For a little while now, The Handmaid’s Tale has been dealing with a challenge that is somewhat unique to adaptations of beloved, acclaimed literary works, in that the series has well outplayed the pages of its inspiration. Even with the release of a sequel novel, The Testaments, in 2019 offering at minimum a hint of a path forward, the Hulu series has been largely left to fill space and engineer its own way forward to mixed success. Season 4 of the series churned along until just beyond its midpoint before wildly blowing things up with the brutal — and deserved — murder of Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) by June (Elisabeth Moss). It seemed in that season-ender that the series had turned a corner, but with Season 5 at our doorstep, it seems that the series is still struggling to not only advance the tale in a timely fashion but advance most of its characters as well.
