The Handmaid's Tale
Wednesdays on HuluThe Handmaid's Tale Season 5 Episode 8: "Motherland" Quotes
Gilead's gonna Gilead.
Joseph
Serena: What am I supposed to do now?
June: Go back to the Wheelers.
Serena: How? How do you go and live in a house with a woman who's trying to steal your baby?
June: Are you seriously asking me that?
Serena: How did you ever, how did you ever live with me?
June: [laughs] Um, OK. OK, I'll tell you. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go back in there, and you are going to act like a handmaid, but the entire time, you will be plotting against them and planning your revenge.
Serena: Is that what you did?
June: Look at what happened to Fred, and look at you now. [she gets up to leave]
Serena: Just, what would you do if you were me?
June: Listen to me. You cannot help your child if you're not with him. I would go back.
Turns out, after all this, I guess I'm a better Christian than you.
June
Serena: I'm not going to live in the same house as my child's kidnappers.
Joseph: Do you have an irony deficiency?
Serena: I don't give a damn. I'm not a handmaid.
Joseph: America is dying. It's an idea that has outlived its usefulness.
June: You said you had news about Hannah.
Joseph: First, hear me out. You need to understand that everything you value, all the things you're clinging to, democracy, liberty, justice, all that feel-good crap defined by a bunch of slave owners talking about how all men are created equal, all of that collapsed under the weight of late-term capitalism and rampant consumerism. It broke our pretty little planet and almost ended the human race, and Gilead, for all of our faults, we fixed that particular problem. We're having babies again. Unfortunately, I had to use religious nutjobs as a delivery system, and I underestimated their depravity, but uh, it was triage, and it worked. So now, with our success, we can afford to let up a little.
June: Are you gonna let Hannah out?
Joseph: Not, I can't. But I can let you in.
Alanis: That's not how cried out works, Serena. It requires a certain amount of mental toughness.
Serena: [whispers] Mental toughness, huh. [out loud] Right. I have overthrown a country, and I have, against all odds, given birth to a very healthy baby, and not once have I lacked for mental toughness.
Alanis: Are you angry with me, Serena?
Serena: Noah is one month old. He is far too young to be crying it out!
Can't we all agree, gentlemen, that it's embarrassing to be running a country in which people are constantly trying to escape?
Commander Lawrence
