Nightmare Fuel / The Handmaid's Tale

From the Novel

Novel

• A snippet from the book. They were talking about a 14-year-old girl being gang-raped.
  "But WHOSE fault was it?"
  "Her fault. Her fault. Her fault."
  "WHO led them on?"
  "She did. She did. She did."
  "And why would God allow such a terrible thing to happen?"
  "Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson."
• The Colonies. They're used for cleaning up nuclear waste until they die from the radiation poisoning. It's basically gulags. At one point Moira tells Offred that her mother ended up there (she saw her in a propaganda video) and when Offred expresses relief since she thought her mother was dead, Moira simply says "She might as well be. You should wish it for her."
• It is hinted that "the Children of Ham" (black people), who are supposedly sent to "national homelands" (a la South Africa), may in fact be suffering extermination.
• While we learn the (possible) fates of the black and Jewish populations, there is no mention of other ethnic or religious groups. What about the Asian, Middle Eastern, First Nation, etc. groups? We don't know, but we can imagine that it was horrifying.
• The whole concept of being a Handmaid. You're separated from your loved ones, and if you have children, they've given away to be adopted by other families. You're forcibly indoctrinated (including such charming little exercises as the one shown above) and then passed around the upper echelons of the military as a brood mare. Your very name is taken away from you, to be replaced with the designation of whatever man currently owns you, e.g., Offred, Ofwayne. You're raped monthly, with the Wife of your owner effectively holding you down. You're blamed if you're not fertile, even though it's most likely the men who own and use you that are sterile, and the Wives resent or even hate you regardless. If you don't manage to get pregnant in one of three "assignments", you're declared defective and packed off to the colonies to die of radiation poisoning or slave labor. If you do actually manage to get pregnant and carry the child to term, it's removed from you except for feeding times and, as soon as it's weaned, you're bundled off to another family to start the whole miserable process all over again. And while you're given a sop of never being sent to the colonies if you bear a live, healthy baby, there's always the possibility that the baby's a "shredder", born with a mental or physical defect that only appears later. You will never be safe.
• Gilead is the sort of nation that would consider perfectly normal things to be "defects." What if the kid grows up to be gay or transgender? What if they're autistic? What if they're schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill? In our society, any decent parent would love them just the same, but in Gilead...
• Particicution, where the women vent their frustrations on a male "criminal" (in one case a political dissenter) by ripping him to pieces with their bare hands. During that scene in the book, Janine, who's had at least two "shredder" babies, finally loses her shit and wanders around with a bloody chunk of the person's scalp in her hand and a vacant grin on her face. The epilogue theorizes that Gileadean society came up with the custom of Particicution not just to get rid of unwanted elements (they had the Wall for that), but expressly to provide a stress outlet for otherwise terribly oppressed Handmaids, to the point where instead of just having one in the rare case the occasion arose, after a while they started to hold them on every equinox and solstice, that is 4 times a year.
• Offred doesn't know what happened to her husband and her daughter, especially considering that before the rise of Gilead, the reader learns that a crazy woman tried to take Offred's baby daughter from Offred's shopping cart when Offred had her back turned to get something off the shelves. Yikes.
• The fact that the entire premise — a takeover by religious fundamentalists, the utter loss of rights for women — is inspired by true events. Iran had been developing into a modern, secular country over the 20th century, but made a turnaround after the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A much worse example though, would be Afghanistan, where the takeover of the Taliban led to far worse consequences for women and the population at large.

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From the 1990 Film

• In the beginning of the film, there were women ruled as infertile being led into trucks and cells previously used for livestock (one soldier just crossed out the "Livestock" and wrote "116" and the Female Biological Symbol). There was one woman screaming "you made a mistake!" and the screams made it all the more jarring.
• The screams of the nuns as the fertile ones are forced onto a bus. You know that they are aware of what's happening because you can hear one shouting "you can't make me break my vows!" To them, they are not only being forced into sexual slavery but also being forced to give up the vows that they had made thinking it would be for their entire lives. Not to mention what probably happened to the infertile or elderly nuns.

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From the 2017 Series

Season 1

• The entire nation of Gilead is a Crapsack World of unrelenting Nightmare Fuel. In summary: almost the entire U.S. has been taken over by extremist Christian totalitarianism. Women are considered second-class citizens. All gay and lesbian people are considered "gender traitors" and sentenced to death. If you commit a crime and are killed for it, your body is hung up in public. The worst punishment is being sent to the Colonies—where you will suffer a slow and painful death from infection and exposure as you are forced to clean up a wasteland. Due to the population crisis, all fertile women have been forced to become "Handmaids"—their sole purpose is to bear children. If they were married or already had children, they will be ripped away from them. Once a month, they are raped by the Commander who owns them, while the Commander's Wife holds them down as part of a "Ceremony." Once a Handmaid gets pregnant, the baby will be taken from her once it's weaned, and she will be shipped off to her next Commander. If she fails to get pregnant for so long, she's sent to the Colonies. Handmaids are named after their Commanders—"Offred, Ofglen, Ofmatthew"—because they are no more than property now. Women are not allowed to read—if one does, she will lose a finger, or her whole hand. Handmaids are "trained" by Aunts—if they step out of line, they will be tortured and mutilated. All while this is happening, Canada has become a safe haven for refugees, but the number of people looking for their wives, sisters, and daughters that were taken from them is in the thousands. And other places, like Mexico? They do not care that this is happening.
• The arrest, trial, conviction and punishment of Emily and her lover. The Martha is sentenced to death, and we see every single moment of it: her in the van with Emily, sobbing in terror, her being taken away, and her slowly being hanged to death by crane, all while Emily watches. Emily is spared death simply because she's a fertile woman, but her crime of "gender treachery" is punished by genital mutilation.
• The book only made references to how the takeover happened. Here, flashbacks show it, and it is nothing short of horrifying to see women bluntly told they can no longer hold jobs or have their own money. The fact that most of them see it as only an annoyance at first is worse, as they have no idea of the horrors that are coming.
  • The turning point is a peaceful protest ending with soldiers gunning down unarmed civilians. Everyone runs in panic as the close-ups reveal how June knows this is the end of the world she knew.
  • Fred and Serena are shown in a movie theater when he receives a text message of the upcoming False Flag Attack that will kick off the takeover. She kisses him, saying "this is for the greater good." They settle back to watch the movie, surrounded by a crowd of laughing, talking, texting people who have no idea that in three weeks, their world is forever changed.
  • It's not just the blatant violence and takeover, either—over the course of the flashbacks we see the unsettling behavior of everyday people changing as the world gets worse. Emily defends one of her female students from a condescending peer, only for said student to implicitly then report her "classroom environment" because she had a picture of her wife and son on her phone. Hannah's teacher calls June a bad mother because she didn't panic over a simple fever. Perhaps most jarring is when June's credit card gets declined at a coffee shop—when she asks to have it checked again, the cashier suddenly calls her and Moira "fucking sluts" and tells them to leave. Some of it seems to be paranoia, but it's very clear that the rising extremist views of Gilead resonated with far too many citizens.
• Nick hearing Rita's screams of horror and running in to see the previous Offred's body hanging from the ceiling. What makes it even more terrifying is that the scene almost comes out of nowhere.
• The Humiliation Conga orchestrated by both Wives and Commanders that leads to Janine attempting suicide with her child in her arms.
• In a flashback to when the infertility problems first started, a woman who had a mental breakdown when her baby was stillborn tries to steal June's, insisting it's hers.
• The infertility crisis is horrifying in itself. Those who wanted children had to suffer through multiple miscarriages, stillbirths, and babies dying soon after birth.
• June seems to have found an ally in a doctor who freely uses the forbidden word "sterile" and offers to help her. Then it turns out by help, he means having sex with her right there to possibly impregnate her when the Commander can't and avoid future punishment, with the implication that he's done this extortion to a lot more women, all while keeping the same Faux Affably Evil tone. Then you add the Fridge Horror that the Commander suffered from The Loins Sleep Tonight that month, meaning if she'd agreed and did get pregnant, she would have been immediately found out.
• The possibility that the doctor was sincerely trying to give her a fighting chance may be even more horrifying than him being a predator; it says a lot about how hideous the situation is when a genuinely good guy's options to help a woman in June's situation are limited to making an offer which would be utterly repugnant in any sane society.
• We find out early in the season that Mexico and Gilead are trying to form trade relations—but while Mexico will be supplying Gilead with crops, Gilead will be supplying them with Handmaids. To better their chances of the deal going through, Gilead makes all the Handmaids look like they're women who stepped up for their country and are happy living there. June finally manages to talk to Ambassador Castillo to tell her the truth: all Handmaids have been forced into sexual slavery, and they are beaten, raped, and mutilated on a daily basis. She begs the Ambassador to help them, or at least not traffic them...and she refuses. Mexico's population crisis is so bad that even after learning what the Handmaids suffer, they will still be traded like cattle. While Canada has become a safe haven for Gilead refugees and tries its best to help those trapped in the country, Mexico has decided to both profit from Gilead's terrorism and actively partake in the abuse that the Handmaids endure.

Season 2

• The second season starts off by the handmaids being blindly taken to Fenway Park to be put in the gallows, but while their lives are spared, the psychological torture was to scare them into submission. Everything they experience in the training centre is a form a psychological torture to punish them for disobeying.
• The punishments for disobeying, include the psychological torture. In addition, they are made the kneel in the rain, each holding a heavy stone. Next, they are lined up inside the cafeteria in a straight line and made to listen to Alma's screams as she is tortured. Alma gets more punishment than the others because June is pregnant and can't be punished, so Alma, as the next unruliest Handmaid, is selected. They are Forced to Watch, as Aunt Lydia and Aunt Elizabeth drag her screaming and kicking into the kitchens, where she handcuffs her hand to the stove and turns on the gas.
• June is forced to listen alongside. As she was being rebellious, the Aunts took her to a prison room, where another pregnant Handmaid, Ofwyatt was chained up for being Driven to Suicide by drain cleaner, with the implication that she'll be killed after having the baby. June knows that if she acts up, she'll end up like her, and is forced to eat the lunch Aunt Lydia prepared for her and act as though nothing happened. We also don't see it but the implication was that all of the Handmaids but June were burned like Alma, so they all had to listen to her being tortured knowing it was about to happen to them, as well.
  Aunt Lydia: You're first, Ofrobert.
• June hides out in the old Boston Globe building, where everywhere she looks there's signs of a mass slaughter of the staff, including a long wall full of bullet holes and covered in bloodstains.
• The entire last act of "Other Women" gives us the moment we hoped would never come: June is broken. After a parade of all the other people who've suffered on her behalf, she gives up and retreats fully into the personality of a smiling, simpering Handmaid, with even her internal narration only repeating her inane comments about the weather. There's nowhere to hide from the realization that the story's hero is gone.
• As punishment for speaking up for Janine, Lillie is given an ironic punishment by having her tongue ripped out. The only literate women allowed in Gilead are Aunts and for all others, it warrants the removal of a finger for the first offense, and the amputation of an entire hand the second offense. They removed her way of communicating with the outside world!
• The line-up of child brides and a building of people applauding the mass marriage. Even Rita notes it's off and tries to rationalize it.
• During the marriage the men have no idea who they are marrying until after the vows have been said and the rings placed on the fingers. It certainly would not have been what they signed up for... or even more horrifyingly, it's exactly what some of them signed up for.
• Eden Spencer, who shows a representation of the next generation of Gilead. She is 15 years old and has no idea of the world outside of Gilead. In addition, she is married off to a complete stranger in an Arranged Marriage and from the looks of it, was the only one of the child brides who was happy at the prospect. When Nick won't touch her she believes that he believes her to be ugly, or even worse, that he is a gender traitor, which warrants death in Gilead. Granted, she was naive, but Nick could've ended up on the wall because of her.
• Nick consummating his marriage to Eden. The only reason he is doing it is because June forced him, as he doesn't feel any attraction to Eden, but Eden is brainwashed by the Gilead regimen and believes that Nick is gay, which merits execution if she were to report him. The consummation process involves having to pray beforehand, and then have them each strip, with Eden using a special sheet in a hole in it. Eden is roughly 15 and brainwashed to be pious and a dutiful wife, which by modern standards means Nick is committing statutory rape, while Nick is twice her age and old enough to be her father. Sex-via-coercion is still considered rape.
• June discovers she's had vaginal bleeding, and desperately tries to keep the possible miscarriage secret even as the problem becomes steadily worse to Body Horror levels. This includes waking up in the bath to find the water is completely red.
• June is Driven to Suicide and falls out her window the night that Nick marries Eden, as now she feels she has nothing to live for. She is found by Nick, heavily pregnant and her lower abdomen covered in blood. Nick's fear: the woman he loves is pregnant with his child but is mentally broken and so gone from life that she decides to take her own life. Only, that also entails taking the life of the child you both share.
• The way Waterford slowly takes the heavily annotated Bible and reads from it before whipping Serena with his belt. How many other awful things have little blue tags that Gilead uses as justification? There are a lot of tags...
• Serena Joy being given a schedule with only illustrations in Canada. Why? Because women in Gilead are not allowed to read, even though they were out of Gilead territory, even though Serena Joy was an educated professional before the takeover.
• During the diplomatic meeting with Canada, Fred mentions he wants to get the Canadians to agree to expel the refugees from Gilead, referring to them as "illegal emigrants". While it ultimately doesn't come to fruition due to the Waterfords being forced out of Canada after Luke, Moira, and Erin release the Jezebel letters, the idea that Moria, Erin, Luke, and others who've escaped Gilead being forced to return after how welcoming Canada was to them is spine chilling.
• Fred raping June in "The Last Ceremony" while Serena holds her down in order to induce labor. What makes it absolutely chilling is the fact that June has never fought back in the Ceremony before, and here actually tries, which includes screaming for help and fighting Serena. Their looks sell it all. If it's that hard to believe, Serena Joy and Fred Waterford both crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
• Nick and June are spotted by Guardians after Hannah - now Agnes - leaves with her Martha. Nick tells June to stay inside while he talks to them, and he ends up being beaten and taken away, leaving a heavily pregnant June in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere and in the freezing cold, no less.
• In the description for "The Last Ceremony", there was a Warning beforehand. No episode of the series has gotten that so far. In a show featuring female circumcision, rape, slow death via radiation poisoning, suicide, the almost death of an infant, and among other things, this episode received a warning in the description.
• The way Serena screams “Offred!” in “Holly” at the top of her lungs.
• Emily's assignment to Commander Joseph Lawrence brings the show into a whole new realm of Gothic horror, with a bravura performance from Bradley Whitford making both her and us constantly question just what kind of person Lawrence is, and if he might snap at any moment. And then there's the way his own wife is terrified of him and calls him a monster to his face for being the one behind the prison at the Colonies.
• The drowning. Execution method of two teenagers in love. It looks almost like everyone is at a swim meet as it is held in an old swimming pool. The juxtaposition of the location and what is happening is chilling.
• During the execution, there are several other iron balls at the bottom of the pool. How many people have been killed this way?
• Serena revealing her amputated pinky to June after the former gets taken away to be punished for reading in front of The Commanders. Another example to Serena that all of the misogynistic, inhumane laws she helped write do very much apply to her.

Season 3

• After June tries to convince Lawrence to use his considerable power to aid the Resistance in much more overt ways, Lawrence takes June for a ride to a dark, eerily lit building surrounded by guards. Inside, packed in standing-room-only cages, are people. Hundreds of them. The only visible furniture inside each cage is a single port-a-potty. These people are going to the new colonies Lawrence talked about establishing earlier in the episode. Maybe the most horrifying thought? Lawrence said colonieS, plural. There have to be other facilities just like this one.
• The revelation that Handmaids in DC have their mouths wired shut is as horrifying to the viewer as it is to June. Some scenes suggest it's not done as a punishment. ALL Handmaids and Marthas seem to have their mouths wired shut. It really doesn’t help that the mouth covering clips each give a loud ‘SNAP,’ like shackling. Aunt Lydia is horrified to see that this is what they do to their Handmaids. Even worse is when Commander Winslow tells Fred that the "ring and veil" may go to other areas in Gilead as well. There is no apparent reason for this whatsoever than to just be that much crueler to the Handmaids.
• Serena despite getting a finger amputated for the ‘crime of reading’ doesn’t seem to really seem to care about the fact that ALL the Second-class women in DC have had their mouths wired shut. Not only does she want to raise a female child in THAT environment, but there isn’t really anything protecting Second class women outside DC, or the Gilead wives either.
• June's descent into He Who Fights Monsters territory in her revenge on Natalie, ultimately watching the woman's psychotic, murderous breakdown with a satisfied Slasher Smile even with a gun pointed right at her. Also keep in mind that Natalie is pregnant during all this, yet June still watches her dead body being dragged out without a hint of regret. Although the pregnancy part might be seen in the opposite way, when we realize that June seems to think that being born a girl in Gilead is Fate Worse than Death - meaning that Natalie's future child would be saved by her death, just like Ofandy's daughter was by being stillborn.
• Christopher Meloni's exceptionally realistic performance of having a perforated lung after June stabs Winslow with his pen.
• The Marthas at Jezebel's, awesome though they are... the fact that they were able to dispose of Winslow's corpse so thoroughly evokes cleaning crews in organized crime, and the lack of hesitation with the steps they take strongly suggests they've done it before.
• June continuing to descend into cold calculation, allowing Eleanor to commit suicide rather than save her and risk her blabbing about the child rescue scheme. Judging by her Thousand-Yard Stare as she lies down to sleep, she's fully aware that what she's doing is horrible, but to June, it has to be done.
• June nearly shoots a Martha that backs out of the plan—and then, when the girl the Martha brought tries to run after her, June turns the gun on her. June confesses this to Joseph later, horrified that she's so traumatized and desperate at this point that she almost killed a child.
• The opening of the season finale, Mayday.
  • flashes back to a point soon after June was captured on the way to Canada, showing the absolutely hellish processing of numerous terrified, confused women. The elderly and disabled — including children — are herded off to be brutally killed right away. The survivors are shouted at and abused, stripped and examined, and are transported in meat trucks.
  • In the midst of all the chaos, terror, and confusion, we see some familiar faces in the women, such as Brianna and Janine. They're not in their wings and red dresses, instead wearing everyday clothes, their hair exposed. It really sells the terrifying idea that these women were torn away from their everyday lives—their families, their jobs, their very appearances—to be turned into walking incubators. The sheer dehumanizing of these human women, treated this way because they did not abide by Gilead's views but were fertile regardless, is chilling.

Season 4

• Following the rescuing of the children in the season prior, Gilead is now planning on invading Canada. Meaning that one of the last safe havens in North America, in which Moira, Luke, Nichole, Emily, and many other refugees now live, has a very strong chance of being taken over.
• The story of Esther Keyes.
  • Forced to marry a Commander, who, upon realizing he couldn't "perform," passed her around to other men to be raped over and over in hopes of getting her pregnant. Note that Esther is a young teenager.
  • Esther's Creepy Child behavior is extremely unsettling, especially watching her instantly turn into an icy, brutal Commander's Wife the second June hesitates. Then she later forces Janine to eat the pork of Mr. Darcy, for no other apparent reason than a powerplay. June talks her down from it later, but it seems that Esther is not too different from Serena Joy: she is so overcome with the stress of her situation that she uses her authority to lash out at others.
  • Esther doesn't stop there in terms of the creep factor; June later finds out that Commander Keyes's doddering behavior is due to Esther poisoning him slowly, using herbs (nightshade in particular) found around the farm. That being said, it doesn't stop June from using Esther's skills to poison the Commanders heading to Chicago.
  • As cathartic as it is for Esther to later butcher one of her rapists, the image of a teenage girl drenched in blood and happy about it is no less chilling. June is also quite unnerving in this scene, playing up Pogue's death the same way that Aunt Lydia did to the Handmaids. Two women finally getting some revenge for everything Gilead has put them through, and it is as deserved as it is horrific.
• All the torture June undergoes to try and get her to confess where the other Handmaids are. First, she's waterboarded, then she almost has her fingernails ripped off, then she's locked in a small box for an indefinite amount of time. All while this is happening, the Torture Technician is smiling, polite, and enjoying every second of it. In another attempt to break her, Beth and Sienna are forced to stand on the edge of a building—so either June condemns her fellow Handmaids back to sexual slavery, or she watches two innocent women die. Beth is killed first when she tells June not to say anything. Commander Stans pushes her off the ledge, and we hear her terrified shrieking as she falls. Sienna and June share one last tender moment, Sienna silently affirming that she won't blame her for not telling...and then she, too, is pushed over.
• Gilead's last attempt to get June to talk, and the one that finally breaks her: threatening Hannah's life. June refuses to believe it at first, as Gilead only cares about children, but Lawrence retorts that Gilead cares about power. All they want is to enforce their values onto people and keep order, and children are just a means to an end to them. June is then shown Hannah in a glass box, affirming Lawrence's warning. That's how far Gilead will go just to get the Handmaids back. June can only give Hannah a broken smile as she tries to comfort her, and finally confesses where the other Handmaids are. And Commander Stans is smiling all the while.
• The recapturing of the Handmaids. They wake in the middle of the night to the sound of voices, dogs barking, and gunshots...and there's nowhere to go. It cuts away before they're taken, but the last scene of them on the farm is them huddled against the wall, flashlights in their faces, as they hold hands and brace for the worst.
• Aunt Lydia's reveal of the new plans for the Handmaids. They can't afford to kill them, especially now that so many children are gone, but they also won't put up with their insubordination any longer. So where are they going? To a "Magdalene Colony"—a place where they will do menial labor, day in and day out, where their Commanders and their Wives will come once a month to perform the Ceremony. Once they have a baby, they will return to their work and do it all over again. As if Handmaids weren't already treated like cattle. June immediately dons it a "breeding colony."
• The last scene of the third episode. On their way to the Magdalene colony, the Handmaids—June, Janine, Alma, Brianna, and a few others—make one last break for it. They break out of the van and take off running for the tracks as a supply train approaches the crossing, smiling and elated because they think they'll be able to make it before it crosses the road. Then one Handmaid is gunned down. Then another. June and Janine make it to the other side, and June looks back at Alma and Brianna...just in time to watch them be run down by the train. June manages to get a hold of herself to encourage a sobbing Janine to keep running. For now, of all the Handmaids that fled to the Keyes' farm in the first and second episodes, only two are still alive.
• The entirety of the "Reason You Suck" Speech that June delivers to Serena Joy, which ends with a To the Pain threat. The twisted, hateful expression on June's face as she screams in Serena's face is absolutely haunting. While undoubtedly offering some catharsis for all the shit June has been put through, it's also genuinely terrifying, as it shows just how far-gone June is at this point. Hurt people hurt people, indeed.
  Serena Joy: I believe that the Lord brought you here so that I could make amends.
  June: I brought myself here so that I could tell you how much I hate you. You don't deserve to make amends to anyone. The only thing that you deserve is a life full of suffering and shame. You have destroyed my life, my family, my friends, my country, and my child. There is no one less worthy of redemption than you.
  Serena Joy: I'm sorry. I am begging for your forgiveness, and I'm begging for the Lord's mercy and for His understanding.
  June: Do you know why God made you pregnant? So that when He kills that baby inside your womb, you will feel a fraction of the pain that you caused us when you tore our children from our arms! Do you understand me? [Serena Joy whimpers] DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
• At the end of episode 7, June assaulting her husband, a sign that the victim is becoming the abuser.
• The very end of episode 9 when June lashes out in anger when Tuello decides to cooperate with Fred Waterford to locate Hannah's whereabouts. As June screams, the music intensifies before completely cutting off to the end credits. What is playing during the end credits? No ironic pop song, no background noise. Just a steady scary low ambiance until the end of the episode...
• Commander Waterford's execution in the season finale - as cathartic as it is to the Handmaids, it is no less horrific.

Season 5

• Janine has been encouraging Esther to be obedient to the Aunts, to please her Commander, etc. Esther responds by accusing Janine of being like everyone who wants to use her for their own purposes and calling her a disgrace. They both start coughing up blood, and Janine realizes from Esther's bloody Slasher Smile that Esther is going for a Murder-Suicide by poisoning the chocolate.
• As he escorts June and Luke back to the Canadian border, Jaeden accidentally steps on a land mine and gets blown up. The aftermath of the poor guy’s state is not pleasant.
• As cathartic as seeing Serena being in the same position as June when the latter was a Handmaid, her situation at the Wheelers’ residence is ripe with many red flags. Deprived of any contact with the outside world and not being allowed to conduct her duties as Gilead’s cultural ambassador, she is scolded for any attempts of stepping outside and being unnecessary coddled. It even got to the point of the Wheelers trying to hook her up with her gynecologist, much to her dismay. After everything in that household, it’s no surprise that Serena took the option of witnessing June’s (eventually foiled) execution as an escape opportunity from this…very eccentric couple. To show how even more Ax-Crazy Mr. Wheeler is, he’s revealed as the one behind June’s and Luke’s capture at No Man’s Land. He’s very determined to kill off June, and he would’ve succeeded had it not been for Serena’s insistence of being there for June’s execution.
• To make matters even worse for the already mentally fragile Esther, it’s revealed that Putnam impregnated her. It’s not helped by him gloating about committing statutory rape to a clearly disgusted Lawrence and Nick. It makes his execution outside of the restaurant he was dining in with Naomi extremely satisfying.
• While the ordeal ends in June thankfully spared from death (though now forcibly stuck together with Serena), it’s clear that Serena is tempted to finally take the opportunity to get rid of her archenemy once and for all. She even has an unsettling Slasher Smile when pointing the gun at June and forcing her on her knees to pray.