(Warning: This post contains spoilers through Episode 408 of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”)
On this season of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Moria (Samira Wiley) is finding out more and more who her best friend has become with each passing day that June (Elisabeth Moss) spends with her, Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and baby Nichole in Canada. But Wiley isn’t sure if the very traumatized June — who wants to work through her pain in a very different way from the one Moira has tried to put in place with the other survived former handmaids of Gilead — is someone she can connect with anymore.
“I think Moira thinks she’s willing to give up everything for that relationship,” Wiley told TheWrap. “I just keep coming back to the guilt. I always think about that episode in Season 1 where they were on the platform of that train and Moira was dressed up like an aunt, and she got on the train and June got taken away by the Eyes because of the handmaid costume. From that moment, Moira is stuck on that. If she had just done something different, their lives could have been completely different. So everything that she does is to try and get her back and she will do anything for that, as we’ve seen. I really do think she probably would have knocked June over the head with a club and dragged an unconscious June on the boat. She didn’t run to the boat because that’s what her focus has been on.”
When Moira saved June in Chicago and risked everything — including her relationship with her new girlfriend, and that new girlfriend’s entire career in the organization that helps survivors of Gilead — to bring her to Canada, Wiley said it was the only thing that mattered to her. But as time went on, Moira has had to learn who June is and if she’s willing to sacrifice everything to keep that person in her life.
“I think that in realizing day after day, week after week, since she’s been in Canada, ‘This is a completely different person and, Moira, you have created a completely different life away from her,’” Wiley explained. “That’s the question: what are you willing to give up on either side? I’m not going to say too much more, but you’ll see where it goes in Episode 9 and 10 before the season is over.”
Luckily, Moira has one person she can confide in throughout all her troubles with June: Luke, who’s struggling with the same thing. Wiley said watching June and Luke lean on each other is so amazing, given how at odds they once were and how much of a team they’ve become co-parenting Nichole in Gilead by Season 4.
“I think about the parallels in this season versus what was happening in the first season,” Wiley said. “I felt like Moira and June were on the same page and Luke was on the outside, simply because he was a man. So he didn’t get his credit card taken away from him. He didn’t get his rights taken away from him. They had this sisterhood and Luke was kind of on the outside. There’s this weird brother-sister kind of relationship between Moira and Luke where there was fighting between the two of them. And now it’s completely flipped.”
“I think they have to lean on each other and I imagine the late-night conversations they have about June,” she added. “Just imagining, ‘She’s different, she’s not the same.’ And the tears that come from that. There’s a line that Luke says in, I believe it’s Episode 6, where she says, ‘What if I’m not what you think I am?’ And he says, ‘I’ll just love whoever you turn out to be.’ That’s really going to get challenged now because June is turning out to be someone who we don’t really recognize. I think that Luke and Moira will have two different journeys with loving whoever she turns out to be.”
A new episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” launches Wednesday on Hulu.
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