They’re going to keep coming for us,” June (Elisabeth Moss) says to her mother (Cherry Jones) in the series finale of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The rebellion that June led against Gilead has all but crushed the fascist regime’s key figures, but she knows an evil that powerful will not die quietly. Though the government is crumbling, June is still not reunited with her daughter Hannah, who was taken from her to be raised as a pious Gileadean when the dictatorship began.
It’s on that not-quite-hopeful note that the series based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel by the same name ends — a frighteningly realistic conclusion to a show that, over six seasons, has reflected the United States’ slide into autocracy and the erosion of women’s rights.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” debuted just months after President Trump started his first term, and the image of red-cloaked women forced into reproductive servitude became a haunting one for an administration that would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade. According to series creator Bruce Miller, that all happened by chance.
“A lot of the credit goes to Margaret,” he said. “The book she wrote was not timeless, but every time I read it, [I would think], ‘Oh, this is the perfect time, putting it out when the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell were rising in power.’ I think it’s more a function of her being able to put her finger on the eternal conflicts between society and gender and misogyny and male power.”
Yahlin Chang, who was co-showrunner with Eric Tuchman on Season 6 and joined the series as a writer in Season 2, pointed out that while Atwood’s book is dystopian fiction, it is deeply rooted in reality. “Margaret said she never made
anything up,” Chang said. “So we also tried to not make anything up. I think that’s why the show feels realistic — because we imagined what would happen with authoritarians in charge or people with authoritarian leanings.”
To Hulu’s credit, the exec producers said, they never felt censored, even when writing plot lines involving genital mutilation, poisonings and hangings. The streaming service was determined to make a drama that could compete with anything HBO made. And it succeeded: In 2017, “The Handmaid’s Tale” won the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, becoming the first (and still only) streaming series to do so. (It went on to win 15 total Primetime Emmys.
“It’s hard to realize how much they protected the show, how much they fought for the show and went to the mat for us,” Miller said.
Of course, none of it would have worked without the Emmy-winning performance of Moss, who also exec-produced and directed 10 of the series’ 66 episodes. “Lizzie’s directed a couple of my scripts, and no one approaches their work as a director with more thoughtfulness and preparation,” Tuchman said. “When I knew that Lizzie would be directing Episode 9 (this season), which is a big episod —a lot of spectacle and really intense two-handers between people—I knew it was in the best hands possible because she cares so much.”
Winding down such a complex, brutal story after nearly 10 years wasn’t easy, especially given the high expectations of the show’s vocal fans. When Chang and Tuchman spoke to TheWrap, the finale had yet to air, and both seemed nervous that viewers would be mad that they killed major characters. “We really wanted to do justice by our fans,” Chang said. “At the same time, we know that we’re not giving them everything that they want, and that’s hard.”
Still, Miller insisted they always knew where they were going from the beginning: with Moss looking into the camera and beginning to tell the story that has transpired over six seasons. The click of a tape recorder is heard, then: “My name is Offred.” The conclusion circles back to the very first episode of Season 1, when we first heard that click.
“It was a question of how much stuff is going to happen in between and making sure they ended up in a place where that made sense for their characters,” said Miller, who is currently working on “The Testaments,” the spinoff series
based on Atwood’s 2019 sequel, which focuses on Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd).
“It’s always been the natural place for June: ‘It’s valuable for me and worth it for me to tell you that story. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to have loss in
it, but it’s going to make you realize how strong people can be.’”
This story first ran in the Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
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