‘They said it would be temporary.
Nothing changes instantaneously.’
“Ofglen is gone.”
Credit: George Kraychyk/Hulu
Now, we find out exactly what happened to the Ofglen we knew, and it’s bad.
Make that unthinkably bad.
She left nothing behind, we’re told.
I was asleep before," Offred thinks during an uneasily quiet walk with her new partner.
There are black-clad guards on every corner, lurking in alleyways.
“That’s how we let it happenwhen they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up.
When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn’t wake up then either.”
“They said it would be temporary,” she adds.
“Nothing changes instantaneously.
In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
Back in the old world, we see a few of those changes as they happened.
LiterallyJune’s debit card is declined even though she just deposited a paycheck.
When she asks him to run it again, the man calls them sluts and tells them to leave.
This is the very beginning of things starting to take hold.)
Another law, Moira has heard, says women can no longer own property.
But Moira is more skeptical: Maybe there weren’t any terrorists at all.
Can’t say I blame them.
“We’re all so hopeful,” Rita tells her.
And there we have itthey all think she might be pregnant.
She even has a “real” name for the baby, Charlotte.
She can even have ice cream, even if it’s only vanilla.
“We’re going to be a real family,” she says.
Now I’m wondering if the ice cream is for real, too.
Waiting to leave the Putnams, Offred tells Serena Joy she fears Janine is losing touch.
Serena Joy says that can happen with “the weaker girls.”
“What you do, what we do together is so terrible.
“Which is why I feel so blessed to have you.”
He doesn’t answer.
What did he mean when he said she was dangerous?
“Everybody breaks,” he tells her.
When they get home, it’s clear what he means.
“But youknewwhat she was,” Lydia says again.
Nick goes up to Offred’s room to check in on her.
She’s fineexcept, she jokes, for the weird guy that just snuck into her room.
Speaking of things that might have been, it seems Offred isn’t pregnant after all.
She drags Offred upstairs and throws her in her room, ordering her not to come out.
“Things can get much worse for you,” she tells her, slamming the door.
How many more protests did it take before people stopped being able to publicly protest?
I can’t imagine Gilead’s free speech laws are generous.
And before the episode ends,we see Ofglen’s fate.
The woman she was in a relationship with is also in the courtroom, cuffed and gagged.
So that’s what “redemption” means in Gilead: female genital mutilation.
her own name!).
“You won’t want what you cannot have.”
(“She saw the van coming for her.
It was better.")
But now, Ofglen is still alive and could very easily remain part of the story.
And I hope she does.
This can’t be the last we see of her, right?
