Blessed be the fruit, and heroic be the handmaids. After a threeyear hiatus, the citizens of Gilead, Little America and New Bethlehem alike return for the sixth and final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” coming to Hulu with a three-episode premiere Tuesday, April 8. Episodes set to release weekly thereafter.
Created for television by Bruce Miller (“Eureka”) and inspired by Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, this dystopian tale takes place in a totalitarian society, Gilead, built in what was once the United States. Low fertility rates led to the rise of theocracy, and the creation of a system in which fertile women (called “handmaids”) are assigned to powerful men and their wives, forcing them to bear children they must immediately surrender.
Eager to save her eldest daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake, “Riot Girls,” 2019), one steadfast Handmaid, Offred (Elisabeth Moss, “The Invisible Man,” 2020) — later known by her real name, June — has fought tooth and nail to free herself from Gilead’s oppressive constraints, despite working for the likes of the ever-powerful Cmdr. Waterford (Joseph Fiennes, “Shakespeare in Love,” 1998) and his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski, “Teacup”), as well as Gilead architect Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford, “The West Wing”), a complicated man wrestling with the reverberations of his own creation. June’s fight continued following the birth of her daughter Nichole, eventually leading both to find safety in Canada, with June’s husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle, “No Good Deed”) and her best friend, former Handmaid Moira (Samira Wiley, “Orange Is the New Black”).
Captured alongside her husband, Serena soon followed suit, confined in Toronto until she was eventually freed and sent to live with a couple more than obsessed with her newborn child. As tensions grew on both sides of the border, however, both Serena and June found themselves on the run in Season 5’s chilling finale, children in tow as they made way for the supposedly-safe Hawaii.
In her first interview following said finale, the Emmy-nominated Strahovski spoke candidly to Vanity Fair about Serena and June’s journey. “Personally, I don’t feel like they’re going to make it very far,” she says. “I can’t see them making it to their destination of choice.”
According to Hulu’s synopsis for the upcoming season, it seems Strahovski is correct. While welcoming series newcomers like Josh Charles (“Dead Poets Society,”
1989), D’Arcy Carden (“The Good Place”) and Timothy Simons (“Veep”), this sixth and final season promises more trouble for series favorites Serena Joy and June, as the former dives into a campaign to reform Gilead, while the latter fights to demolish the oppressive regime.
Later, speaking with W Magazine, Strahovski shared her thoughts on the upcoming season: “It got pretty raw in past seasons, but it gets even rawer this season. I don’t know how to explain it any other way. They just have some kind of a no-[nonsense] language between them, where they can really see and hear each other. They can’t lie to each other very well. And that relationship is also really, really complicated, and it’s been great to go even deeper into those complications.”
While Serena and June fight for opposing sides once again, the morally ambiguous Cmdr. Lawrence is busy reimagining his blueprints for Gilead, creating a more welcoming, approachable environment with New Bethlehem — a development meant to offer more modern-day amenities and less stringent rules to those interested in joining a Gilead-adjacent way of life. New Bethlehem offers sanctuary to all, including banished traitors and runaway handmaidens, which may prove tantalizing for runaway Serena.
Despite his role in Gilead’s creation and evolution, however, Lawrence has often undermined his own totalitarian society, leaving fans to wonder what his true intentions might be with this next plan of action.
Speaking to Liam Crowley at SXSW, Whitford shared his complicated (and cheeky) feelings regarding the show’s final season.
“I won’t say the ending, but we just wrapped up,” Whitford said. “Obviously, it’s a dark show, but it was such a joyous, weirdly sweet set, and a really wonderfully creative, interactive experience. It’s a show I’m really proud of. I love that part, and it was really hard to say goodbye to everybody. But we solved the whole misogyny fascism thing. Our work was done.”
Whether June and her allies are truly able to “solve the whole misogyny fascism thing” has yet to be seen, but “Handmaid’s” fans and avid Atwood readers alike know that Gilead’s story is far from over, given that “The Handmaid’s Tales” sequel, “The Testaments,” is set to be developed into a series of its own.
Set 15 years after the original, this next series will also feature Miller as series creator and will star the likes of Ann Dowd (“The Exorcist: Believer,” 2023), who reprises her role as Aunt Lydia, alongside Chase Infiniti (“Presumed Innocent”), Lucy Halliday (“Blue Jean,” 2022) and more.
Ending one story and introducing another, the epic, sixth and final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” debuts with a three-episode premiere Tuesday, April 8, on Hulu.