruce Miller and his fellow writers to get from point A to point B with more urgency."
• Season 3's first half often lapses into the realm of the deadly dull
• The Handmaid's Tale is stuck in a grim cycle of combative misery, working ever harder for a future that gets further and further out of reach
• The Handmaid's Tale keeps playing its greatest hits: "What’s strange about Handmaid’s Tale three seasons deep is that it keeps hammering home its greatest hits to the detriment of the possible new avenues it could explore," says Caroline Framke, adding: "The show is stuck in a repetitive loop, both by design and accident."
• Unfortunately, six hours is a long time to slog through a story that just seems to get more and more depressing
• The Handmaid's Tale is still bleak in Season 3, but at least there is finally hope
• Handmaid's Tale garb is the viral protest uniform of 2019
• Producers call the Washington, D.C. of Season Gilead on steroids
• Showrunner Bruce Miller explains Season 3's tone: "We’re experiencing the show through June, and when she feels brutalized, we feel brutalized, and her resistance is coming up. Although the brutality is still happening, you don’t have to show as much because it doesn’t have as much of an effect on June."