Hey Bruce Miller: Speculation and Ideas for THT

[greekmom]

Things I want to see next season:

• Either Serena writing about how Gilead is so bad or being shipped back and becoming a handmaid (at least for a few episodes). She loses her baby boy.  
• If Serena does turn, she and June have another uneasy truce like the time they did when Serena was covering for Fred and bring down Gilead. (yeah i know big wish but....)
• I would love to see some back stories on some of the wives prior to Gilead like the Putmans. I mean what drove intelligent women such as Naomi and Serena to give up their freedoms to the extent the right to read?  It cant be just because of the low birth rate.  It could have been solved without them giving up their rights. 
   

[Umbelina]

I just need Serena in the Red Center please.  I need Lydia to use her taser on her, I need her hearing "YOUR FAULT!" over and over again, and I need her assigned to the worst commander and his wife there is.

[Umbelina]

https://ew.com/tv/the-handmaids-tale-showrunner-season-4-finale/

I just put this question and answers interview in the media thread, BUT, dang, he spills a lot here, not complete spoilers, but considering he runs this thing, certainly speculation.

(some of it is...UNEXPECTED.)

[chaifan]

15 hours ago, greekmom said:

Things I want to see next season:

• Either Serena writing about how Gilead is so bad or being shipped back and becoming a handmaid (at least for a few episodes). She loses her baby boy.  
• If Serena does turn, she and June have another uneasy truce like the time they did when Serena was covering for Fred and bring down Gilead. (yeah i know big wish but....)
• I would love to see some back stories on some of the wives prior to Gilead like the Putmans. I mean what drove intelligent women such as Naomi and Serena to give up their freedoms to the extent the right to read?  It cant be just because of the low birth rate.  It could have been solved without them giving up their rights. 
   

I do not want to see Serena and June partnering up again.  That was fine the first time, but it would take some amazing literary gymnastics to figure out a way for that to be plausible.  It would have to be an absolute last resort for both of them, and I don't think June will be in that position.

As for backstories on the wives, hell yeah!  That would be great.  They never really went into this.  Same with the Marthas. 

I put this in the Wilderness thread, but I'll repeat (and expand on) it here.  I'd like Season 5 to be more Gilead, less Canada.  (70/30 split would be good for me.)  I'd like Gilead to concentrate on Jeanine and Esther as handmaids, Lydia and her possible questioning of the system, and of course, Lawrence.  I want to see more Mayday, and it would be great to have a wife involved in that.  (Maybe that's how we get the wife backstories?)  I know this isn't going to happen, since this is the Lizzie Moss show, but I want less of June.  I'd be happy with a running subplot of June and Luke's attempts to track down and save Hannah, but as a B or C plot.  The Canadian scenes can revolve more around Serena (I love love love where they took her these last few episodes!), and the resistance movement operating from Canada.  I don't really want Serena back in Gilead, that's just set up for more torture porn.  I want less/no torture porn.  But I don't want Serena free.  I want Serena's baby taken away from her, even if it's just temporary, so she understands what that is like.  I want June's magical ability to call Nick and Lawrence to be cut off - it's way too convenient and unbelievable. 

If they want to bring Hannah in as a regular character, then I think it would be great to have a Mayday plant somewhere in her house/orbit, who slowly gets her to remember pre-Gilead life, tells her about June, and Hannah becomes part of Mayday.  That way, when Hannah is finally rescued (which I totally expect to happen before this show ends for good) she's not being wrenched away from her family, she's leaving willingly to go back to her real parents and fight against Gilead. 

I'd also like a little glimpse into the rest of the world, and how they're dealing with the low birth rate issue.  Fred claimed Gilead's methods were getting better results than anywhere else, and I'd like to see this refuted.  From a common sense perspective, any country using actual science to identify who is fertile, uses modern medicine to help the pregnancies to term, support the mothers, give them good environments, etc., would have to be seeing better results than Gilead.  I just want a shout out to science. 

I am horrible about predicting where plots will go in shows, so I expect none of this.  But this is my wish list.  Bruce, are you listening?

 

[EllaWycliffe]

14 minutes ago, chaifan said:

Fred claimed Gilead's methods were getting better results than anywhere else, and I'd like to see this refuted.  From a common sense perspective, any country using actual science to identify who is fertile, uses modern medicine to help the pregnancies to term, support the mothers, give them good environments, etc., would have to be seeing better results than Gilead.  I just want a shout out to science. 

My small disagreement with this - because yes I believe science would get better, more humane, results, is that Gilead is basically taking a hammer to the problem... which does get results. So if you grab all the fertile women and force them to breed, regardless of whether they want to or not, you're probably going to get better results than a society where fertile women are allowed to decide whether they want children or not. Look at it this way - 100 fertile women in Gilead vs 100 fertile women in Canada. Gilead has forced sex on the days of highest likelihood of pregnancy. Canada lets their women decide, and allows use of contraceptives. Guess who will have more pregnancies?

The interesting question will be - can Canada/Rest of the World actually solve the fertility issue, or is Gilead doing the right thing for the preservation of the species?

[chaifan]

1 hour ago, EllaWycliffe said:

My small disagreement with this - because yes I believe science would get better, more humane, results, is that Gilead is basically taking a hammer to the problem... which does get results. So if you grab all the fertile women and force them to breed, regardless of whether they want to or not, you're probably going to get better results than a society where fertile women are allowed to decide whether they want children or not. Look at it this way - 100 fertile women in Gilead vs 100 fertile women in Canada. Gilead has forced sex on the days of highest likelihood of pregnancy. Canada lets their women decide, and allows use of contraceptives. Guess who will have more pregnancies?

The interesting question will be - can Canada/Rest of the World actually solve the fertility issue, or is Gilead doing the right thing for the preservation of the species?

Good point.  But... 1) Gilead doesn't actually know which handmaids are fertile, especially with the new groups of recruits who do not have histories of successful pregnancies.  And, 2) it is known/speculated that many/most of the Commanders are shooting blanks.  So it would be 100 possibly fertile women in Gilead having sex with likely infertile men vs. 100 known (as far as medical testing can figure out) fertile women in Canada (or elsewhere in the world) having sex with known fertile men or having IVF with good sperm. 

Add into that the issue of Gilead a) prohibiting Wives from having sex, automatically assuming they are infertile; b) prohibiting unmarried women from having sex, even where they may be fertile; and c) disincentivizing other married women (econowives) from actively trying to get pregnant because they don't want to get turned into handmaids after having a child. 

So it's a numbers game.  Gilead is largely dependent on a small fraction of it's female population to have babies, relying on the sperm of mostl infertile old men; whereas every other country could be incentivizing all possible fertile women to have babies and using modern medicine to identify fertile men or using IVF.  I still think science wins this one.

(I actually love this discussion!)

 

[greekmom]

If anything this coming season I want to see Jainine finally leave Gilead for good. God knows the girl deserves it.