One of the gems of current television, The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, wraps up its first season with an ending that’s appropriately menacing and yet reassuringly cryptic.
The 10th and final episode of the first season becomes available Wednesday on the streaming service.
A second season has been ordered, so it will come as no surprise that the show isn’t wrapping up its complex and troubling matters quite yet.
That’s not a bad thing, because much remains to be explored in the story of Offred (Elisabeth Moss) and her sister “handmaids” in a world where women are brutally subjugated in the name of merciless Old Testament-style patriarchy.
The show is set in Gilead, a mutation of the old United States that is run by hard-core religious fundamentalists.
Under this new order, women are not allowed to own property, control money, work or read. At least they aren’t summarily executed, which is what happens to those who happen to be gay. Or Catholic. Or anything else of which the fundamentalists don’t approve.
This new civilization has a problem, though. Environmental contamination from warfare has left most women infertile, meaning the few who can still bear children become the property of the ruling class, which uses them as brood mares, er, that is, handmaids.
All handmaids are named for their masters. So…
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