15 minutes in and I’m already having a nervous breakdown

Now that June’s a symbol of revolution, maybe the most compelling stories The Handmaid’s Tale has to tell aren’t about her. Spoilers.

June is alive! Like a Postal Service employee with a Rambo complex, neither imprisonment nor beatings nor a gunshot wound to the abdomen will stay this warrior from the swift overthrow of a terrorist junta!

‘15 minutes in and I’m already having a nervous breakdown,’ one viewer wrote

“Are you ready?” they asked June, holding a red hot cauteriser over her bleeding gunshot wound. “No,” she said, but they jabbed her anyway. Hard relate. The Handmaid’s Tale has been away for almost two years, and now it’s back, are we ready for the pain? Of course not, but it’s happening.

In any other show, episode one’s pain would have been been extreme. Esther’s story of a bloody act of revenge inspired by child sexual abuse would have been a rare depth plumbed, the culmination of a whole-series crime mystery, or a long-held simmering character secret. Here? It’s just another day in Gilead. Mrs Keyes (played with remarkable self-possession by 14-year-old actor McKenna Grace), is one awful story among thousands.

Specifically, she’s the story June fears will become Hannah’s in the near future. In her numbed, feverish state, June conflated the two girls and called Esther by her daughter’s nickname in that final “I love you too, Banana,” scene.

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Esther isn’t June’s only adoptive daughter, our lead is also the protector of Janine and all the other former Handmaids. Despite barely being able to walk, June insisted on approaching the safe house alone, signalling to them when it was safe to follow. When they were dancing like teenagers in the barn, she only looked on. She’s no longer one of them, but their leader – a resistance hero in command of an underground revolt. More than that, she’s become a celebrity in this world – a figurehead for everybody who wants to see Gilead burn. She’s Che Guevara, a symbol of revolution. If Gilead’s rebels could put her face on t-shirts, they would.

A potential problem for season four is that symbols don’t make compelling characters. The transformation from person to icon can be fascinating, but once a character’s up on that pedestal, giving out rousing speeches and making the hard decisions, they’ve generally reached their climax. However supreme Elisabeth Moss remains in this role, there’s a sense that we may already have seen everything that June Osborne the character has to offer. How many times now have we watched June – as she did in this episode – suffer, collapse, and then rise up with a renewed sense of fight? Half a dozen? More? At some stage, a repeating pattern begins to lose impact.