[Spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 finale, ahead.]



Look, I’m glad there’s going to be a season four of The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s not like we can leave it with June still separated from Hannah, Nichole, and Luke. Still, unless we manage to fully take down the oppressive regime in the next 10 to 13 episodes, we’re likely not going to see the end of Gilead next year...and I don’t know how much more of this torture porn I can take.

Despite a slightly lighter start, season 3 was just as emotionally draining as the previous two. The handmaids went through more beatings, rapes, and don’t even get me started on the episode where June (Elisabeth Moss) was forced to live in her brain-dead walking partner’s hospital room for more than a month until she gave birth and was taken off life support.

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Sure, there were definitely some highlights: Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) conning Fred (Joseph Fiennes) into taking her to Canada and getting arrested was only a drop less delicious than Fred turning around and exposing her right back. June stabbing Commander Winslow (Christopher Meloni) to death was another cathartic victory. But June’s rape by Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), Janine’s (Madeline Brewer) beating from Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), and that terrible flashback episode left me begging for the end on more than one occasion.

So what does season 4 have to do to take the edge off all the despair? Well, I’ve got some thoughts:

1. More Serena Joy and June scenes.

This will be tough, considering Serena is now being held in Canada and June is still in Gilead, buuut there are no characters with a more palpable chemistry than these two. Despite her sworn enemy’s irredeemable flaws, June still manages to bring out what’s left of Serena’s compassion, while Serena has arguably empowered June more than any other character.

After everything, June deserves to confront her by the end of next season on completely equal footing.

Sophie Giraud

2. No more onscreen rape, please.

I never thought I’d say this, but I stan Fred. Well, that’s not true, I actually stan actor Joseph Fiennes. It turns out, Fred was supposed to rape his wife during their visit to Washington D.C. and Joseph politely declined to portray the scene.

“I felt that Yvonne had made such a beautiful, delicate trajectory of her character, it didn’t need a brutal rape to recoil back and find her hatred,” he told The Guardian. “It just felt like an idea to push the misogyny. And I felt it was all already there. It didn’t need to be so brutally illustrated.”

THIS. Exactly this.

Jasper Savage

3. Spend as much time in Canada as Gilead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, recovering from Gilead is a fascinating avenue that hasn’t been explored nearly enough on this show. Instead of consistently checking in on Moira (Samira Wiley) and Emily (Alexis Bledel), they’ve been pushed to the background. Now that Serena and Fred are also being held in the sovereign nation, maybe it’s time to stick around and see how everyone copes.

Elly Dassas

4. NICK

Seriously, just let us know he’s okay!

Emily Tannenbaum Entertainment Editor Emily is the entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan, which is a nice way of saying she watches way too much TV and constantly wants to tell you about it.

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