Alexis Bledel Gets Down, Dirty, And Devastating In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 2

The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t easy on anyone; the award-winning Hulu Original Series drags its leading ladies through a dystopian hellscape where they are essentially either forced baby machines or toxic waste maids, and the actresses behind these characters do truly magnificent work from scene-to-scene. Perhaps no performance has been a more pleasant surprise than Alexis Bledel‘s. With a career largely defined by playing fast-talking Rory on Gilmore Girls, Bledel stunned with her turn as Ofglen/Emily in The Handmaid’s Tale‘s first season, even taking home an Emmy. Season 1 may have put her through hell (and seen her rebel), but Season 2 takes her story to a whole new place – and it may very well be the best work of Bledel’s career.

In The Handmaid’s Tale‘s first season, Ofglen, named Emily prior to being subjugated by the rules of Gilead, was exposed as a “gender traitor”, underwent genital mutilation, and was later carted off after hijacking a car and running over a Guardian. Often with just her eyes, Bledel was absolutely arresting, managing to capture all the agony and fury and despair that anyone in her situation might feel. It’s rare that a performer can do so much without a single word, but she said a million things without ever speaking, taking viewers on a ride through her emotional state in the process. In Season 2, Bledel seemingly does the impossible – she gets even better.

When we first catch up with Emily in “Unwomen”, the second episode of Season 2, she’s not the young woman we once knew. Working in the Colonies has begun to chip away at her, both in body and soul. There’s still a fire in her, but it’s dim, manifesting only in the way she cares for the other women as their makeshift nurse. We finally get a glimpse at Emily’s backstory, and while we’re not one to compare tragedies, it might just be the most painful one the show has presented us with so far. We’ve known that Emily left behind a wife and infant, but we’ve never had a chance to see them until now. We see Emily as a respected, confident professor, that fire alive and well, and the slow realization that her life is about to come crashing down around her. Soon after warning her about the way things are changing, her gay colleague (John Carroll Lynch) is found hanging by a noose on campus over the word “faggot” spray-painted on the sidewalk. This inevitably drives Emily and her wife Sylvia (Clea DuVall) to escape to Canada with their child, but when they try to get to their flight at Boston Logan Airport, Emily is detained – and we know where things go next.

There have been few moments on The Handmaid’s Tale as devastating as Emily watching her wife and child go up the escalator and out of her life, and Bledel plays it beautifully. There’s a different pain here than the pain we saw in Season 1; rather than being fueled by rage, it’s pure despair. It’s confusion. It’s uncertainty and resignation all at once, an attempt to stay strong in the face of the worst fate imaginable. The stark contrast between flashback Emily and Colonies Emily somehow makes each performance even more effective. We see her at her highest and lowest, and watching her wither away packs twice the punch once we see how full of life she once was.

What’s so fascinating – and wildly compelling – about Bledel’s take on Emily in the Colonies is the misleading nature of her apparent complacency. It definitely seems in character for Emily to take care of the dying women who surround her, but when a wife (Marisa Tomei) arrives and Emily appears to take pity on her, it’s easy to wonder if she’s lost all the fight in her. When the twist kicks in towards the end of the episode, it’s breathtaking. She shifts from guardian angel to vengeful villain all at once, and plays every beat to its maximum potential. “Every month, you held a woman down while your husband raped her,” she spits. “Some things can’t be forgiven.”

All these moments amount to something truly extraordinary and see Bledel go to a place miles beyond any expectations. The weight of these scenes lie in her eyes, in her ability to get down and dirty when necessary, to embark on journeys that expose the darkest part of ourselves – even when it’s the last thing we want to do.

Where to Stream The Handmaid's Tale