The first series of The Handmaid’s Tale arrived in 2017 a few months after Donald Trump became US president. Soon, around the world, women protesting against him and for abortion rights donned the handmaid’s uniform of white bonnet and red cloak that was the trademark of the show based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel.
The series, part of an early generation of prestige streaming dramas, became a pop culture phenomenon in other ways. It was the first show on a streaming service to win a best drama Emmy, as well as the 2018 Golden Globe for best television drama, up against the likes of Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, The Crown, and Better Call Saul. For her leading role portraying Handmaid Offred/June Osborne, Elisabeth Moss won trophies for best actress from both ceremonies.
And when Atwood published The Testaments, her 2019 sequel to the original novel, which now has its own television adaptation in development, she cited the influence of the show on some characters. Helped by the programme’s profile, the book was an instant bestseller, then a joint Booker Prize winner.
But having in its first season covered all of the story of Attwood’s first tale set in Gilead – the totalitarian patriarchal republic that took over much of the continental United States – the show continued through four more seasons, which met decreasing adulation. In 2021, its fourth series became an Emmy record holder for the most nominations – 21 – without a win. Reviews became less glowing. Many critics decried the repetitiveness and grim, sexual violence of the episodes.
The show’s narrative had also come to rely less on the dystopian nightmare of Atwood’s creation, and more on two melodramas – the romantic triangle between June and the fathers of her two children on either sides of the Gilead-Canada border and on her interdependent relationship with Serena Joy. Serena is the Gilead fundamentalist to whom June was assigned as a surrogate womb, and whose husband she helped kill at the end of season four.
Now, after a delay caused by the Hollywood strikes in 2023, comes the final and sixth season. For those who have stuck it out all the way through – or for those who ran out of patience in earlier seasons – it’s a 10-episode opportunity to see if June, who has been through quite a lot, gets a happy ending. And if she finally gets back her daughter Hannah, who Gilead stole and who features in the parallel universe of The Testaments.
Oddly, the final season arrives a few months after the start of Trump’s second term and in an era when US-Canada relations are increasingly resembling the show’s depictions of a hostile division between Canada and Gilead. In past seasons, while either seeking refuge in the north or heading south on another mission of mercy, June has traversed that border in secret many times.
At the end of the penultimate season five, though, she was headed with her child west from Toronto by train with other Gilead refugees seeking sanctuary in the remains of the old US in Alaska and Hawai’i. Also aboard the train was her old nemesis Serena and her own baby.
However, the new season trailer suggests that the trans-Canada express is a misdirection and that all roads lead once again to Gilead, where it seems the ever-shrewd Serena will marry another of the regime’s commanders, while the glutton for punishment that is June will be bonneted once again, leading her fellow Handmaids in a murderous rebellion against the Gilead patriarchy it’s long deserved. But in TV years, for far too long.
The Handmaid’s Tale final season, Neon, from April 8.
