Why June & The Other Handmaids Kill Fred Waterford
The Handmaid's Tale season 4 finale ends with the death of a major character. Here's why June, with the help of other Handmaids, does it.
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Handmaid's Tale season 4, episode 10, "The Wilderness."
June Osborne, with the help of some other former Handmaids, kills Commander Fred Waterford in The Handmaid's Tale season 4 finale, a shocking decision that reflects just how much she has survived and changed. The conflict between June and Fred has been building to a head. That's true of The Handmaid's Tale's entire run in a way, but particularly season 4 where, for the first time, June has had the power to seek justice for her abuser.
Her arrival in Canada and subsequent testimony against the Waterfords should have been enough for that to happen. But when Mark Tuello decided to work with Fred, who turned against Gilead after realizing there was no chance he and Serena Joy could return there safely, June's hand was forced. Making a deal with Gilead, Fred was traded back to the Republic in exchange for 22 women they had held there, but that wasn't going to cut it for June. Instead, she arranged for Fred to be taken to No Man's Land, where she and many other former Handmaids gave chase to Fred before brutally killing him.
The truth of June's desire - or rather, need - to kill Fred comes in her conversation with Commander Joseph Lawrence earlier in The Handmaid's Tale season 4 finale, wherein they're agreeing the terms of the trade. Lawrence tells her that it'll never be enough; that no matter what Gilead does to him, it won't help her. So much of June's trauma, and the anger that comes with it, is because of Fred, and there's a very fine line between justice and revenge. She wants the former, but she also wants the latter too, and given the opportunity she's going to take whichever she can. If the courts won't do it and Gilead can't help either, then she has to take matters into her own hands.
The killing of Fred is about June's attempts at dealing with her trauma and her newfound freedom. June has escaped from Gilead in a physical sense, but still carries so much of what happened. With Fred looking like he could be freed himself, then June would once again find herself trapped in a world with him, her own sense of freedom diminished. But it also speaks to that power she has from being out of Gilead: killing Fred is not something she could ever have done while in Gilead, no matter how brave Offred was, but it is something that June can do. She channels Offred's bravery, that which she says she misses to Fred, in a way that brings much of The Handmaid's Tale's story so far full circle.
That sense is also clear in the method of Fred's death. June wants him to feel the fear she did when she was captured, connecting his final moments to her first in Gilead; since he was one of the architects of that fate, then it's understandable why she'd want to end it in a similar manner. So many women lived (and live) in fear because of Fred and men like him, so it's a punishment that fits the crime in her mind. June also makes sure to bite off Fred's tongue, which speaks to their own relationship - the finale shows them in flashbacks at Jezebel's, and his sleazy behavior (which includes biting her neck and ear), that she has to resist biting back at. Now, she can literally bite back. Fred took June's voice away for years; elsewhere in Gilead, Handmaids suffered that fate in a much more literal and horrific way. So in his final moments, Fred has that ripped from him too, a sign of the flipped power dynamics and role reversals.
That also goes for the method of Fred's death, for which June enlists the help of Emily and many other former Handmaids and people from Gilead. Whipped into a frenzy, they chase and then tear apart Fred, bit-by-bit. It's deliberately reminiscent of the Particicutions, the ceremony in Gilead where Handmaids kill a man who has committed a serious crime against another Handmaid. Fittingly enough, that ceremony was (in the book, at least) created by Commander Waterford - he is being killed by the very thing in built. For the Handmaids, they help June because of who she is and what she represents to them - a leader, a hero, a beacon of hope. But it's also for their own personal revenge, their rage, their traumas; each one suffered at the hands of a man just like Fred Waterford, and that's why so many are willing to kill him in The Handmaid's Tale season 4 finale.
Next: The Handmaid's Tale Season 4 Ending Explained (& What Happens Next?)
