Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6, Episode 10.
And just like that, Bruce Miller’s TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel has officially taken its final bow. In six seasons and 65 episodes, viewers watched June Osborne go from a frantic but courageous handmaid into the leader of a rebellion against the patriarchal, totalitarian society of Gilead.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang unpacked the finale’s biggest moments with TheWrap, including those heartwarming surprise returns, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and Luke Osborne’s (O-T Fagbenle) tender farewell, Serena Wharton’s (Yvonne Strahovski) apology and much more.
In Episode 10, titled “The Handmaid’s Tale,” June’s years-long worth of efforts took down Gilead’s reign over Boston, returning the city to U.S. territory. As the last bits of Gilead’s hold on her home burn up in flames, memories of Nick Blaine fall onto her like ashes. She and Luke have found peace and acceptance in their newfound differences, knowing that what keeps them united is their fight to save their daughter Hannah (Jordanna Blake).
While nothing is like what it used to be or could have been, June closes the chapter with many of her love ones, including her mother Holly (Cherry Jones), Janine (Madeline Brewer) — whose daughter was also returned to her, thanks to Mark Tuella (Sam Jaeger), Naomi Putnam (Ever Carradine) and Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd); as well as the return of Dr. Emily Malek (Alexis Bledel).
“I know [show creator Bruce Miller’s] feeling, which I think is so lovely in how the episode ended up. He wanted it to not suffer from finale-itis,” Chang explained. “He didn’t want to wrap everything up in a beautiful bow, and he didn’t want it to feel like this is the final episode of this whole series. He wanted it to feel like this is what happens the next day. It feels like life.”
Chang continued: “We had Eric’s amazing, epic Episode 9, where he really delivered on everything that we wanted to see. And then I think 10 is just sort of very beautiful and elegant denouement of what happens after that huge revolution, where you finally get bloodlust satiated. It’s kind of like what happens the moment after the end of ‘The Graduate?’ Here’s the next day. It’s that realism and that novelistic quality of the show that makes it feel real, and is why people connect to it … it doesn’t feel like a TV show.”
As the city regains power, June burns the last remaining item from her horrid years as a handmaid: her red dress and cloak. However, the final scene shows June deciding to relive her abuse, but in the form of a supportive and informative tool for the families that have been torn apart. She begins to pen her story into a book, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Read below for more with the showrunners, including how the upcoming spinoff “The Testaments” changed the show’s ending. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
TheWrap: We got to see the return of some familiar faces, including Alma (Nina Kiri) and Brianna (Bahia Watson) in that dream/fantasy sequence. Talk to me about that.
Tuchman: If you’ve talked to Bruce, he’s had the idea for that dream sequence for a long time. And if you remember in Season 1, when Janine (Madeline Brewer) is going to jump off the bridge and June is trying to get her not to, and June saying, ‘Someday we’re going to go sing karaoke and get wasted, and Moira (Samira Wiley) is going to be there.”
That stuck in [Bruce’s] head, I think. So to see it actually play out in this fantasy, and to see Alma (Nina Kiri) and Brianna (Bahia Watson) return, and to see Janine with both eyes — what should have been. These vibrant, beautiful young women should have had these lives, and these lives were destroyed or taken from them. I find it incredibly powerful, and it was even more powerful in person watching them shoot it, to see this group of people get back together. So it’s a wish fulfillment moment. It’s just an opportunity to see what could have been, should have been.
For the first time ever, June finally gives Serena her forgiveness for all that she’s done. How was it to craft that moment?
Chang: That’s one of the themes that we played with throughout this season, which in Episode 6 actually, there are like two big June-Serena scenes. And you know, Serena even says, “Yet you refuse to forgive me. I’ve tried and tried again to make amends, and yet you refuse to forgive me.” And June says, “Well, I can’t forgive you. Don’t you think I wish I could if only to be rid of you.”
And that, for Serena, it really started to define her relationship that, like it or not, she uses June, sees June as her vehicle for redemption, and she’s not going to feel right about herself. She’s not going to feel good about herself unless June forgives her. And for so long, June can’t. Then in the finale, June finally does sort of a gift to her, and it’s a gift to herself too. Forgiveness is a gift.
So they finally come to this point where Serena did this incredible thing in Episode 9, which is give up the location of that plane. June is finally able to forgive her, and that really releases and liberates both of them, and that relationship, and their tortured, tortured dynamic, which has been very instructive for both of them, it’s like that dynamic finally comes to a close and they go their separate ways.
Tell me about Luke and June’s sweet but sad — at least for the viewers — farewell.
Tuchman: So much has been made about the love triangle, and who is June going to choose? And yes, of course, I understand that was a significant thing, but ultimately, that’s not the show. It’s not what the show is about, and it’s not about her choice. What I love about how June and Luke end up, how Bruce wrote [it] and how they played it, it just feels very real. It feels mature, it feels honest. It feels like a couple that have a long history together, that share a child, but they’re different people. They’ve changed. As much as they wish they could go back to who they were, they can’t. They’ve been forever changed by this experience. What they will never give away is the connection that they have. Of course, it’s through their daughter, but the love and respect that they have for each other. So maybe they won’t be physically together, but they’ll always be bound together, and then sometime in the future, they’ll reunite again.
It just feels like the most mature, authentic, adult version of that relationship that we could get. It feels like real life.
In the final scene, we see June recording audio so she can write “The Handmaid’s Tale,” were those the first lines from the book? Unpack that entire scene.
Chang: Yes, those are the first lines from the book. Bruce had that idea for June to record her handmaid’s tale I think for years, for seasons, that that would be a scene in the finale. Originally, it wasn’t actually the last scene. It wasn’t what he envisioned as the last scene, but I think that ultimately it is so perfect as the last scene. I’m glad that he made it the last scene, and actually it was like a little easter egg before, I think, in the pilot. And we did it here. When she says, ‘Chair, table, a lamp,’ there’s like a little click of a tape recorder that goes on. It’s in the pilot, but you probably don’t notice it, but here you finally see her later with the tape recorder. What I love so much about that is that the whole scene made so much sense to me as a story.
The context is that we knew we could not bring June and Hannah together, which was, as writers on the show, extremely painful. But as you know, there’s a sequel, and it’s all about Hannah. And they will hopefully reunite in that show, but we couldn’t do it in the show because [“The Handmaid’s Tale” author] Margaret [Atwood] wrote “The Testaments” and it’s a beautiful book, and it’s going to be a beautiful show.
What you would expect to happen in this show is it would end with that reunion, and we couldn’t do that. But what made so much sense to me, what was so beautiful about the way Bruce did the finale and [how] Lizzie [Elisabeth Moss] directed it and acted it, is that when she starts to record her tale, it is for Hannah. And what we realize is that this whole show we’ve been seeing in this entire story is her reaching out to her daughter, and her daughter hearing this one day. So it creates that relationship between the two of them, which has to be good enough for now, you know? And as June says, also in the finale, “This story is for the moms who don’t get their kids back.” It is a story of trauma and loss, and that is just real life, and you don’t get everything that you want.
All episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” are now streaming on Hulu.
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