Fair warning: This article contains spoilers for episode four of the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale (and drops some heavy-handed hints about what’s to come later, too).

June’s failed escape attempt has landed her back in Gilead – and into a whole world of trouble.

At first, it seemed as if our brave heroine was untouchable: Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) may have had her chained up at the Red Centre, but June refused to be referred to as Offred.

“It’s June,” she snapped, almost feral in her fury. “You know my f**king name.”

Aunt Lydia, though, was undeterred: instead, she shows June her old red and white uniform hanging from a rail in the corner, and informs her that Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) have agreed to her returning to their home for a “trial run”.

“You see, June will be chained in this room until she gives birth, and then June will be executed,” smiles Aunt Lydia. “Offred has an opportunity. It would be better for the baby.”

June, it seems, senses a very different kind of opportunity: back at the Waterford home, there is still a tiny possibility that she will be able to rekindle her escape plans and flee over the border to Canada. Locked in this room, however, she is sentencing herself to death. So, fury clearly visible in her eyes, she agrees to become a Handmaid once again – and goes along with the story that she had been kidnapped and taken from her “home” against her will.

“Kidnapping is a story everyone can life with,” she notes, noting that the subterfuge allows the Waterfords to a) keep their baby, b) keep their position of authority (the Commander has already seen his position threatened after the previous Handmaid rebellion) and c) maintain Gilead’s glossy veneer of “reach and might.”

The Handmaid’s Tale recap: the heartbreaking ‘death’ of June Osbourne