“It’s a Lot”: Samira Wiley Explains Moira’s Dangerous Return to Gilead in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Back in the early days of The Handmaid’s Tale, when June (Elisabeth Moss) suffered at the hands of Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), her best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) was one of the few women who managed to escape Gilead and found safe harbor in Canada. Fans also witnessed Moira’s frustration at not being able to do more, but this changed in the latest episode from the final season of the series. In a recent interview with TV Line, Wiley talked about getting back in the game and her impressions of revisiting Gilead.

It’s pretty easy to understand Moira’s headspace in this week’s episode, titled “Janine.” Undercover, she is taken back to the Jezebels nightclub, a place where she used to be kept as a plaything of Commanders back in Season 1 and before she escaped. So it’s perfectly reasonable that the character has PTSD from it. The actor stated that if Marthas didn’t have to wear masks, “the fear would be shown on her face,” and that there is a slate of emotions that go through her mind. We definitely felt it watching the latest episode — and Wiley felt it too:

“Because I walked into that room [and] I immediately flashbacked to the costumes that I had to wear in Jezebel’s, all of that, you know? So, I’m trying to keep it cool, I’m trying to stay to the thing of, ‘No, this is my mission.’ June is used to doing these things in Gilead, and [Moira is] definitely capable of it, but you don’t know what something is going to be like when you’re in the scene and you have the smells of the room that you were in, all of those things. Yeah, it’s a lot.”

The Handmaid’s Tale Prepares For Final Batch of Episodes

As we pass the halfway mark of Season 6, The Handmaid’s Tale starts to reveal its endgame and one thing we know for sure is that a true happy ending is far from the show’s reality. In the same episode that Moira goes undercover, even a high-ranking figure like Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) got the short end of the stick and discovered that he has a reserved spot on the wall. So there’s still room for twists before we reach the end of the line.

Additionally, fans are curious to discover how The Handmaid’s Tale will set up its sequel series The Testaments. It looks like there won’t be much of a break between one story and the other, since Ann Dowd (The Friend) is already slated to return as Aunt Lydia and the main cast has already been selected. It’s possible that Hulu won’t miss the chance of teasing The Testaments as soon as The Handmaid’s Tale ends, so chances are that we get some news about it in the coming weeks.