The Handmaid’s Tale’s Most Conflicted Commander Is One of Its Best Characters

There are some awful women on The Handmaid’s Tale, but men make up the bulk of its villainous characters. That goes for individual men like the thankfully departed Commander Fred Waterford, but also “men of Gilead” as a collective, oppressive, violent, misogynistic whole. The show tends to deal in heavy-handed themes, but it’s also invested in creating complex characters. The most fascinating examples are Gilead insiders who realize too late they’re trapped in prisons of their own making. We’ve previously explored how this makes Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) one of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s most consistently infuriating yet interesting characters, still true in the show’s current sixth season. Over the years, we’ve seen Serena captured by Canada for war crimes, then released, then awkwardly told there was no place for her in Gilead because its rigid culture wasn’t equipped to deal with a widowed single mother. Then, after Gilead tucked her out of sight as its representative in ... Read full article.