Season finales time!
May. 29th, 2026 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFor All Mankind Season 5: Season Finale: now that was a great season finale!
The complete absence of Miles and indeed anyone in MOCC from last episode which I had noticed in my review turns out to have beeen a major plot point, in addition to solidifying the ground level experience of sticking to the povs of Alex, Lilly and Avery. This time, for the finale, we basically get everyone's pov, including Margo's back on Earth (whom we haven't seen ever since Aleida left Earth), as the various plotthreads come together and there is an incredible amount of emotional pay off all around. On Titan, what I expected to happen - Walt finding out what Kelly did to force the landing - did not, but what happened instead felt much better and narratively earned. A few episodes back I mentioned that the stunt Kelly pulled is of the type that's called unforgivably selfish if it doesn't work and gets everyone klilled, and heroic and daring if it does work and get the great goal achieved, and that it's really both. The show provided me with further proof of this interpretation by how it brrought Kelly's seasonal (and really, overall) arc to a cllose. She does find (methan- instead of oxygen-based) life, achieves that decades-long dream, makes the greatest discovery in eons (since if life can develop this way on Titan, it can develop in non-oxygen based ways everywhere). The mission to Titan and her decision to risk all on a landing is thus validated. BUT at the same time, due to the goings-on on Mars and some further misfortunes, she, Lena and Walt are cut off not just from Mars but from Sojourner, no one knows at all what they found, and they will most likely die. Because of that same decision she took. Which was still also selfish. Kelly then decides while all three members of the Away team will die if they try to reach Sojourner on foot because of the lack of oxygen, two of them have enough oxygen left if the third sacrifices themselves. And that third is going to be her. She does it for a variety of motives, again both heroic - saving the lives of her two comrades - and self-centred, connected to her life long ambition, because they need to get news of this discovery back to Earth, and connected to recognizing her responsibility. She makes that decision, the other two do make it back to Sojourner - which by then has reconnected with Mars - and the last scenes of the episode in which the Titan storyline was not the main but the supporting plot are devoted to Kelly, who decided that if she dies, she's going to do so placing Ed's moon plaque on top of that mountain where she found life, and who once she's done that spots that glowing methan-based life soup again and steps into it. We're not seeing her die so much as being enveloped in life as the episode fades into the traditional flash forward to the next season's setting. I've always liked Kelly while never having her as my favourite character; this was after Ed's the second death of a long time regular, and when in the earlier voice over by Kelly from her message to Alex she mentioned "how I came to America" as the first of her long journeys, it really hit me that we saw almost her entire life play out on this show over all seasons but the first, from Vietnam refuge girl adopted by Ed and Karen onwards. All the way to Titan. All the way as the first human being to touch alien life. Dear reader, I cried.
And this was the subplot. In the main plot we found out what Miles & Co. were doing while events were unfolding last week; they did have a strategy and a scheme other than "let the marines conquer by force of superior numbers and weaponry". I had suspected GovernorOleg Lenya had been up to something last episode when playing the "I was a hostage" card with the marines, but I had thought he was improvising; turns out instead this was part of the scheme agreed upon by the rest of the MOCC gang except for Aleida. To wit: let the marines escort him to their temporary HQ on the station, which courtesy of a tracer he was wearing thus would be signalled to the MOCC based people, who would then (once he switched the tracer off, thus signalling he had arrived) flood the room with pure oxygen which would then ignite after the agreed upon time to give the ex Governor the chance to escape. This was a both incredibly ruthless and efficient strategy to take out a superior force (well, the command structure of same) (unsurprisingly, Irina was involved in this tactic), and the episode made clear that we didn't take it in a video game way where the other guys dying in horrible ways is par the course by having both Aleida object and the MOCC guy who at first was supposed to press the relevant button find himself incapable of it. Otoh, the show also did't go the easy way of first offering this dilemma and then at the last second providing a third way - instead, Miles does press the button, burns those people, and essentially wins the war. (Not at that moment, but long term.) It's the culmination of his arc from hapless schmuck at the start of last season to leader of the Marsians now, and while I didn't buy his rise last season, this season they really sold it to me. Given Lilly's expression later when they're reunited, his more distant past (i.e. the betrayal Palmer took great pleasure of telling her about) will also come to haunt him in addition to these actions.
If the episode played fair by having someone to actually do the incredibly ruthless thing it had set up - not least the last episode demonstrating that in the "conventional" military way, there was no way the hopelessly outgunned Marsians could have won and the Marines by then were shooting on sight - , it didn't suddenly turn into 24, either, but in the same story but different characters supported Aleida's plea that people can be better, not worse as well. Early on, we saw Alex and Avery bonding not just over the shot Haskell but about having shot another human being for the first time in their lives (fatally so in the case of Avery the trained soldier, almost fatally in the case of Alex who only avoided having killed his friend by virtue of him and Avery getting Haskell to Helios HQ in time), the enormity and awfullness of that, by letting them see and support the humanity in each other despite being on opposite sides in this conflict, and by the end of the episode, letting them be the ones getting the news of a ceasefire to their respective sides in time to save further lives. There is the additional poignancy of them being the grandchildren of bffs Ed and Gordo, but that's just one layer here. I think the season did a well enough job introducing us to Alex and Avery as adults in their own right to make us care about them and rejoice when they managed to be their better selves and help save the day. (And in Avery's case, come to terms with her family's past; the last we see of her is visiting the place on Mars where her father, Danny, was exiled and died, with the tag on her uniform reading "Stevens" instead of "Jarret".)
(Also being his better self, but in this case meeting my personal scepticism about the long term effect: Dev, who when confronted with the havoc his selfishness has wrought on Mars in terms of sheer bodycount repents, provides the stolen medical items and does his personal climbing bit to reestablish the communication both to Earth, Sojourner and each other. It's not that I found Dev making all these decisions at the particular points he made them ooc, I believed he would. But I also somewhat doubt it will stick. If he's still around next season, that is.)
Aleida and Irina working together despite Aleida's well earned animosity towards Irina to find away to contact Sojourner, by contrast, was of great emotional satisfaction for me because I love the enemies working together trope if it doesn't overlook why the characters are enemies in the first place. It's absolutely in Irina's interests to help with the communication, both because she needs to know how her latest coup back home in Russia is doing and because she's invested in finding out whether or not there's life on Titan as well, she's smart, she's efficient, her brainstorming with Aleida therefore did produce results, and I was all for it. Doesn't mean Irina and Aleida will now be chums. But there is something to be said about worthy enemies.
Meanwhile on Earth, we did see Margo again, which I hadn't expected (other than maybe a very brief cameo), because as I said at the start of the season, basically Margo's personal story was wrapped up with last season's finale, but I loved those additional scenes with her we got anyway. Margo must have had a distinct case of deja vue when waiting for her in the prison visitors room was an angry and upset dark haired teenage girl, only in this case not Aleida, but her daughter Graciana (whom we saw rebel against Aleida at the start of the season). Graciana asking Margo - called by Aleida the smartest person she ever met - for help to find out ANYTHING about how Aleida is doing (because of the communication black out, no one on Earth knows anything at this point in the episode) leads to Margo relentlessly calling person after person (still alive) from her past and being rebuffed (btw, I expect someone will make a screenshot of her list that will tell us whom she tried in vain) by them not even accepting her call until she arrives at Will (introduced, like Kelly, in season 2) was poignant, as was their conversation, though he couldn't help her re: news about Aleida. Whom she also manages to connect with throughout the episode is Graciana, and thus we close the season with Margo, while remaining in prison, starting to mentor a clever, rebellious teenage girl again, and thus who knows, we still might not have seen the last of her yet.
By the time everyhting wraps up, Irina's coup has led to the new regime pulling out the Sowjetunion from the M6 which together with the 80 or so other nations (including such heavyweights as China) objecting to the Martian goings-on leads to a ceasefire ordered and in the closing montage in Martian independence being accepted and Miles becoming the first Martian President (with the clock ticking re: Lilly now knowing what he did in the past), everyone on Earth has heard about what Sojourner found on Titan, and as mentioned we take our leave from Kelly being engulfed by Alien life, with the transition to the traditional flash foward at a season ending introducing us to a vessel named "Mars-91" exploring space beyond Saturn.
All in all, I really loved this season in a way I didn't s4 (s4's Margo and Aleida plot line was great; everything else, not so much), and to me, the show has now proven that it could lindeed continue with what is mostly an entirely new cast of characters. Bring on the final season!
The Testaments Season 1: Season Finale: a good finale, with my only problems coming from knowing the source material, otherwise I would completely cheer what has been a very good first season.
To wit: if you know the book a tv show is based on, you do have of course certain expectations about where the story will go. Now this show is based on two - or three, if you will - different sources, "The Testaments" the book, "The Handmaid's Tale" the tv show, and "The Handmaid's Tale" the book - and because it's made by the same people who made the tv Handmaid's Tale, it will, I suspect, if in doubt prioritize this particular continuity. This so far has not had bad results - if I disconnect myself from my book based expectations, I can love the season unreservedly, it has really been excellently played and scripted - , but the differences have grown rather than diminished, which now and then makes for a "yes, but..." in this viewer.
Luckily, the book in question, captivating as I found it, had room for improvement - back in the reading day book!Daisy struck me as the least convincing of the three book narrators, for example, and I wondered whether this was because she was suposed to be the closest to a "normal" teenage girl of our world and just didn't feel like one. Show!Daisy, by contrast, and in fact all the show main characters (though in different ways due to the difference between Daisy's upbringing and that of the others) are convincing teenage girls. Show!Daisy making the decision to return to Gilead as the completion of her seasonal arc therefore felt less like teenage bravado (though there was certainly some of that there as well) and more like the character now making an informed and very deliberate decision instead of the original one motivated by a mixture of emotional hurt (the dead adoptive parents), skilled recruitment and impulsivity. It's also a pay off for her having grown close not "just" to Agnes but to the other girls as well, and of having grown more ruthless. (When Daisy hears about what happened, she's horrified, of course, and immediately decides they need to do something to rescue Becka from execution, but you don't get the sense she regrets what she did in bringing the death of the Dentist about per se.)
Agnes, while going through some disillusion (and thus the beginning of deprogramming) arc with Gilead, mainly had one of self discovery, I'd say. Not just in the literal sense that lets her hear in the finale her original name, Hannah, and the name of her biological mother, June, from Daisy, but in the sense of discovering who she is beyond what Gilead expects of her, how she really feels about anyone and anything, what and who her true priorities are. It's not that her crush on Garth is unreal (it is a very teenage girl thing to feel, especially given all the male alternatives she knows), but what the finale demonstrates to her and the audience is that what she feels for Becka goes far deeper, and is truly unconditional. Various people try and contribiute to rescueing Becka, but I'd say Agnes' contributions to this goal kickstart everything - her challenge to Aunt Lydia phrased as "what a mother will do", her throwing her "advantageous" Gileadean marriage prospect away by telling Commander Weston what Dr. Grove did to her, Agnes (as expected, Weston does not want a "sullied" bride, but before he ends the engagement, he does something useful re: Becka) , her asking Garth to marry Becka post rescue despite it being against his interests and her crush (so that Becka has the social protection of a marriage; we the audience have already heard Judd speculating about making her a handmaid, and I'm sure Agnes is aware of the possibility once Becka is no longer in danger of being executed now that she's doubly orphaned). And, of course, the kiss between Agnes and Becka, the first for either of them.
Lydia being Lydia, Agnes' challenge about what a true mother will do for her children (in a conversation where Lydia has claimed motherly feelings for the women and girls she is responsible for) doesn't result in Lydia volunteering in self sacrifice, but in Lydia figuring out the most plausible way to get Becka off the hook from being executed for killing her father is to make Becka's mother "confess" to the murder and get executed instead. (BTW, that Becka's mother does this out of love for Becka is a big difference to the book, where Becka's father had been abusing her as well as many other girls and her mother turned a deliberate blind eye even to that. I would say show! Mrs. Grove has been wilfully blind re: other girls and feels ashamed of that now, hence her "I should have done it" in conversation with Becka, but mainly she does it out of love for her daughter.) This (talking Becka's mother into self sacrifice) Lydia does in conjunction with Vidala, because the two of them had what seems to be their first true conversation about their relationship and what happened back in the stadium when the Sons of Jacob took power ending in Vidala suggesting cooperation instead of rivalry. I wouldn't exclude Show!Vidala still having long term hostile intentions as well, but already she is far more interesting than book!Vidala, who is simply and one dimensionally hostile and in a rivalry with Lydia (and also is not identical with the woman Lydia had to shoot to "prove" herself to Commander Judd, that was another character). All of this is very different from the novel yet, I felt, fits the spirit of the story the show tells (where allying yourself against the patriarchy instead of insisting on lone wolf actions is narratively rewarded and also ic for Lydia (who would think of something like this).
All of which does mean that no one has become an Aunt by the end of the season and I'm now doubtful they ever will, and other than the demise of Gilead being the end goal, they might not take that much more from the book now. (Though I think they will what happens to Judd's wife in the book and who replaces her.) But what the show is certainly has me hooked, especially by all the deepened characters - including Shulamite, as mentioned in previous posts, who is so much more than a mean girl here. I'm also curious about Garth's backstory, what made him - who like the girls other than Daisy was raised in Gilead and thus has no memories of a pre Gilead life - join the Resistance in the first place, and what conversely made June & Co. decide they can trust him.
Lastly: we got a Margaret Atwood cameo! (She's the woman guiding Lydia when Lydia visits Becka in prison.)
All in all: an excellent first season!
The complete absence of Miles and indeed anyone in MOCC from last episode which I had noticed in my review turns out to have beeen a major plot point, in addition to solidifying the ground level experience of sticking to the povs of Alex, Lilly and Avery. This time, for the finale, we basically get everyone's pov, including Margo's back on Earth (whom we haven't seen ever since Aleida left Earth), as the various plotthreads come together and there is an incredible amount of emotional pay off all around. On Titan, what I expected to happen - Walt finding out what Kelly did to force the landing - did not, but what happened instead felt much better and narratively earned. A few episodes back I mentioned that the stunt Kelly pulled is of the type that's called unforgivably selfish if it doesn't work and gets everyone klilled, and heroic and daring if it does work and get the great goal achieved, and that it's really both. The show provided me with further proof of this interpretation by how it brrought Kelly's seasonal (and really, overall) arc to a cllose. She does find (methan- instead of oxygen-based) life, achieves that decades-long dream, makes the greatest discovery in eons (since if life can develop this way on Titan, it can develop in non-oxygen based ways everywhere). The mission to Titan and her decision to risk all on a landing is thus validated. BUT at the same time, due to the goings-on on Mars and some further misfortunes, she, Lena and Walt are cut off not just from Mars but from Sojourner, no one knows at all what they found, and they will most likely die. Because of that same decision she took. Which was still also selfish. Kelly then decides while all three members of the Away team will die if they try to reach Sojourner on foot because of the lack of oxygen, two of them have enough oxygen left if the third sacrifices themselves. And that third is going to be her. She does it for a variety of motives, again both heroic - saving the lives of her two comrades - and self-centred, connected to her life long ambition, because they need to get news of this discovery back to Earth, and connected to recognizing her responsibility. She makes that decision, the other two do make it back to Sojourner - which by then has reconnected with Mars - and the last scenes of the episode in which the Titan storyline was not the main but the supporting plot are devoted to Kelly, who decided that if she dies, she's going to do so placing Ed's moon plaque on top of that mountain where she found life, and who once she's done that spots that glowing methan-based life soup again and steps into it. We're not seeing her die so much as being enveloped in life as the episode fades into the traditional flash forward to the next season's setting. I've always liked Kelly while never having her as my favourite character; this was after Ed's the second death of a long time regular, and when in the earlier voice over by Kelly from her message to Alex she mentioned "how I came to America" as the first of her long journeys, it really hit me that we saw almost her entire life play out on this show over all seasons but the first, from Vietnam refuge girl adopted by Ed and Karen onwards. All the way to Titan. All the way as the first human being to touch alien life. Dear reader, I cried.
And this was the subplot. In the main plot we found out what Miles & Co. were doing while events were unfolding last week; they did have a strategy and a scheme other than "let the marines conquer by force of superior numbers and weaponry". I had suspected Governor
If the episode played fair by having someone to actually do the incredibly ruthless thing it had set up - not least the last episode demonstrating that in the "conventional" military way, there was no way the hopelessly outgunned Marsians could have won and the Marines by then were shooting on sight - , it didn't suddenly turn into 24, either, but in the same story but different characters supported Aleida's plea that people can be better, not worse as well. Early on, we saw Alex and Avery bonding not just over the shot Haskell but about having shot another human being for the first time in their lives (fatally so in the case of Avery the trained soldier, almost fatally in the case of Alex who only avoided having killed his friend by virtue of him and Avery getting Haskell to Helios HQ in time), the enormity and awfullness of that, by letting them see and support the humanity in each other despite being on opposite sides in this conflict, and by the end of the episode, letting them be the ones getting the news of a ceasefire to their respective sides in time to save further lives. There is the additional poignancy of them being the grandchildren of bffs Ed and Gordo, but that's just one layer here. I think the season did a well enough job introducing us to Alex and Avery as adults in their own right to make us care about them and rejoice when they managed to be their better selves and help save the day. (And in Avery's case, come to terms with her family's past; the last we see of her is visiting the place on Mars where her father, Danny, was exiled and died, with the tag on her uniform reading "Stevens" instead of "Jarret".)
(Also being his better self, but in this case meeting my personal scepticism about the long term effect: Dev, who when confronted with the havoc his selfishness has wrought on Mars in terms of sheer bodycount repents, provides the stolen medical items and does his personal climbing bit to reestablish the communication both to Earth, Sojourner and each other. It's not that I found Dev making all these decisions at the particular points he made them ooc, I believed he would. But I also somewhat doubt it will stick. If he's still around next season, that is.)
Aleida and Irina working together despite Aleida's well earned animosity towards Irina to find away to contact Sojourner, by contrast, was of great emotional satisfaction for me because I love the enemies working together trope if it doesn't overlook why the characters are enemies in the first place. It's absolutely in Irina's interests to help with the communication, both because she needs to know how her latest coup back home in Russia is doing and because she's invested in finding out whether or not there's life on Titan as well, she's smart, she's efficient, her brainstorming with Aleida therefore did produce results, and I was all for it. Doesn't mean Irina and Aleida will now be chums. But there is something to be said about worthy enemies.
Meanwhile on Earth, we did see Margo again, which I hadn't expected (other than maybe a very brief cameo), because as I said at the start of the season, basically Margo's personal story was wrapped up with last season's finale, but I loved those additional scenes with her we got anyway. Margo must have had a distinct case of deja vue when waiting for her in the prison visitors room was an angry and upset dark haired teenage girl, only in this case not Aleida, but her daughter Graciana (whom we saw rebel against Aleida at the start of the season). Graciana asking Margo - called by Aleida the smartest person she ever met - for help to find out ANYTHING about how Aleida is doing (because of the communication black out, no one on Earth knows anything at this point in the episode) leads to Margo relentlessly calling person after person (still alive) from her past and being rebuffed (btw, I expect someone will make a screenshot of her list that will tell us whom she tried in vain) by them not even accepting her call until she arrives at Will (introduced, like Kelly, in season 2) was poignant, as was their conversation, though he couldn't help her re: news about Aleida. Whom she also manages to connect with throughout the episode is Graciana, and thus we close the season with Margo, while remaining in prison, starting to mentor a clever, rebellious teenage girl again, and thus who knows, we still might not have seen the last of her yet.
By the time everyhting wraps up, Irina's coup has led to the new regime pulling out the Sowjetunion from the M6 which together with the 80 or so other nations (including such heavyweights as China) objecting to the Martian goings-on leads to a ceasefire ordered and in the closing montage in Martian independence being accepted and Miles becoming the first Martian President (with the clock ticking re: Lilly now knowing what he did in the past), everyone on Earth has heard about what Sojourner found on Titan, and as mentioned we take our leave from Kelly being engulfed by Alien life, with the transition to the traditional flash foward at a season ending introducing us to a vessel named "Mars-91" exploring space beyond Saturn.
All in all, I really loved this season in a way I didn't s4 (s4's Margo and Aleida plot line was great; everything else, not so much), and to me, the show has now proven that it could lindeed continue with what is mostly an entirely new cast of characters. Bring on the final season!
The Testaments Season 1: Season Finale: a good finale, with my only problems coming from knowing the source material, otherwise I would completely cheer what has been a very good first season.
To wit: if you know the book a tv show is based on, you do have of course certain expectations about where the story will go. Now this show is based on two - or three, if you will - different sources, "The Testaments" the book, "The Handmaid's Tale" the tv show, and "The Handmaid's Tale" the book - and because it's made by the same people who made the tv Handmaid's Tale, it will, I suspect, if in doubt prioritize this particular continuity. This so far has not had bad results - if I disconnect myself from my book based expectations, I can love the season unreservedly, it has really been excellently played and scripted - , but the differences have grown rather than diminished, which now and then makes for a "yes, but..." in this viewer.
Luckily, the book in question, captivating as I found it, had room for improvement - back in the reading day book!Daisy struck me as the least convincing of the three book narrators, for example, and I wondered whether this was because she was suposed to be the closest to a "normal" teenage girl of our world and just didn't feel like one. Show!Daisy, by contrast, and in fact all the show main characters (though in different ways due to the difference between Daisy's upbringing and that of the others) are convincing teenage girls. Show!Daisy making the decision to return to Gilead as the completion of her seasonal arc therefore felt less like teenage bravado (though there was certainly some of that there as well) and more like the character now making an informed and very deliberate decision instead of the original one motivated by a mixture of emotional hurt (the dead adoptive parents), skilled recruitment and impulsivity. It's also a pay off for her having grown close not "just" to Agnes but to the other girls as well, and of having grown more ruthless. (When Daisy hears about what happened, she's horrified, of course, and immediately decides they need to do something to rescue Becka from execution, but you don't get the sense she regrets what she did in bringing the death of the Dentist about per se.)
Agnes, while going through some disillusion (and thus the beginning of deprogramming) arc with Gilead, mainly had one of self discovery, I'd say. Not just in the literal sense that lets her hear in the finale her original name, Hannah, and the name of her biological mother, June, from Daisy, but in the sense of discovering who she is beyond what Gilead expects of her, how she really feels about anyone and anything, what and who her true priorities are. It's not that her crush on Garth is unreal (it is a very teenage girl thing to feel, especially given all the male alternatives she knows), but what the finale demonstrates to her and the audience is that what she feels for Becka goes far deeper, and is truly unconditional. Various people try and contribiute to rescueing Becka, but I'd say Agnes' contributions to this goal kickstart everything - her challenge to Aunt Lydia phrased as "what a mother will do", her throwing her "advantageous" Gileadean marriage prospect away by telling Commander Weston what Dr. Grove did to her, Agnes (as expected, Weston does not want a "sullied" bride, but before he ends the engagement, he does something useful re: Becka) , her asking Garth to marry Becka post rescue despite it being against his interests and her crush (so that Becka has the social protection of a marriage; we the audience have already heard Judd speculating about making her a handmaid, and I'm sure Agnes is aware of the possibility once Becka is no longer in danger of being executed now that she's doubly orphaned). And, of course, the kiss between Agnes and Becka, the first for either of them.
Lydia being Lydia, Agnes' challenge about what a true mother will do for her children (in a conversation where Lydia has claimed motherly feelings for the women and girls she is responsible for) doesn't result in Lydia volunteering in self sacrifice, but in Lydia figuring out the most plausible way to get Becka off the hook from being executed for killing her father is to make Becka's mother "confess" to the murder and get executed instead. (BTW, that Becka's mother does this out of love for Becka is a big difference to the book, where Becka's father had been abusing her as well as many other girls and her mother turned a deliberate blind eye even to that. I would say show! Mrs. Grove has been wilfully blind re: other girls and feels ashamed of that now, hence her "I should have done it" in conversation with Becka, but mainly she does it out of love for her daughter.) This (talking Becka's mother into self sacrifice) Lydia does in conjunction with Vidala, because the two of them had what seems to be their first true conversation about their relationship and what happened back in the stadium when the Sons of Jacob took power ending in Vidala suggesting cooperation instead of rivalry. I wouldn't exclude Show!Vidala still having long term hostile intentions as well, but already she is far more interesting than book!Vidala, who is simply and one dimensionally hostile and in a rivalry with Lydia (and also is not identical with the woman Lydia had to shoot to "prove" herself to Commander Judd, that was another character). All of this is very different from the novel yet, I felt, fits the spirit of the story the show tells (where allying yourself against the patriarchy instead of insisting on lone wolf actions is narratively rewarded and also ic for Lydia (who would think of something like this).
All of which does mean that no one has become an Aunt by the end of the season and I'm now doubtful they ever will, and other than the demise of Gilead being the end goal, they might not take that much more from the book now. (Though I think they will what happens to Judd's wife in the book and who replaces her.) But what the show is certainly has me hooked, especially by all the deepened characters - including Shulamite, as mentioned in previous posts, who is so much more than a mean girl here. I'm also curious about Garth's backstory, what made him - who like the girls other than Daisy was raised in Gilead and thus has no memories of a pre Gilead life - join the Resistance in the first place, and what conversely made June & Co. decide they can trust him.
Lastly: we got a Margaret Atwood cameo! (She's the woman guiding Lydia when Lydia visits Becka in prison.)
All in all: an excellent first season!
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Date: 2026-05-29 02:58 pm (UTC)Agnes's reaction to the kiss (maybe a little surprise, but no big shock) made me realise that she wasn't blind to Becka's true feelings for her, which I found very interesting considering Gilead's stance on the topic.
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Date: 2026-05-30 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-30 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-29 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-30 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-29 04:56 pm (UTC)I think the show will make Agnes an Aunt-in-training going forward. Lydia tells Agnes that Cmdr Weston's rejection is a first for the school, so she doesn't (yet) know how to handle this situation. Agnes is probably no longer marriageable after Weston rejects her; but any other possibility for Agnes (i.e. Handmaid) would likely bring shame to Cmdr McKenzie, and would actually put his future at risk too.
I very much like show!Shunnamite, and I agree her future will likely dovetail with the book. Although I think the show's plot has already widely deviated enough from the book that I can see other possibilities there too.
Possible speculative spoiler alert!
Date: 2026-05-30 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-29 10:50 pm (UTC)I HOPE Becka doesn't have the same fate as in the book, that was awful.
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Date: 2026-05-30 02:22 pm (UTC)I missed Lydia as narrator (in all but one episodes where she is the narrator) as well, but like you said: it works for better for a book, and not on a show which put a firm focus on "what is it like to grow up as a girl in Gilead, and how can you even begin to escape mentally before doing it physically?". I mean, they had to find a key difference to "The Handmaid's Tale", and this is certainly it - that all the young main characters except for Daisy have grown up in Gilead, unlike the main characters in "The Handmaid's Tale", who were all old enough to have spend most of their lives in the pre Gilead world. But that does mean a less dominant role for Lydia than in the book, unfortunately. Mind you, they still use her very well on the show, and I did like the departures from the book re: Lydia's relationship with Vidala - both by making Vidala a former colleague of Lydia's and the woman she has to shoot in the Stadion (only in this case it's blanks, because Judd is sadistic and "divide and rule" like that) and by making her more than just a wannabe Lydia rival.