(Spoiler alert: Please do not read ahead unless you’ve seen the Season 2 finale of “Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Word.”)
“The Word” was an episode full of big moments for old and new “Handmaid’s Tale” characters alike. However, two prominent figures were missing from the Season 2 finale of Bruce Miller’s Hulu series: Moira (Samira Wiley) and Luke (O-T Fagbenle).
The absence of the two characters from the sophomore season’s closer may not have been felt too much, as a lot was going on with June (Elisabeth Moss) in the foreground. But, still, you probably want to know where everyone’s favorite Gileadean refugees are as we close the book on this installment and head into the next, right?
Well, good, because creator/showrunner Bruce Miller says there is “absolutely” more in store for the Canadian residents when we come back for Season 3.
“I think Luke and Moira have definitely turned to corner in terms of their feeling about how much they can affect the lives of people in Gilead and the world of Gilead,” Miller said during a conference call with reporters Monday. “I think for a while, very understandably Moira was, kinda trying to get her footing. And in Gilead, she’s a very tough person and a very strong-centered woman. And I think she’s been as you would, been trying to kind of put her experience in Gilead into some sort of place in her past. And I think that through the season she’s realizing it has a place in her present, and that you can’t put it behind you.”
“So I think that that is gonna activate her towards a lot more,” Miller continued. “I mean, the season is really about confrontation and resistance, and taking to the streets in force, and it’s time to kinda rise up and get involved. And I think for Moira, that’s exactly what she does in a very aggressive way in Canada in any way that she can.”
“So I think that, whereas before she was trying to do good and trying to get her feet under her, she’s still of course, like all of us, trying to get her feet under her,” he added. “But I think that she’s making a decision that her best course of action to be satisfied and to change things is to be aggressive.”
OK, what about June’s husband? Miller says Luke is “learning the same thing in a different direction.”
“Luke has been trying to take care of himself and kind of be a person who’s the voice of people like him, who have suffered these great losses and are trying to somehow maintain hope, but I think he’s done with maintaining and has moved on to acting. So I think that now that he’s met Fred [Joseph Fiennes], face-to-face, that is the focus of his fury, is Fred. All of the sudden the Gilead, and the Gilead system has been reduced to Fred Waterford and he’s gonna find a way to get Fred.”
Read more from our interview with Miller about the Season 2 finale here.