âThe more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.â
This line from Atwoodâs THT novel has been etched into me ever since I first read it.
Itâs messy. Romantic. Rooted in theology, philosophy, desire. Itâs a contradiction â just like the book. And itâs the most honest thing Iâve ever read about love.
Because it doesnât speak to fairy tale love.
Or safe love.
Or easy love.
It speaks to the kind of love that lives in the ruins with you.
The kind that changes you.
That doesnât need to be pure to be real.
That doesnât need to be public to be true.
This quote â this entire passage â is the thesis of THT.
Atwood was never writing about "happily ever after."
She was writing about how people stay human inside systems designed to hollow them out.
And June? She survives not because she becomes cold or perfect or self-righteous.
She survives because she remembers how to want.
Because she lets herself love, even when itâs dangerous, even when itâs wrong, even when it makes no sense.
âWe were waiting, always, for the incarnation.â
Not a fantasy. Not a savior. Not a symbol.
A real man. Flawed. Quiet. Bleeding. Complicit. And the incarnation of love in the darkest place imaginable.
Loving him didnât save June from pain.
But it kept her whole. It tethered her to the part of herself Gilead couldnât take.
I didnât need a happy ending.
I didnât need sunshine and closure and a white picket fence.
But what I did need was an ending that was earned.
What I needed was:
A woman who doesnât walk away from the love that sustained her.
A man who doesnât get reduced to a ghost in the machine.
A story that understands that messy, complicated, gut-wrenching love is not weakness â itâs humanity.
Instead, the show told us:
That loving someone like Nick â someone flawed, dangerous, but loyal â is a mistake.
That Juneâs survival means detachment.
That the âreal worldâ doesnât have room for complex love, only correct, simple love.
It told us that traditional love â clean, sanctioned, externally approved â is the kind worth fighting for.
That the love that fits neatly into boxes, that doesnât challenge the status quo, that doesnât ask hard questions â is the one that wins.
But thatâs not The Handmaidâs Tale.
Thatâs not the story Atwood wrote.
This story was never about choosing the man with the cleanest résumé.
It was about breaking the rules â all of them.
About surviving in ways youâre not supposed to.
About loving in ways the system canât predict, and therefore canât control.
Nick and June were never traditional. They were never safe.
But they were true.
And they were dangerous to Gilead precisely because their love didnât follow the rules.
Because it wasnât handed to them â they built it. They bled for it.
So when the show decided that love like that had to be sacrificed for something simpler, more acceptable, more palatable â it didnât just abandon Nick and June.
It abandoned the point.
But thatâs not the book.
And thatâs not The Testaments, either â where love and loyalty still survive in the background, where the human heart remains a factor.
So yeah, Iâm disheartened.
Not because Nick and June didnât get a romantic ending.
But because the writers refused to give them a narratively honest one.
Because they pretended this story was never about love â when it always, always was.
Atwood understood that choosing to love someone who is difficult, complicated, flawed â especially when you are too â is one of the most radical things a person can do.
Itâs not blind. Itâs not passive. Itâs a conscious, daily act of seeing someone fully and still saying: yes, you. Especially when the world tells you that love is dangerous. Or selfish. Or futile. And that love ânot the violence, not the vengeance â is what ultimately broke Gilead.
And that, to me, is what real feminism is about.
Not perfection. Not purity. Not moral absolutes.
Choice.
The power to decide who you love, how you love, and what youâre willing to risk for it.
To say: this is mine, and I choose it â even if itâs messy. Even if the world tells you not to.
You own it. Out loud.
And thatâs what hurts the most:Â June never got to make that choice.
Not fully. Not freely.
The show skirted it, deflected it, passed it off in glances and silence.
And in doing that, it robbed her of what shouldâve been the most radical act of all â choosing the flawed, complicated love that made her feel alive.
And thatâs why Iâll never accept a version of this story that treats love as weakness.
That frames complexity as failure.
That suggests safety is more noble than honesty.
That tells us simple is more righteous than real.
Because love isnât less valuable when itâs complicated.
Itâs more.
And choosing it anyway? Thatâs the most radical thing she ever did.
