How ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Made Sure at Least One Character Got a Genuinely Happy Ending

In the first episode of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, viewers met Janine, played by Madeline Brewer. Like June, the main character played by Elisabeth Moss, she’s been abducted by Gilead and is now in the Red Center, where new handmaids are forced to learn their horrifying new duties. When Janine talks back, she’s hauled off for a biblical punishment: the loss of her eye. That set the tone for Janine’s harrowing journey throughout the series—but she never lost her spirit, and in the end, the show rewarded her with an ecstatically happy last moment. Her missing eye—often, but not always, concealed with her trademark patch—was more or less the only constant for Janine over six seasons. After being the first handmaid in June’s group to give birth, she entertained fantasies of keeping her baby girl. Of course, that is not the way of Gilead, and Charlotte (Janine’s name for her daughter; her captors, Commander Putnam and his wife Naomi, called her Angela) was ripped from her arm ... Read full article.