As The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 gets underway, Moira has mixed emotions about June’s continued efforts to fight against Gilead from within – and one of those emotions is anger. Like Luke, who is still struggling to cope with the fact that June decided to stay in Gilead when she had the opportunity to leave, Moira’s feelings towards June are very complicated.
Moira managed to get out Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale season 1. She and June initially tried to escape together, but June was apprehended at a train station and Moira was forced to go on without her. Moira herself got caught shortly afterwards, and worked at a Jezebel’s in Boston until she eventually killed one of the brothel’s patrons and went on the run again. After an exhausting journey, she managed to make it across the border into Canada and has since been working to help other refugees like herself.
While June’s liberation of 86 children from Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 finale was a hugely triumphant moment, what comes after is a lot less simple. Alongside fellow Gilead escapee Emily, Moira is now working to place the children from Angel’s Flight with their original families or with new adoptive families. However, many of the children are too young to remember life before Gilead, and from their perspective they have been ripped away from their parents and brought to live in a strange country where nothing is like it was at home. After dealing with a particularly difficult case, Moira vents to Emily about her anger towards June:
“That’s what she does. Takes the big swing and f**k the consequences. Look, god knows I can be a messy bitch but that one… I love her, and I miss her, and I am worried about her…”
Moira does have a point about June’s bold moments frequently having consequences for people other than her. It has been a consistent theme throughout the series, and one that continues in The Handmaid’s Tale season 4. Moira’s outburst takes place in episode 2, “Nightshade,” which is also the episode in which June plots to poison a group of commanders who are visiting another Jezebel’s. It’s framed as a victorious moment, but shortly afterwards June is captured and in the following episode several major characters die – indirectly, as a result of her actions.
That doesn’t mean that June’s actions are wrong, of course. Fighting back against an oppressive regime will always be a hard task that comes with a high price, but the alternative is to submit to Gilead entirely, which Moira wouldn’t want either. A considerable amount of the anger she feels towards June is actually driven by fear of what could happen to her friend, frustration over her own feelings of being helpless to save June, and a suffocating feeling of obligation. As she admits to Emily, Moira never wanted to be a mother but now feels she has to help look after Nichole, and even her work with the refugees is more driven by what she feels she owes than what she wants to be doing. “[I’m] making up for when I got out and she didn’t, I guess,” Moira tells Emily. “I’m tired of feeling guilty.“
These feelings are compounded by the fact that Moira herself is more inclined to big swings than cleaning up the consequences. Flashbacks to her life before Gilead showed her being politically outspoken, taking part in protests, and being confrontational in moments of injustice. The work she’s doing to help the refugee children is important, but it’s also difficult, tedious, thankless, and emotionally draining. And while Moira is engaged in this hard work, she also has to take part in the publicity work of framing June as an unblemished rebel hero. It’s little wonder that she’s feeling the strain.
Originally from https://screenrant.com/handmaids-tale-moira-june-mad-angry-reason/