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In Margaret Atwood’s The erotice massage elderly womanHandmaid’s Tale, the story of Offred is told from an anthropological distance. The book frames Gilead as something odd that happened in the past, and Offred’s testimony of her time as a handmaid is considered an historical artifact. From that, viewers of The Handmaid’s Taleon Hulu can infer that the Gilead of the show must at some point fall.

After two bleak seasons -- one unbearably so-- Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Taleappears to be drifting towards that inevitable end. Very, very slowly.

The cliffhanger ending of Season 2 left viewers wondering what would happen to Offred/June after she turned down an opportunity to escape Gilead in favor of getting her baby Nicole and friend Emily out of the country. Season 3 picks up right where the finale left off, with June in the road confronting the immediate consequences of her decision.

Without spoiling the season premiere or any episodes after (the first six episodes were provided for review), it’s fair to say that June’s choice acts as a rock thrown into the still pond of Gilead — rippling outward to affect more than one woman’s life.

Consequently, there are many important actions in the first few episodes of Season 3: New characters come to the forefront, fires erupt, secrets are revealed, and emotional reunions take place. The sense of momentum that was missing from Season 2 is almost back, but the show’s other flaws continue to pull back on the reins. For every burning blaze, there’s a five-minute sequence where characters angrily stare at architecture, or yet another too-long close up on Elisabeth Moss’s award-winning face. The Handmaid’s Talehas gorgeous direction and cinematography, but hell if it doesn’t wallow around in them in lieu of following up on its actual plot.

A common complaint about Season 2 was that the unyielding horrors of Gilead turned the show into trauma porn, and for the most part the new season has learned from that negative response. There are awful moments in Season 3, including a diabolical twist in how handmaids are treated in different parts of Gilead, but the show no longer takes every opportunity to show its characters being tortured and abused. When it does lean back into violence it serves a greater purpose to the story, which should be a relief for anyone who could barely get through last season without needing a hug, a blunt, or a therapist.

Even as The Handmaid’s Talelearns from its previous mistakes, it still revels in some of its more annoying habits. The long, slow shots mentioned above are one of these, but more egregious is its insistence on punctuating big moments with cloying needle drops. In one episode, a willful act of destruction rages to the tune of “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats. In another, a small victory comes through with the opening chimes of Buddy Holly’s weapons-grade earworm “Everyday.” These musical cues telling the audience how to feel were jarring in the first season and played out by the second, and are beyond irritating in the third.

Even with these caveats, Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Taleis good. It’s slow, annoying, and good. Maybe the reason it feels bogged down by tracking shots and ambiguous conversation is because audiences expect a lot more payoff for their time, which is absolutely not how change happens in the real world. The fact that Season 3 focuses so much on how one handmaid’s choice can change the world is the glimmer of hope that keeps characters (and viewers) holding on.

There has to be hope — that the revolution comes, that June is reunited with her children, that Serena Joy is punched directly into the sun — or else there’s no point to the show. This is not just ahandmaid’s tale, it’s thehandmaid’s tale. June’s role as a narrator centered her as the protagonist in previous seasons, but Season 3 does the work of making her something much bigger. It’s worth it to keep watching to see what that something is.