Hulu Review: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Returns for a Formidable and Unforgettable Final Season

Since it first began in 2017, The Handmaid’s Tale has offered a dark vision of a totalitarian society and the people who refuse to accept the place it has dictated for them. As pieces of today’s real United States of America start to look more and more like the fictional Gilead, this show makes a bold and ultimately quite successful choice in its final season not to mirror what’s going on but instead to showcase the very opposite: how it might look for Gilead to attempt to deradicalize, and how those who have been through hell trying to take down the regime aren’t willing to give it time to change on its own.

Watching season six of this series, which has long since surpassed the content of its source material, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, necessitates having seen what comes before it. Its characters have evolved considerably, and the season picks up exactly where the previous finale began, with June (Elisabeth Moss) no longer a handmaid in the home of Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) and both of them aboard a train in Canada with their babies. Their paths soon diverge as June is drawn back into efforts to help those who haven’t been lucky enough to escape Gilead and Serena Joy finds a way back into the society she was fleeing as a beacon of change within New Bethlehem, the more openminded and progressive offshoot of Gilead where women can indeed have a voice again.

Audiences who have been with this show since the beginning know that it can often be an ordeal to watch, with transcendent moments of hope typically followed by crushing scenes of devastation, with a betrayal or failed plan leading to untold horrors somehow worse than what’s already come before them. While that is true in the final season as well, there’s a sense that this show is reaching its end, with its characters no longer holding back as they understand the urgency of their actions and that things have been allowed to go on for too long as so many has suffered. Hulu is smartly retaining its typical airing schedule, with three episodes dropping at first to entice audiences but then going down to one per week to ensure each installment has its desired impact and demands viewers return for the next hour.

It’s fascinating to see the redemption arc of Serena Joy and how it’s not a neat circle but a very complicated one, with her so eager to just start over with June and others when she can’t truly comprehend the extent of her cruelty to them before this newfound rebirth. Seeing Serena Joy with Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) is particularly intriguing because she pushes him to take his faith seriously, something he’s never even pretended to do, since, even after the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband and supposed fellow believer, Fred (Joseph Fiennes), she still thinks there is something worth saving about Gilead. She also gets a new thought partner in a commander played by Josh Charles, who is also the intimidating father-in-law of Nick (Max Minghella) and who seems particularly interested in Serena Joy’s vision for what the future can be.

Like everything that’s come before it, this season can be extremely difficult to watch, particularly for those who see all-too-recognizable parallels to the real world. Commanders, even those whose time is mostly spent in New Bethlehem, still visit brothels where they find a new way to treat women poorly, without any awareness of how such practices stand in stark contrast with their alleged piousness. A scene about normalizing relations with other governments in New Bethlehem is eerily reminiscent of a moment from early in the show that features the same fertility propaganda, with visitors overwhelmed by the sight of newborns and willing to overlook terrible injustices for the sake of a glimmer of hope.

For all its transmitted misery, this season is still full of triumphant moments and comeuppance for some who have visited pain on others. The gray area in between is the most intriguing, like watching Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), no longer shepherding young women into their forced servitude and instead worrying over the fate of her precious Janine (Madeline Brewer) with little power to do anything in a society that’s largely forgotten her. Naomi (Ever Carradine), newly married to an entirely uninterested Lawrence, is another fascinating subject who has to adjust to her new status, which is still much more comfortable than most of the women around her but robs her of the authority and station she once commanded.

It’s great to see Moss upping her episode count as director from three the past two seasons to four, helming the first and last two installments of this final run. While this show features a fantastic ensemble, Moss has always been its core, and seeing the disdain and anger barely contained on her face as she sees an opportunity for vengeance remains both powerful and chilling. That handmaids are such a small part of this season is fitting since this represents the final chapter of a formidable and unparalleled saga, exploring the facets of a dystopia that, with just a few more wrong turns, could all too easily be realized in reality in a masterful, gripping, and immensely watchable way.

Season Rating: 9/10