The Handmaid’s Tale Progress: Love Complicates Everyone But June

Full spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4, Episode 9, “Progress.”

The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 episode “Progress” works because love suddenly makes everyone more complicated — everyone except June.

That is the strange trick of this episode.

For most of the season, June has been the center of the moral storm. She gets out of Gilead, but Gilead does not get out of her. She reunites with Luke, but the reunion feels more like grief than relief. She confronts Serena, but carries that hunger for power home with her. She testifies against Fred, but the show keeps asking whether her righteous anger is healing her or consuming everyone around her.

Then “Progress” turns outward. Suddenly, the characters who have felt secondary, static, or emotionally underwritten start becoming interesting again.

Nick laughs. Luke breaks your heart. Lawrence becomes impossible to read. Lydia shows something that almost resembles tenderness. Serena and Fred make a choice that is still self-serving, but also recognizably parental. Even the love triangle, which has often felt more like obligation than drama, suddenly has actual emotional weight.

But June?

June is not complicated by love in this episode. Not in the same way.

For June, love does not soften the problem. Love clarifies it. Hannah is still gone. Fred is still a rapist. Gilead is still standing. And if the people in power are willing to turn justice into a deal, June’s rage is not going to negotiate with them.

Looking for the full season arc? Start with our The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 recap, reviews, and ending explained hub.

What Happens In The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 Episode “Progress”?

In “Progress,” June continues trying to find a way back to Hannah from Canada. Luke shows her everything he has done to search for their daughter, and he eventually suggests that June contact Nick. June meets Nick with Nichole, and for a brief moment, the episode lets that strange, impossible family unit feel real.

June also speaks with Commander Lawrence, who offers a possible deal involving Hannah and other children. As usual with Lawrence, the conversation is difficult to read. He seems sincere, manipulative, strategic, compassionate, and cruel all at once.

Back in Gilead, Janine is alive and back under Aunt Lydia’s control. Lydia tries to protect her from the other Aunts, while Esther Keyes reappears transformed into a Handmaid. Meanwhile, the Waterfords meet with the Putnams and begin to understand how far they have fallen in Gilead’s eyes.

The episode ends with Fred cutting a deal that could help him avoid meaningful punishment. June explodes at Tuello, furious that the man who raped and abused her might turn cooperation into freedom.

That final turn sets up the Season 4 finale. “Progress” spends most of its runtime complicating love, loyalty, family, and survival, but it ends by making one thing brutally clear: June is done accepting justice as paperwork.

Nick Finally Feels Human

Wait a second.

Did I actually just have a moment when I cared about Nick?

That is not a small thing. Nick has spent a lot of The Handmaid’s Tale as a brooding collection of angles, silence, loyalty, and an aggressively punchable face. He matters to June, and he matters to Nichole, but the show has not always made him feel like a fully textured person outside of what he represents to June.

Then “Progress” gives him one small, almost stupidly simple human action.

He laughs.

That is it. That is the whole thing. Nick, June, and Nichole are together, and Nick laughs. I do not even remember exactly what prompted it, and I am not sure it matters. What matters is that, for the first time in a long time, Nick feels less like an emotional cipher and more like a person who might actually exist when June is not looking at him.

That kind of detail matters in a dystopian show. The Handmaid’s Tale is not built to be a joyous viewing experience, obviously. But protagonists and protagonist-adjacent characters need the capacity for joy if we are going to keep investing in them as people rather than symbols.

Nick’s laugh does more for his characterization than another dozen scenes of grim, quiet longing ever could.

Nick, June, And Nichole Become A Real Possibility

The meeting between Nick, June, and Nichole works because the episode lets the three of them feel like a whole unit, even though everything about that unit is impossible.

Nick has information about Hannah ready before June even has to ask. That is a sweet detail, and it matters because it tells us he understands what June actually needs from him. He is not just there as romantic fantasy or unresolved longing. He is there as someone who knows Hannah is the wound underneath everything.

But the emotional force of the scene comes from the fact that June seems at ease with Nick in a way she does not seem at ease with Luke right now.

That does not mean Nick is the “right” choice. It does not mean the show is asking us to forget everything complicated about him. Nick is still embedded in Gilead. Nick still has power inside a monstrous system. Nick still carries the ambiguity that has always made him difficult to fully embrace.

But in this moment, he gives June something Luke cannot.

He knows the same war. He knows the language of Gilead. He knows what it means to live inside the system and make compromised choices within it. That does not make him clean. It makes him legible to June.

Elisabeth Moss’s performance as June drives away from Nick is a masterclass in face acting. Happiness, rage, sadness, regret, longing, and self-disgust all pass across her face without the scene needing to explain itself. June is leaving something that feels real, even if she knows it cannot be simple.

Luke Becomes More Compelling Because He Lets June Go

What surprised me even more than caring about Nick is that I genuinely care about Luke now too.

That has been building. His plate-fixing in “Home” was one of the most human things the show has ever let him do. His presence in court during “Testimony” mattered. And now, in “Progress,” watching him show June everything he has done to find Hannah from the safety of Canada is genuinely heartbreaking.

Luke’s pain is different from June’s, and the show is finally treating that difference with some respect.

He did not survive inside Gilead. He did not endure what June endured. He does not understand the trauma from the inside, and he never will. But he has been living with helplessness for years. He has been trying to find Hannah with files, maps, calls, contacts, and hope that has nowhere clean to land.

That is why his decision to tell June to contact Nick is so painful and so generous.

Luke knows what that means. He knows Nick is not just a source. He knows there is emotional history there. He knows sending June to Nick, alone with Nichole, may hurt him. But he does it anyway because Hannah matters more than his pride.

That is love.

Not clean love. Not uncomplicated love. But love that is willing to be wounded if it gives Hannah even the smallest chance.

The Love Triangle Finally Means Something

For the first time in a long while, the Luke-June-Nick triangle feels like more than a lingering obligation from the show’s earlier seasons.

There is an actual choice here now, not just a romantic one, but an existential one.

Luke represents the life June had before Gilead and the home she is supposed to be able to return to. He loves her, but he cannot fully understand the person Gilead made her become. Their relationship has history, marriage, family, and a daughter still trapped somewhere in the system that stole everything from them.

Nick represents a different kind of connection. He is compromised, but he understands the terrain of June’s trauma. He is part of Gilead and also one of the few people inside it who has repeatedly helped her. He is not safety, exactly. He is familiarity inside the nightmare.

That is why “Progress” is more emotionally effective than a simple love triangle episode would be. The question is not just who June loves. The question is what kind of life June can still recognize as real.

Luke loves June from outside the war.

Nick loves June from inside it.

And June does not yet know how to live anywhere else.

Commander Lawrence Is Back In The Gray

June’s conversation with Commander Lawrence gives the episode another kind of complication.

Lawrence is obviously playing a role. There is no way to watch that call and assume he is speaking freely without calculation. Someone in Gilead may be listening. He may be performing. He may be testing June. He may be using tenderness as a tool because he knows tenderness is one of the few ways left to reach her.

At the same time, there is still a part of me that believes Lawrence is on no one’s side but his own.

That is what makes him interesting when the writing gives him room to breathe. Earlier in the season, Lawrence sometimes felt like a side character who appeared when the plot needed someone to move a chess piece. In “Progress,” the extreme grayness returns.

Bradley Whitford continues to give Lawrence dread, menace, intelligence, and a strange thread of compassion. I believe Lawrence might want to make a deal, even if the deal is heinous. I believe he is manipulating June when he says Canada has made her soft. I also believe he has some genuine concern about whether June can ever be normal in Canada.

That is the maddening thing about Lawrence. He can be cruel and still see the truth. He can care about June and still use her. He can despise Gilead’s stupidity while remaining one of the men who knows how to survive inside its power.

He is always tiptoeing along a line, and “Progress” finally makes that line interesting again.

Janine And Aunt Lydia Become A Disturbing Pair

The episode also does something I did not expect: it makes me feel a small pang of sympathy for Aunt Lydia.

I know. I hate it too.

UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, PREMIUM PODCASTS & MORE Join The #NerdClan

But watching Lydia try to defend Janine from the other Aunts creates one of the episode’s strangest emotional complications. Lydia is still Lydia. She is abusive, manipulative, violent, and deeply committed to a system that has destroyed countless women. Nothing about her treatment of Janine or the other Handmaids should be softened into redemption.

And yet, the Janine-Lydia dynamic is undeniably interesting.

June wounded Lydia emotionally when she suggested Lydia had failed her girls. Janine may now become Lydia’s chance to prove that accusation wrong. In Lydia’s mind, Janine could be the way back to the Handmaids, the proof that she still knows how to guide, discipline, protect, and be needed.

That is deeply uncomfortable because Lydia’s idea of care is inseparable from control.

Still, “Progress” understands that love in The Handmaid’s Tale is rarely pure. Lydia may care about Janine. That does not make the care safe.

Esther Keyes Shows What Gilead Does To Rage

Seeing Esther Keyes transformed into a Handmaid is frightening.

Esther entered the season as a teenager already warped by abuse, rage, and survival. June saw that rage and used it. Now Gilead has taken Esther’s body, renamed her purpose, and forced her into the same machinery June wanted to destroy.

There is something brutal about that.

Esther’s resilience is impressive, but resilience is not the same thing as strategy. The tragedy of Esther is that she has every reason to be furious and very little understanding of how to survive the system that feeds on women’s fury.

That is part of the Season 4 pattern. Anger can keep someone alive, but it can also make them easier for Gilead to punish, redirect, or consume.

Esther is not just another Handmaid now. She is another warning about what happens when rage enters a system designed to break it.

The Waterfords Become Interesting Again

The Waterfords’ scenes with the Putnams are quietly loaded with information.

Yes, there are some logistical questions here. The Putnams seem to cross the border with remarkable ease, and Nick’s meeting with June is also convenient enough that the episode asks us to go along to get along.

But the implicit storytelling inside the Waterford-Putnam interactions is strong.

Mrs. Putnam suggesting that she would be happy to raise Serena’s son says a lot about how Gilead still sees motherhood as something the state can assign, redistribute, and claim. Serena may be pregnant, but that does not mean Gilead sees her as untouchable. If anything, her pregnancy makes her newly useful and newly vulnerable.

For more on what Serena’s pregnancy means, read our explainer: Serena’s Pregnancy Explained In The Handmaid’s Tale

Mr. Putnam admitting that the other Commanders are not really negotiating on Fred’s behalf is just as important. Fred and Serena gave years of dedicated service to Gilead, but now they are captured, embarrassing, compromised, and politically inconvenient.

The cold setting of the scene says everything. The relationship between the Waterfords and Gilead has become frigid. They are not honored servants of the cause anymore. They are liabilities.

Mrs. Putnam’s reaction to seeing Serena write is a small but extraordinarily telling moment. It reveals how far Serena has fallen in the eyes of the world she helped build. The very thing that once made Serena powerful — her intellect, her language, her authorship — now marks her as dangerous, improper, and out of place.

Fred And Serena Unite For Their Child

I am not surprised Fred and Serena choose to drop their charges against each other and turn against Gilead to protect their child.

But I am surprised the choice moved me.

That is an annoying sentence to write, but it is true.

Maybe it is because I have children, and I understand the instinct to do anything to protect them. Maybe it is because the show has spent so long letting Fred and Serena hate each other, betray each other, and weaponize each other that seeing them align around their baby creates a new emotional configuration.

It does not redeem them. It does not erase what they did. It does not make their love noble in any clean way.

But it does make them interesting again.

Serena understands that if she returns to Gilead, she could be turned into a Handmaid. Fred understands he could be killed. Both understand their son could be taken from them regardless of what they want. That fear gives them a shared purpose stronger than their mutual resentment.

United, scared, and determined, the Waterfords enter the finale in their most compelling position since Serena gave Fred up at the end of Season 3.

Love Is Complicated In The Handmaid’s Tale

Love is complicated in The Handmaid’s Tale because the world of the show is so devoid of it.

That is why Nick laughing matters. That is why Luke sending June to Nick matters. That is why Lydia comforting Janine is disturbing but effective. That is why Fred and Serena choosing their child can be emotionally legible without becoming morally absolving.

In a world built on control, genuine attachment becomes both precious and dangerous.

Love can make people better. It can make them braver, softer, and more willing to sacrifice. Luke proves that when he puts Hannah ahead of his own insecurity. Nick proves it when he gives June the information she needs. Even Lydia, in her warped and controlling way, reveals that attachment can destabilize the role she is supposed to play.

But love can also make monsters more strategic.

Fred and Serena do not become good people because they love their unborn child. They become more focused. More unified. More dangerous.

That is why “Progress” works as a penultimate episode. It complicates the board emotionally before the finale knocks it over.

June’s Rage Refuses The Deal

For all the episode’s emotional complication, the ending is brutally simple.

Fred may have turned on Gilead. He may be useful. He may even be able to help find Hannah. But June does not care about the usefulness of the man who raped and abused her.

Her anger at Tuello is not procedural. It is not strategic. It is not interested in the legal machinery of cooperation, leverage, or state interests.

To June, a deal with Fred is a betrayal of the truth.

That is why her final outburst lands so hard. After all the PTSD, all the containment, all the attempts to process, testify, reconnect, and live in Canada, June’s rage comes roaring back with absolute clarity.

She believes Tuello is letting a rapist turn his crimes into currency.

And in that moment, I believe her when she says she will kill him.

That is the right place to leave the episode before the finale. “Progress” spends most of its time making everyone more complicated, but it ends by stripping June down to the thing that has been driving her all season.

Justice is becoming a deal.

June is not going to accept the terms.

Why Progress Matters For The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4

“Progress” matters because it sets the emotional conditions for “The Wilderness.”

The finale only works if Fred’s fate feels like the result of a season-long pressure system, and “Progress” tightens that system from every direction. Luke’s sacrifice, Nick’s tenderness, Lawrence’s ambiguity, Lydia’s attachment to Janine, the Waterfords’ fear, and Tuello’s deal all push June toward the same conclusion.

Everyone else can live in complication.

June cannot.

Or maybe she will not.

That is the key distinction. June understands complexity. She understands impossible choices better than almost anyone. But when it comes to Fred, she has no interest in letting complexity become mercy.

That is why the episode’s title works. “Progress” is not just about political progress, legal progress, or progress toward the finale. It is about the characters moving into more complicated emotional territory while June moves toward something much simpler and much more dangerous.

Fred Waterford is a rapist.

Fred Waterford made a deal.

June is going to answer that deal with blood.