After the action and carnage of Execution, we had to wonder how the series finale, simply called The Handmaid’s Tale, would keep up the momentum of last week. In short, it didn’t. This episode was a 55 minute denouement. And I am totally here for it. One of the things people rarely discuss about traumatic events is the way you’re supposed to just...go back to living a regular life afterward. After all your mental and emotional circuits have been rewired.
Luke and June reflect on how they’re both very different people now. They still care for each other, feel some kind of love, and respect each other’s objectives. Unsurprisingly, Luke is off doing extreme leftist stuff while June is clearly not giving up the fight either. None of them are sleeping. After prolonged trauma, most people don’t sleep without pharmaceutical help.
Boston is free, after being left rudderless after the mass deaths of the commanders. It’s not all good news though. Hannah is still with the Gilead family, though they’re slightly closer, in DC. Worse still, the Eyes have Janine. But Lydia is looking for her. How much did we love Lydia’s turnaround this season? Ann Dowd was consistently exceptional in this series. If you’re new to her work, check out the HBO series The Leftovers, or great horror movies like Hereditary and Apt Pupil.
June’s flashback to losing Hannah for a few minutes at a carnival is telling. She tells her oldest, “mommies always come back,” letting us know that she’ll never stop looking for Hannah. Later, June finds that Serena is incredibly put out to be mildly inconvenienced. Serena has her life, her child, and yet another man looking out for her. Hilariously, she ends up in a small room with “A bed, a table, and a chair—what more could anyone need.” The same setup, you’ll recall, that “Offred” was given upon moving in with the Waterfords.
Serena confesses that she’s “ashamed.” And yes, she should be. I imagine the lesson we should take away from June forgiving her abuser is that June is the better person and that forgiveness is good for you. But Serena knew she was wrong when she helped subjugate women, when she abused her staffers, these were things any adult knows not to do. She’s only sorry because it’s all over. That’s why she’s complaining about being a nobody.
Suddenly: Emily!! I don’t think any of us expected her to show up. She seemed...off. We know at the end of Season Four she’d gone back to Gilead to fight for the resistance. She was a martha for a time, and worked with Mayday. Trying to reconnect with her partner and son has been tricky, but basically Emily gives June tacit permission to leave her family and get back to the fight. Like her and Tuelo—the fight is for their children. It great to see Emily, but jarring to hear all the Gilead expressions tumbling out of her mouth.
The scene where June envisions the life they should have had—the one Gilead took from them—is both fun fan service and wish-fulfilment for the cast. We hadn’t seen Janine’s other eye since S1E1. When The Handmaid’s Tale premiered on HULU in 2017, decent people were all still reeling from the confounding election of a lecherous game show host to the highest office in the land. Eight years, a pandemic, a domestic terror attack on our capitol, and the abdication of the Constitution later—the fascism is slapping us in the face and we’re gawking at it as if we’ve learned nothing. Anyway, Landslide was an excellent choice for this scene.
We can’t imagine what’s happening when June is woken from a sound sleep. A clandestine meeting—the best possible thing we could hope for: Janine. She looks...rough as hell. We only have a few seconds with her until Angela, Aunt Lydia, and Naomi show up. Naomi is giving Janine her child back. This is presented as another altruistic gesture on the part of a Gilead wife. Sorry, but no. Naomi never appeared to be a kind or attentive mother in the first place, and literally regarded handmaids as animals. Nobody thinks she’s strong enough to be a single mom. The kid is mostly a liability for Naomi. And she probably gave it up to avoid charges.
June’s moment with Lydia was more grace and forgiveness. She acknowledges Lydia’s change of heart and thanked her for standing up for what’s right. Lydia’s response tells us a few things—she’s going back to Gilead and she’ll be toeing the line. Though, we think, with an improved understanding of the world she lives in and new objectives. If you’ve read The Testaments, and you totally should, you’ll see what our favorite Aunt gets up to in the future.
We’ll recall that before Gilead, June worked as a book editor. That’s a cool job with a lot of opportunities for personal growth and advancement. June’s mother thought June was squandering her talent doing ‘business’ instead of being an activist. So as we watch Holly plead with her daughter to write a book instead of being an activist—it’s a total reversal of where they started. Later, Luke also suggests she write a book, if only so that the decent folk will be remembered—Rita, Lawrence, Cora, Emily, even Nick.
Every parent, I’m told, would do anything to protect their children. But the question becomes—do you protect them more by staying with them, or by creating or fighting for a better world for them. As an author, I have a clear bias. But I also think writing a book is an impactful way to inspire sociopolitical change. We hear the same ‘I neglected my family because my job was important’ line from military folk (like Tuelo, who tells us about his son in Hawaii that he never sees), docs and nurses, researchers, all sorts of people. In the end, The Handmaid’s Tale teaches us that you just gotta make the choices you can live with.
The series closes by taking us back to where we began: the now-ruins of the Waterford house. They spare us the flashbacks of “Offred’s” arrival and early conversations with Fred, Serena, or Nick. Remember, it’s our last chance to get long slow closeups allowing us to contemplate June’s innermost thoughts. And contemplate we do, because there is a sense of wistful victory in seeing the once-opulent home dilapidated and empty. Why is she there? To get ideas.
The episode closes with June speaking what we know are the opening words to Atwood’s novel. We’re reminded that June has gone from a suicidal widow (she believed Luke to be dead for some time) called “Offred” to the warrior and activist we came to know. I’m a great fan of the trope of ending a book with the main character writing it. I use that in my third novel—and as mentioned, it’s also the ending of Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.
The Handmaid’s Tale finale was a grounded and impactful conclusion to a series that could have easily become overwrought with aggressive political commentary, bogged down with exploitative sex scenes, or mishandled by cowardly studio interference. It didn’t. Overall, the show remained pitch-perfect in its depiction of the fascist desire to control and command, the sniveling toadies that enable whatever works best for them, and the will of the people determined to fight against it. The final lesson is that victories are great, but it’s not over until the machine is broken. Here’s hoping that the lessons of Atwood (and everyone involved with this vital addition to the zeitgeist) ripple out to where they’re most needed. 9/10