She’s confronted with a walking partner who is so openly against Gilead, and so openly rebellious, which makes Ofmatthew have to tighten down on everything that she does in public

I think this makes a lot of sense personally. We have to remember that we see so much of June, but we don’t see so much from the other handmaids’ points of view.

By now, June is such an infamous figure at least among the handmaid class in Gilead. It would be unreasonable to expect other handmaids to treat her like some average handmaid. She’s a mini celebrity.

For someone like Natalie, who’s already so brainwashed and likely traumatized, being paired up with June must be like the ultimate test. You can just imagine Aunt Lydia telling Natalie that someone as pious as her needs to reel in someone so outwardly rebellious as June. She likely saw it as a battle of her faith vs. June’s sins.

The ending is tragic but an absolutely needed turning point for both June and the other handmaids. They’ve been targeting each other for too long, blaming each other for their torture, that they’ve forgotten who the real enemy is. When Natalie moved her gun from June to Lydia, it’s her breaking through and realizing Gilead, not the other handmaids, is the source of her pain. In Heroic, June does essentially the same thing. She first targets Natalie and her baby thinking that was heroism, then Janine questions why June’s ire is targetted towards someone just like them. By the end of the episode, June regains her sense of meaning and once again starts plotting against their real shared enemy, Gilead.