You know it will be a landmark episode when the screener drops an hour before airtime and the spoiler note explicitly tells you not to discuss song choice or the demise of any characters.
And then the episode is titled “Execution”?
Come on. You don’t need a Gilead-approved prayer book to know we were heading straight into the fire.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
But what I didn’t expect — even after all this time — was how personal it would feel. How heavy, how earned.
And how… exhilarating.
“Look What You Made Me Do” — And Look Who We’ve Become
Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” opens the episode with such brutal perfection that it’s almost laughable they tried to keep it under wraps. As the handmaids scatter in the night, hunted like animals, there’s no more room for symbolism. There’s only war.
And yet in the chaos — Serena running, the echoes of wives screaming, Gilead burning — what stood out most was the love.
June. Moira. Janine. Ava (an embedded CIA agent!). In the back of that truck, dirty and determined, they make a choice. We are staying. We are finishing this. And they say it like sisters — like women who’ve shared pain so specific and ugly it’s impossible to explain, only to feel.
They say “I love you” before June is dragged away.
And somehow, that is the real revolution. Not the bombs. Not the blades. But the fact that after six seasons of being tortured, raped, silenced, and discarded, these women still know how to love each other.
They didn’t just fight Gilead. They remembered what Gilead tried to take away: connection.
The God of Vengeance and the Women Who Rose Anyway
Aunt Lydia always believed she was doing God’s work. That if she was just firm enough — cruel enough — obedient enough — she could protect her girls by guiding them through suffering.
But when she’s brought to the stage next to June, still unaware of what’s happening, she has a moment of reckoning. She looks out at the sea of red, the nooses, the righteous rage disguised as ritual, and you can see the cracks forming.
And then she does something that almost wrecked me.
She prays aloud — not for the men, not even for herself, not exactly. But for them. For “her precious girls,” for what has been done to them, while they have been prisoners of wicked, godless men.”
She finally said it.
This woman, who twisted scripture into submission, finally let the truth out of her mouth.
And June? The woman who has walked past body after body hanging on The Wall, who once dared to love a daughter stolen from her, who has carried grief and fury in equal measure — she gives them one last prayer, one that turns into a guttural, full-bodied battle cry.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
The gunfire starts. The ropes fall. And for once, they’re not the ones dying.
June and the God of Love
There was something poetic in June’s jail cell conversation with Gabriel. Not just because she’s tied to so many moments of righteous confrontation, but because it finally reframed the why.
Gilead used God as a weapon. Twisted His name into doctrine. Justified everything — rape, torture, forced childbirth — by invoking “His will.”
But June never accepted their God. Her God — and Serena’s, for all her failings — is a God of love.
“Choose love,” she tells Gabriel. “Be the man she believes you can be.”
It’s such a simple line, and yet… no Gilead commander has ever seemed smaller than Gabriel did in that moment. Because deep down, they all know what June said is true.
It was never about piety. It was always about power.
Serena’s Last Line — And Her First Step?
Serena’s been so many things. A villain. A victim. A cautionary tale. A survivor. But in “Execution,” she’s quiet.
She sees Gabriel. She hears the same tired language. She watches him twist kindness into a leash, and she doesn’t run. She doesn’t help. She just looks… sad. Lost.
At least until June — the woman she once hated, the one who saved her — stares her down and asks, what kind of man do you want raising your son?
Serena gives up the commanders’ flight plan. For once, she doesn’t reach for power. She reaches for decency, remembering that the woman before her did far more for her for far less than her new husband ever could.
The Final Flight
Joseph and June drive to the hangar. Joseph is scared. June isn’t. But it’s not June who has to get on that plane, never to return. The look on his face, the hand to his heart. It was a crushing blow for a good man who made bad decisions for the right reasons.
Nick arrives, and June crumbles. There are two men she loved getting on that plane. Two men who loved her, differently and insufficiently. And neither of them gets to stay.
Joseph’s final words to Nick — “Someone better than me will have to see it through” — hit like a quiet confession. A passing of the torch. An admission of guilt, hope, and surrender.
Nick asks, “Is she alright?” Joseph answers with a smirk: “You can’t keep a bitter woman down.”
Joseph knew what was coming. Nick didn’t, but he was resigned to his place in this world, one that, without June, wasn’t worth living.
Then the plane exploded, reflected in June’s eyes. She watched it fall like fireworks on the Fourth of July, and the fallout is no different. The fight for freedom continues.
Final Thoughts: Execution Was the Reckoning We’ve Waited For
This wasn’t just a battle. It was the moment The Handmaid’s Tale stopped asking to be understood and became what it always promised it could be — a story not about pain, but power. Not about trauma, but transformation.
The handmaids didn’t just survive. They rose, together. In love, in fury, and in sacred vengeance.
And if you’ve ever known what it’s like to be silenced, dismissed, controlled, or reshaped by someone else’s rules — you felt it too.
There is one episode left, and I have no idea how we will say goodbye to these characters we’ve grown to love. But I’m ready for it. Let’s go.
How about you?
Did “Execution” zig when you thought it would zag? Where will the finale take us? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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