The Handmaid's Tale returns to form in a propulsive final season
The Hulu drama recaptures the urgency and watchability of its early episodes.
Photo: Steve Wilkie/Disney
As the sixth and final season of Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale returns this month to give its audience, and heroine June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), some closure, it’s worth taking a beat to really consider the lifespan of this monumental series. In the history of television, there’s never been a time when audiences could watch a fictional, dystopian drama about the patriarchal and theocratic overthrow of the United States government unfold onscreen in parallel with chillingly similar events happening in real life.
As they say, timing is everything, and series creator/executive producer Bruce Miller (Alphas, The 100) couldn’t have launched his telling of Atwood’s 1985 book at a more opportune moment. The pilot dropped on April 26, 2017, just three months after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Told through the perspective of June, audiences came to know how she was placed in her “sacred” position and—through flashbacks—witness some of the steps taken that eventually ripped away autonomy and dignity from all women.
Even if we remove current politics from assessment, the first two seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale are still high watermarks. The alchemy of Miller, his writers, and the cast made this series, early on, an inspired reimagining of the brilliant source material. But for all its strengths, the series has suffered from the common challenge of keeping audiences engaged with relentlessly depressing storylines and tough depictions of torture and misogyny. There’s also a strong argument to be made that the show should have been condensed into a tighter run. The last two seasons of Handmaid’s in particular tested the patience of audiences who were very much ready for a conclusion to June’s suffering.
In this final batch of episodes, the throttle has been released and the show delves into Gilead’s liberal capitulation experiment, New Bethlehem (run by Bradley Whitford’s pragmatic Commander Lawrence), as well as the individual fates of June, true believer Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), zealot Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), and the many others impacted by this bleak turn in society.
