Tropes often get a bad rap for being overused, but they can serve a powerful purpose when used with intention. The Handmaid’s Tale proves this in the Season 5 two-episode premiere, where it brilliantly uses the “food is power” trope to deepen its storytelling. This trope links a character’s control over food to their power in the narrative.

In Gilead, food for Handmaids, Marthas, and other “lesser” individuals is tightly controlled—both to preserve wartime resources and to keep women healthy for pregnancy. Their meals are bland, portioned, and joyless, symbolizing their lack of agency. By contrast, those in power eat freely, reinforcing their dominance.

In Season 5, this dynamic shifts. June, no longer under Gilead’s rule, eats on her own terms—signaling her growing autonomy. It’s a subtle but clever way The Handmaid’s Tale uses a familiar trope to reflect empowerment and control, adding meaning beyond dialogue.

It’s telling that in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 premiere, “Morning,” June—still bloodied from killing Fred—meets her co-conspirators at a diner and voraciously eats, taking food from their plates as well as her own. Her act of consuming their meals subtly mirrors how she used them to carry out Fred’s murder. She eats with bloodstained hands, smearing Fred’s blood on the glass she drinks from. The scene is a visceral display of reclaimed power—June has killed her oppressor and now freely chooses what, how, and how much she eats.

In Episode 2, “Ballet,” the narrative shifts back to Gilead with Serena Joy’s return. At Fred’s wake, food once again becomes a symbol of control—lavish, excessive, and curated for appearances. A tower of macarons appears, echoing Season 1 when Serena gave June a single macaron as both a forbidden treat and a calculated show of dominance. Even in that small offering, Serena maintained control, and now the same symbol resurfaces as she reclaims her role in Gilead’s hierarchy.

At Fred’s wake in Season 5, Putnam eyes a new potential handmaid, Esther, and stages a disturbing “audition” by offering her a piece of chocolate. He teases and withholds it, forcing her to eat it on his terms. Though lacking the graphic violence often seen in The Handmaid’s Tale, the scene is deeply unsettling—an exercise of control that, through the lens of the “food is power” trope, starkly contrasts June’s newfound autonomy outside Gilead.

By the end of Episode 2, Esther weaponizes that same symbol of power. She poisons herself and Janine with chocolate, using Gilead’s own tool of control as an act of rebellion and severance.

Beyond this, the show weaves food into power dynamics elsewhere—like the wine shared in June’s household or the guards’ small gestures meant to pacify Mark Tuello. In the buildup to its final season, The Handmaid’s Tale uses food as more than a background detail—it becomes a subtle yet potent narrative force, revealing who holds power, who’s losing it, and who’s taking it back.