How ‘The Handmaid’s Story’ Made Certain at Least One Character Received a Genuinely Pleased Ending

Within the first episode of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, viewers met Janine, performed by Madeline Brewer. Like June, the principle character performed by Elisabeth Moss, she’s been kidnapped by Gilead and is now within the Purple Heart, the place new handmaids are pressured to study their horrifying new duties. When Janine talks again, she’s hauled off for a biblical punishment: the lack of her eye. That set the tone for Janine’s harrowing journey all through the sequence—however she by no means misplaced her spirit, and in the end, the present rewarded her with an ecstatically glad final second.

Her lacking eye—typically, however not all the time, hid along with her trademark patch—was roughly the one fixed for Janine over six seasons. After being the primary handmaid in June’s group to present beginning, she entertained fantasies of retaining her child woman. In fact, that’s not the way in which of Gilead, and Charlotte (Janine’s identify for her daughter; her captors, Commander Putnam and his spouse Naomi, referred to as her Angela) was ripped from her arms, nearly actually.

After that, she held totally different roles with various ranges of freedom—at one level she ended up in exile, shoveling poisonous waste within the dreaded Colonies; at one other, she survived a bombing after briefly escaping Gilead for Chicago. Within the final seasons of The Handmaid’s Story, we noticed her helping Aunt Lydia within the Purple Heart, constructing on a sophisticated relationship rooted in energy, guilt, shared trauma, and the occasional try at kindness.

In season six, former handmaid Janine is pressured into a special form of sexual slavery, toiling at Jezebel’s, the brothel created for the pleasure of Gilead’s two-faced commanders. There, she encounters Angela’s new adoptive father: the grumpy however not-evil Commander Lawrence, who reluctantly married Naomi for causes which can be frankly too lengthy to get into right here. (It’s The Handmaid’s Story—count on the worst!) He’s conscious of Janine’s state of affairs and brings one of many little woman’s drawings to her, an act of kindness that renews Janine’s hopes that at some point she’ll get to see her once more.

That state of affairs feels ever-bleaker when Jezebel’s is destroyed and Janine is snatched up by a commander who’s taken a merciless curiosity in her. Ultimately, although, her extended struggling lastly ends when June kills the man (stabs him within the eye, actually), and after one other temporary but terrible stint in captivity, she’s free of Gilead perpetually.

Better of all, although, as June and firm are dashing to get her to security, we see Aunt Lydia and Naomi seem. Extremely, they’re bringing Angela/Charlotte to be along with her mother, to reside a life away from Gilead’s cruelty. Although The Handmaid’s Story sequence finale ended with a variety of characters nonetheless on the mid-points on their journeys, that’s not the case for Janine. This can be a actual and true glad ending for her, in the end.

Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Brewer was understandably thrilled that her character lastly bought her biggest want. “I assumed it was so lovely. I’m so happy with the ending for Janine,” she mentioned. “It may have gone a variety of other ways and it’s all she’s ever wished.”

She continued. “I don’t suppose I actually, really hoped for something as a result of I couldn’t even think about. That’s additionally not my job (laughs) [to write the show], however it’s the identical purpose why I by no means made too many selections about Janine’s life earlier than … So I didn’t need to make too many selections. I wished it in methods to shock me. And it did … I’m simply so pleased with Janine for all the time being herself and never letting them take the fireplace away from her. And for being good friend and mother and individual.”

The present was typically very bleak, however reward be—a minimum of Janine lastly triumphed in the long run. All seasons of The Handmaid’s Story at the moment are out there on Hulu.

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