The Handmaid’s Tale’s Most Conflicted Commander Is One of Its Best Characters

There are some awful women on The Handmaid’s Talebut men make up the bulk of its villainous characters. That goes for individual men like the thankfully departed Commander Fred Waterford, but also “men of Gilead” as a collective, oppressive, violent, misogynistic whole. The show tends to deal in heavy-handed themes, but it’s also invested in creating complex characters. The most fascinating examples are Gilead insiders who realize too late they’re trapped in prisons of their own making.

We’ve previously explored how this makes Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) one of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s most consistently infuriating yet interesting characters, still true in the show’s current sixth season. Over the years, we’ve seen Serena captured by Canada for war crimes, then released, then awkwardly told there was no place for her in Gilead because its rigid culture wasn’t equipped to deal with a widowed single mother. Thenafter Gilead tucked her out of sight as its representative in Canada, she had to flee Toronto when a kerfluffle over her immigration status meant she might lose custody of her son.

Serena has done a lot of soul-searching since we first met her as pious Commander’s wife, all in favor of ritualized rape if it meant she could get her mitts on a baby. As we learned in flashbacks to her life “before,” she was once a powerful author and speaker pushing the far-right Christian movement that brought Gilead into existence… Gilead, a place where women are not allowed to read or write and anyone who dares to speak out is swiftly executed.

Fortunately for Serena, her husband Fred doesn’t order her killed when she steps out of line; he just chops off a finger as punishment. But her conflicted feelings about Gilead have crystallized quite a bit as season six gets underway. She understands now the harm she’s caused, both to the people who’ve been personally damaged by her actions, as well as her culpability in helping build a horrendous regime.

After realizing too late she’s too famous to slink around unnoticed, Serena barely escapes an angry mob that’s all too prepared to rip her to shreds. She’s truly a woman without a country until Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) suddenly reappears in her life, as seen in “Exile,” season six’s second episode. It’s fitting that Serena and Lawrence become allies on behalf of New Bethlehem, his “reformed” version of Gilead, because like her he’s constantly grappling with the guilty unease of having had a hand in bringing the nightmare that is Gilead to life.

This week’s episode, “Promotion,” refers to Lawrence’s elevation from Commander to High Commander, a ranking that helps lend legitimacy to the fledgling New Bethlehem. It’s still a part of Gilead, but in New Bethlehem women are treated far more respectfully; they can read and write, and there are no Handmaids. (Also, no public executions!) Serena doesn’t even have to see its elegant beachside homes in person before she agrees to move there; the promise of being able to use her brain again is irresistible, as is the feeling that the God who once steered her so wrong is now guiding her on a path to make amends.

Lawrence may be the least religious man in Gilead—don’t ask him to recite a prayer—but he can certainly identify with Serena’s quest for redemption. Lawrence joined The Handmaid’s Tale in season two, after we’d long become accustomed to assuming that anyone walking around calling himself a “Commander” was a woman-hating monster. But Lawrence, despite being known as “the architect of Gilead,” isn’t a monster. Devoted to his wife throughout her long struggle with mental illness, he treats the women forced to serve in his home with benevolence—he has Handmaids, because all Commanders must, but he avoids the rape “ceremony” and is seemingly the only Commander who sees it for what it really is.

He also proves to be an ally for June (Elisabeth Moss) and the growing resistance movement; while he’s not exactly an active participant, he frequently uses his Commander status to misdirect Gilead’s nosy soldiers. He passes on information, offers shelter, and facilitates clandestine transportation, sometimes groaning about it, but always saving lives in the process. Outwardly, at least, he’s part of Gilead’s elite, keeping up appearances and going through the motions. But especially after his beloved wife dies, and he’s nudged into marrying the shrill widow of an executed Commander (the dead man’s crime: raping a Handmaid that wasn’t his Handmaid), Lawrence moves full speed ahead on New Bethlehem.

Lawrence knows he can’t undo the considerable damage he’s caused, but he believes he’s found a way forward with New Bethlehem. The rest of the world has understandably rejected Gilead’s draconian way of life—but remains curious about the positive environmental changes it’s enacted, and especially all the successful pregnancies that’ve been happening inside its borders. New Bethlehem also provides a more palatable return point for Canada and other countries who’ve become overrun with desperate Gilead refugees. They don’t want to send people back to a place known for rampant human rights violations, but New Bethlehem is different, right?

With Serena Joy fully on board, and Lawrence confident that “power will come from reform,” there’s a twinkle of hope that New Bethlehem can steer Gilead to a more progressive future. There’s still a lot of season six left to go, though, and it seems likely that the “men of Gilead” that The Handmaid’s Tale viewers have grown to despise won’t easily part with their cruel dystopian paradise.

At least we have Lawrence—sarcastic, depressed, but wryly funny and, albeit misguided at times, undeniably smart as hell—to remind us that not every Commander is loathsome to the core. The show itself seemed to underline that point this week, when instead of playing a song over the end credits of “Devotion,” it instead used voice-over of Lawrence reading The Little Princess to Angela, his toddler-age step daughter. Earlier in the episode, he’d introduced the story by saying it was his first wife’s “favorite book when she was a little girl,” and promising Angela—a child born into a society where women aren’t allowed to be literate—that once she’s old enough, she’ll be able to read it all by herself too.

New episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale season six arrive Tuesdays at 12 a.m. ET on Hulu.