‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: What Happened to Commander Lawrence’s Wife, Eleanor?
Although she is deceased, Eleanor Lawrence is still an important character in The Handmaid’s Tale. Her death had a profound impact on her husband, Commander Lawrence. In season 5, episode 9, Lawrence brings Eleanor up while on a phone call with June. However, June drops a bombshell about Eleanor’s death, but what exactly happened to her?
[SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers ahead for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 Episode 9, “Allegiance.”]
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 2 introduced Eleanor and Commander Lawrence
Commander Lawrence and his wife Eleanor are an enigma throughout The Handmaid’s Tale. The pair are first introduced in season 2 when Emily gets posted in their home. Despite Lawrence’s title as the architect of Gilead, he doesn’t share the other commanders’ pious values.
He helps Emily get out of Gilead and even allows the Martha’s to use his home for the rebel group, Mayday. It’s slowly revealed that Lawrence wanted to save the human race from the plummeting birth rate.
Still that doesn’t excuse all the damage he has done. Lawrence’s wife, Eleanor has mental health issues, which are only made worse by her life in Gilead’s horrific society. Eleanor tells Emily with horror that Lawrence is responsible for the dreaded Colonies.
How did Eleanor Lawrence die?
After Emily escapes Gilead, June becomes Lawrence’s new handmaid. She and Lawrence plan to get Eleanor into Canada on Angel’s Flight. However, June finds Eleanor in her room, overdosing on her medication. Instead of calling for help, June watches her die, likely seeing Eleanor as a liability to her plan.
June finally reveals the truth to Commander Lawrence in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5. He tells June over the phone that he is doing what he can to improve Gilead because it’s what his wife would have wanted. June says, “Eleanor hated you. She couldn’t stand the sight of you.”
“She was so broken and so ashamed by the man that she loved that she’d rather be dead. I watched her die. I did I watched her die and I did nothing.” Lawrence then reveals that he knew June had something to do with his wife’s death.
Commander Lawrence plans to remarry in season 5
In spite of this, Commander Lawrence continues to work to make some form of positive change in Gilead, and Eleanor is his inspiration. “There’s two things that I’m always thinking about. One, is his love for Eleanor was real,” Bradley Whitford said of his character while speaking to Entertainment Weekly.
“And then, immediately when I got this part, there’s a guy, Robert McNamara. He was Secretary of Defense and escalated the Vietnam War, and a brilliant economist, who streamlined auto production in the United States, and then used those same ideas to incinerate about a million people on the other side of the planet,” Whitford continued.
“He’s one of these guys that I always thought Lawrence was, someone whose huge brain obliterates his humanity. [Now] I think Lawrence feels like he has an opportunity — and it may be naive, and it may be misguided — to some path of redemption that has to do with Eleanor, and I think it’s an interesting discussion in the world of Handmaid’s Tale.”
Despite this, Lawrence finds himself in a tricky situation. In Gilead, a single man in leadership is frowned upon. This leads Larence to suggest a marriage between himself and Naimi Putnam, whose wife Warren was executed.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 Wednesdays on Hulu.
