The Other Side

The Other Side
Season 1
Episode 7
Air date	May 24, 2017
Directed by	Floria Sigismondi
Teleplay by	Lynn Renee Maxcy
Episodes
Previous	A Woman's Place
Next	Jezebels

The Other Side is the seventh episode of the first season of The Handmaid's Tale.

Synopsis

Having sent June and Hannah into the woods to give them a head start, Luke tries to hold off the pursuers and make good his own escape. While he tries to make his own way to Canada, he thinks back on why such a well-orchestrated plan went so badly wrong.

Plot

In a flashback, we see more of June's and Luke's escape attempt to Canada. After their car gets stuck in a snowy embankment, Luke tells June to take their daughter and run. Shortly after, he is taken captive by Guardians. They place him in an ambulance after he is shot in the stomach, and intend to question him.

The ambulance veers off the icy road, rolling into a creek. One of his captors has died, the other was thrown from the vehicle and lies severely injured on the opposite embankment. He takes a first aid kit and a Glock 17 handgun from a dead Guardian and goes off to find his wife and daughter. Before he leaves, he asks the injured guard to tell him their location but the man dies before he can answer. After stumbling in the woods for a bit, Luke sees his daughter's shoe, her stuffed bunny rabbit, and what appears to be June's belongings. He takes this to mean that they were captured before they could reach the border.

Luke finds a small town and rests inside of a bar of some sort. There are bullet holes all over the walls and in the windows.

In another flashback, he reflects on the moment he and June hid in the trunk of their car while a man called Mr. Whitford drives them to a secluded cabin near the border. Whitford refers he helps them escape because he still owes June's mother, who performed a vasectomy on him "a few years back after they made it illegal", a favor. He tells them he still needs to get them Canadian passports, because U.S. passports "don't mean shit no more". Before he leaves, he teaches Luke how to shoot a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver, which he is clearly uneasy about.

Rescued by strangers: Who are you guys?

Back in the present, Luke is rescued by strangers who are also on their way to the border. They think he is a Guardian at first, but after determining he is on their side, they carry him to a schoolbus, where the leader, Zoe, cleans out his bullet wound. The people on the bus are introduced as Christine, Lyla, and Peter, or: "an army brat, two strays, a gay, and a nun". They tell Luke that Zoe and a group of US Army soldiers she was stationed with in South Carolina rescued a girl from one of the Red Centers, but they don't even know the extent of what's happening.

In more flashbacks we see the events that lead to June and her daughter's capture. The family has a few happy days lodging in the cabin. They’re discovered by a man out hunting with his dog. The man seems genial and friendly but they decide they can't risk him turning them in. Later, while they’re preparing to leave, the hunter shows up and tells them he‘d heard about them on his radio. He tells them that Whitford has been captured and hanged in town. The family tries to reach the Canadian border on their own, but their car is spotted by a patrol. They crash at the side of the road, and Luke tells June to take Hannah and run from the Guardians pursuing them.

In the present, Luke, still in the schoolbus, plans to leave the other and head back to Boston. Zoe brings him inside a church and shows him what happens to people who try to fight back. The townspeople who hid their fertile women were all hanged and strung up inside the church by the Guardians. Luke decides to go with the others to New Brunswick in Canada. They find the owner of a motorboat whom they made a deal with, but only for five people. Luke offers the man the morphine and Percocet from his bag, along with his wedding band and the man accepts. Just as they are boarding the boat, the Guardians open fire from nearby. Zoe dies from the gunfire, and Luke is seen escaping with the others.

Three years later, in "Little America", a neighborhood in Toronto, Canada for Gileadian refugees, Luke is seen with one of the women he escaped the U.S. with. He gets a phone call and goes into a government office filled with flyers of missing persons. A woman brings Luke into a room where she hands him the note June wrote him via the Mexican ambassador's assistant. The note, read in June's voice, says: "I love you so much. Save Hannah." Realizing they are both still alive, Luke cries while he smiles.

Cast

Starring

• Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne
• O-T Fagbenle as Luke Bankole

Guest Starring

• Rosa Gilmore as Zoe
• Tim Ransom as Whitford
• Erin Way as Erin

Additional Cast

• Jordana Blake as Hannah Bankole
• Ted Simonett as Older Guardian
• Ben Lewis as Peter
• Kim Roberts as Christine
• Shane Daly as Joe Bradley
• Marvin Kaye as Boat Captain
• Krista Morin as Rachel Tapping

Quotes

• Luke Bankole: We're just out for breakfast. It's not illegal.
• June Osborne: Not yet.

• Luke Bankole: Who are you guys?
• Peter: You got an Army brat, two strays, a gay, and a nun.
• Luke Bankole: Sorry about the "fucks."
• Christine: [chuckles] I think God has bigger things on His plate these days.

• Peter: You know at some point, you're gonna have to stop collecting strays.
• Zoe: I shoulda stopped before I found you.

Music

• "Sweet Baby James" — James Taylor, pancake music.
• "Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby" — Cigarettes After Sex, closing credits.

Notes

• Whitford addresses those who made vasectomies illegal as "they", as well as those who "can track" cell phones, "location services or not". The latter "they" clearly refers to the Gilead regime and its representatives.
• The events of this episode are happening three years before the main storyline, which in turn takes place at most Several Months after the Takeover (see Offred (TV Episode)§Notes), i.e. the escape takes place at most several months after the Washington D.C. events. This means vasectomies became illegal already in the pre-Gileadean (and presumably democratic) era a few years prior. Encroachment on corporal self-determination are usually prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. (Fundamental Rights and Constitutional Law/Privacy and Self-Determination)
• This could be a clue that the conspirators had already notable influence with the pre-Gileadean government and possibly even infiltrators.
• A scene shows that Washington D.C. fell just as the U.S. military and civilian authorities discovered it wasn't foreign terrorist that caused the attack. The woman who was a U.S. Army soldier was based in Columbia, South Carolina at Fort Jackson; this was still albeit barely under U.S. control along with most of the state of South Carolina that was assigned to verify a Red Center.
• The attempted escape takes place months after the President's Day Massacre and several weeks after June and the other women were no longer legally allowed to work.
• Whitford tells June and Luke that American passports are useless, insinuating that by that time, the new regime already started using own travel documents. It is unclear if the Republic of Gilead has already been established at this point. (Republic of Gilead)