The Handmaid’s Tale takes author Margaret Atwood’s popular 1985 novel of the same name and uses it as inspiration for the dystopian series. Now in its sixth and final season, which comes an almost three-year wait after season five, the story is coming to a conclusion.
The series begins following a civil war that has resulted in a totalitarian society taking over much of the U.S. Fertile women are ordered to serve as handmaids for wealthy commanders and their infertile wives, effectively subjected to child-bearing slavery. Women are not permitted to read, write, or work, unless they’re a Martha (Gilead’s version of a maid) or a girl at Jezebels, the club where self-righteous commanders ironically indulge with sex workers. (Apparently not under his eye?) June (Elisabeth Moss) is a fierce, determined young woman hellbent on escaping, getting her daughter out, and saving as many women and children as she can. She succeeds, but the battle is far from over. Things escalate in season five, and the 10-episode sixth and final season finally wraps up the story, for better or worse.
[Note: this review is based on episodes 1-8, which were provided for screening purposes].
A Recap of Season 5
Season five picks up after the brutal murder of June’s former Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes). Since it took place in No Man’s Land out of any specific jurisdiction, June, who played a hand in the attack, gets off scot-free. Trying to take down Gilead from Canada, June is constantly being targeted. Gilead is running campaigns in Canada to promote its ideologies and trying to recruit new support, while anti-refugee sentiment is growing in the country. Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), meanwhile, in a twist of fate, is miraculously pregnant. But now that she’s widowed and technically unwed, she’s relegated to a life much like the oppressive one she subjected June to when she was her handmaid.
Both June and Serena have opportunities to take one another out but can’t bring themselves to do it. June because she realizes that Serena is pregnant and Serena rife with guilt over how she has treated June. They even share tender moments when June helps Serena deliver her baby in a barn. Despite the mercy she shows, however, June makes it clear that they aren’t friends and never will be. But she delivers some advice when Serena pleads with her for help: go back to the Wheelers and plot her revenge from within.
Any of June’s efforts to save Hannah (Jordana Blake) are thwarted, including an attempted raid on the Gilead school orchestrated by Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger), a U.S. government-in-exile representative who has become an important ally in the fight. When a Gileadian truck intentionally hits and seriously injures June, breaking her arm, she realizes it’s no longer safe for her in Canada. Tuello helps June get out of the country via train to Vancouver where she can then head to Hawaii. Luke, however, is stopped at the station, arrested for beating up the truck driver, who has now passed from his injuries.
Aboard the train with baby Nichole, June hears the cries of another child. Through the crowd, she spots Serena and baby Noah on the same train. She fled as well, and both women are on the run together. Season six picks up right from this moment.
The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Review
Fans have high hopes for The Handmaid’s Tale season six, and most importantly, a desperate desire for resolution. The show has long diverted from Atwood’s writing, but the sentiment remains the same. The oppressive society is focused on spewing religion, yet their actions don’t necessarily follow their words. They provide the promise of a better world, but at the expense of breaking down the spirits of women, manipulating vulnerable young men like Nick (Max Minghella), and delivering cruel punishments to all. Gilead is hypocrisy personified.
This season is, more so than others, about both perception and hidden oppression. Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), for example, builds New Bethlehem, a community he swears is a better version of Gilead. But is it really? Just because there are no handmaids and women are permitted to read and write there (yes, this is a selling point), it doesn’t mean the society is progressive. In the end, both are sad attempts at leveraging the concept of “God’s will” to give power to misogynistic, not to mention deeply obnoxious, white men who hide behind the veils of doctrine.
The season delivers on what fans are hoping to see, with heroes and villains, resolutions and liberations, bloodshed and tears. I found myself near tears by the end of the first episode. It’s partly the emotionality of the series and partly, as polarizing as it might be to say, how much the situation mirrors things going on in the real world. It’s all fictional, of course. But it’s impossible not to view the show in some ways as a cautionary tale, even if a far-fetched one.
A show like The Handmaid’s Tale requires both comeuppance and redemption for the most hated characters, and you’ll get a dose of both. The hope for fans who have followed the show all the way through is that it will end in a satisfying way, no matter what that might be. June’s happy ending may have started linearly – leave Gilead, find Luke, get Hannah. But so many wrenches have been thrown into the mix that what her happy ending looks like in the end might not be what it was in the beginning. There’s Nick and her complicated feelings for him (and he for her). There’s her new baby Nichole/Holly. There’s also her deep sense of responsibility to not just save herself, but save everyone stuck in Gilead, and now New Bethlehem. June has become a face for the movement, and nothing has changed for season six.
As you power through the episodes, you’ll feel a constant, ongoing, edge-of-your-seat desire for June and her allies to pull out a win. They deserve one. It might be realistic to expect a neat and tidy resolution where Gilead burns to the ground, every commander taken away in handcuffs as the U.S. returns to normal and the handmaids congregate in a Kumbaya moment. But Moss told Business Insider that the final season will satisfy fans and that it’s “definitely for the people that have stuck with us for five seasons.” So, we can expect that there will be retribution, revenge, and some kind of justice served.
Thankfully, while there’s still a lot of June glaring into the camera menacingly as she plots her next move in this season, these overdone shots aren’t as prevalent as in previous seasons. Instead, this season is more about giving every character their due, not just June.
At times, some moments feel rushed, as though specific aspects of a character’s arc were just thrown in to give them and their story more depth. In others, it’s like characters are reciting practiced monologues that sound too perfect to be off the cuff. You kind of don’t mind, though, because The Handmaid’s Tale has a point to make as much as it does a story to tell. The real story is not that of the resistance itself but of the people who come together to be part of it, and why it’s happening in the first place.
The best way to describe season six is as a 10-episode day of reckoning. All the pieces come together and each player has their own revelation. Some are terrifyingly eye-opening but others bring a semblance of peace. Praise be.
Stream The Handmaid’s Tale in Canada on Crave.