Every episode of The Handmaid’s Tale S2 ranked

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Update: Stream The Handmaid’s Tale S1-4 first on Showmax

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Warning: spoilers ahead! The latest season of The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most watched shows on Showmax and it will take you 12 hours and 47 minutes to binge the entire season. Not that we would recommend it. Here’s our ranking of every episode you can watch right now on Showmax.

13. Unwomen: episode 2

Episode 2 is a respite from the horrors of a brutal season-opener, alternating between landscapes of dusty wastelands and the barren cubicles of June’s hidey hole at the Boston Globe.

12. Smart Power: episode 9

Fred and Serena Joy travel to Canada on a diplomatic mission, accompanied by Nick. The Commander comes face to face with Luke, who is holding a picture of himself, Offred/June and their daughter Hannah. Gasp!

11. Baggage: episode 3

This episode’s big interest point is that we get our first real introduction to the Econowives. June is taken in by her would-be rescuer Omar, who brings her home to his horrified wife and sweet young son. When the family don’t return to their Econo-house after church, June escapes in the drab beige and grey clothing of Omar’s wife, blending in with the other Econowives and taking a train to GTFO of Gilead. Which is foiled at the very last moment, of course.

10. Other Women: episode 4

And, we’re back inside the safe confines of the Waterford brownstone, with the “kidnapped” June back in “Offred the human incubator” mode. Serena’s green-frocked gal pals throw the expectant Mrs Waterford a baby shower. The tension between Offred and Serena this entire episode could slice, well… an orange.

9. Seeds: episode 5

You get a child bride! And YOU get a child bride! Commander Waterford arranges for Nick to be issued a wife as a reward for his work – and finally, something interesting is happening in episode 5 after a few sedate episodes. Meanwhile Offred is bleeding in the bathtub and, convinced she’s about to miscarry, leaps out of her window.

8. June: episode 1

The brutality of the season premiere left us wondering if we had the guts to stick out another 12 episodes in Gilead. When last we’d seen Offred, she’d been locked in a van and transported to certain doom. From the frightening scene in Fenway Park where the bound and muzzled Handmaids are made to believe they’ll be hanged en masse to the rain-soaked tableau in the courtyard (all those scarlet-dressed women in circle formation!), episode 1 was electrifying, all the way through.

7. First Blood: episode 6

So much plot is packed into episode 6. Eden, Nick’s young bride, tells Offred she thinks Nick might be a “gender traitor” because he won’t have sex with her. We see Serena get shot by a protester in BG (Before Gilead) while promoting her book called A Women’s Place. And the new Rachel and Leah Center goes “boom” after Ofglen detonates a bomb.

6. After: episode 7

Episode 7 is beautiful, terrible and defiant – we can’t help but admire the symmetry of the headstones and caskets, and the red dresses stark against the snow as Offred buries her fellow Handmaids killed in the bomb blast. Later the Handmaids whisper their real names to each other.

5. The Last Ceremony: episode 10

June has contractions and endures a birthing ceremony, but it’s a false alarm. Later, Fred rapes June with Serena holding her down “to induce labour”. And just like that we’re knee-deep in horror again.

4. The Word: episode 13

The finale is not quite the showstopper that episode 12 was before it (oh sweet, innocent Eden!) but when Fred orders that Serena’s finger be cut off for reading from the Bible, you’re left gasping for breath.

3. Women’s Work: episode 8

Sure, episode 8 has its dark moments but it ends on such a high note – and boy, did we need some sunshine – as Janine is allowed to see her sick baby, and cradles her back to health, singing “I Only Want to Be with You” to her child.

2. Postpartum: episode 12

Eden and her lover Isaac are brought to a diving board above a swimming pool with chains and weights attached. They are sentenced to death before the crowd, unless they ask forgiveness. It’s almost too much to bear when they refuse and in the most profoundly sweet and hopeful moment in a heavy season, they sink to the depths of the olympic swimming pool and drown.

1. Holly: episode 11

The stage is yours, Elisabeth Moss. In what must be one of the most white-knuckled 46 minutes of streaming television this year, a defeated Offred gives birth to her baby all alone in an abandoned house in the snow. She can’t but help feel her loneliness as she has flashbacks to the birth of her first child with Luke by her side, and relief that she has a precious few moments alone with the baby.

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