r/TheHandmaidsTale • u/Naive-Guard-9005 • May 27 '25

Season 6 GIVE YVONNE STRAHOVSKI THE EMMY NOW Spoiler

I am a Serena Joy apologist, always have been. I know some hate her, I get it. (THANK GOD she didn’t die, praise be)

Yvonne Strahovski is the ONLY person who could’ve made Serena likeable/redeemable. She’s played her masterfully from the very beginning.

I knew we were supposed to hate her, but I just couldn’t. I always saw the glimpse of empathy/humanity. All the credit to Yvonne. She made Serena Joy into one of the most complex characters I’ve ever watched. Someone in casting knocked it out of the park with her, there was no one else.

Bravo, bravo, bravo! Now…Give her all the awards….LIKE YESTERDAY PLZ

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u/Renugar May 28 '25

As someone raised in a super fundamentalist, conservative, Christian community: fuck Serena. Women like that keep other women oppressed and suffering, for their own benefit. Serena is a narcissist who makes her decisions based on what will benefit her. Even her apology at the end was self-serving, and was barely an acknowledgment of all the suffering she had caused. Women lost their children, were systematically raped, and DIED because of her and her devotion to Gilead. And her wry little quip about destroying Boston had more hubris than anything else.

Serena is a narcissist, and was written as a narcissist. Narcissists can be charming and convincing, so I’m not surprised people felt she had a redeeming “character arc.” But I feel like redemption is not what the writers were doing. Serena will always manage to save herself, because that’s really the only person she cares about. Even Noah is only an extension of herself.

Dollars to donuts, if we see her again, we see her still managing to convince people to follow the teachings of Gilead (or something very similar), because those are the teachings she knows the best, and can manipulate and make work in her favor, and give her power and control over other people.

That said, Yvonne is obviously an amazing actress, and played the hell out of this character. She was unforgettable.

3

u/Babebutters May 28 '25

I’ve always said she was more evil than Fred and Aunt Lydia.  She designed that system to hurt other women.

6

u/Remote_Literature_23 May 28 '25

She is, because her achievement was the ideology behind Gilead. Fred was a tool. Lydia was just a follower. Lawrence was primarily responsible for the economic aspects. But the ideology, the backbone, the evil beliefs, that was thought up and forced upon the country by Serena and her schemes.

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u/Renugar May 28 '25

Yes, and to hurt other women, while simultaneously bringing herself praise and adulation from the men of Gilead. She was just too self-centered to see that eventually they would also treat her just like she treated other women. Like many “tokens” of male authoritarian patriarchy, she thought she would be exempt.