In the first episode of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, viewers met Janine, played by Madeline Brewer. Like June, the main character played by Elisabeth Moss, she’s been abducted by Gilead and is now in the Red Center, where new handmaids are forced to learn their horrifying new duties. When Janine talks back, she’s hauled off for a biblical punishment: the loss of her eye. That set the tone for Janine’s harrowing journey throughout the series—but she never lost her spirit, and in the end, the show rewarded her with an ecstatically happy last moment.
Her missing eye—often, but not always, concealed with her trademark patch—was more or less the only constant for Janine over six seasons. After being the first handmaid in June’s group to give birth, she entertained fantasies of keeping her baby girl. Of course, that is not the way of Gilead, and Charlotte (Janine’s name for her daughter; her captors, Commander Putnam and his wife Naomi, called her Angela) was ripped from her arms, almost literally.
After that, she held different roles with varying levels of freedom—at one point she ended up in exile, shoveling toxic waste in the dreaded Colonies; at another, she survived a bombing after briefly escaping Gilead for Chicago. In the last seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, we saw her assisting Aunt Lydia in the Red Center, building on a complicated relationship rooted in power, guilt, shared trauma, and the occasional attempt at kindness.
In season six, former handmaid Janine is forced into a different kind of sexual slavery, toiling at Jezebel’s, the brothel created for the pleasure of Gilead’s two-faced commanders. There, she encounters Angela’s new adoptive father: the grumpy but not-evil Commander Lawrence, who reluctantly married Naomi for reasons that are frankly too long to get into here. (It’s The Handmaid’s Tale—expect the worst!) He’s aware of Janine’s situation and brings one of the little girl’s drawings to her, an act of kindness that renews Janine’s hopes that one day she’ll get to see her again.
That situation feels ever-bleaker when Jezebel’s is destroyed and Janine is snatched up by a commander who’s taken a cruel interest in her. Eventually, though, her prolonged suffering finally ends when June kills the guy (stabs him in the eye, in fact), and after another brief yet awful stint in captivity, she’s freed from Gilead forever.
Best of all, though, as June and company are rushing to get her to safety, we see Aunt Lydia and Naomi appear. Incredibly, they’re bringing Angela/Charlotte to be with her mom, to live a life away from Gilead’s cruelty. Though The Handmaid’s Tale series finale ended with a lot of characters still at the mid-points on their journeys, that’s not the case for Janine. This is a real and true happy ending for her, at long last.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Brewer was understandably thrilled that her character finally got her greatest wish. “I thought it was so beautiful. I’m so satisfied with the ending for Janine,” she said. “It could have gone a lot of different ways and it’s all she’s ever wanted.”
She continued. “I don’t think I really, truly hoped for anything because I couldn’t even imagine. That’s also not my job (laughs) [to write the show], but it’s the same reason why I never made too many decisions about Janine’s life before … So I didn’t want to make too many decisions. I wanted it in ways to surprise me. And it did … I’m just so proud of Janine for always being herself and not letting them take the fire away from her. And for being a good friend and a good mom and a good person.”
The show was often very bleak, but praise be—at least Janine finally triumphed in the end. All seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale are now available on Hulu.
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