WARNING: Spoilers Ahead
It has been so long since the last episode of The Handmaid’s Tale aired on November 9 of 2022 that you could be forgiven for forgetting that Hulu’s acclaimed series was still a going concern. The other issue is the series’ uneven qualitative performance since its groundbreaking debut season. Some shows aren’t meant to last six seasons, and as we are now into the show’s sixth (and final) season, it’s become more evident that the story of June/Offred is one of those shows. Over the life of the series, it has been showered with 94 Emmy nominations and 15 wins, but the Academy winnowed their recognition down to just one nomination for 2022’s season five–recognizing Elisabeth Moss’s consistently excellent work in the Leading Actress – Drama category. However, her name was the only one on the list of Emmy nominees.
As the show finally wraps up, the only remaining question is whether the show can regain some of its former glory and be more than just a showcase for Moss’s stunning ability to convey suffering and rigorous defiance against the world of the fictional country of Gilead, where women who can give birth have become subservient to the wealthy who cannot conceive, and all women are, by law, second class citizens. Even the show’s conflicted villain, Serena Joy (well-played by Yvonne Strahovski), loses a finger for stepping out of line and taking some measure of public agency in her life.
At heart, The Handmaid’s Tale is a cautionary, well, tale (based on the esteemed novel by Margaret Atwood) of what happens when religion, patriarchy, and fascism become the rules of the road. When the series debuted way back in 2017, it struck like a lightning bolt at the town square on a busy afternoon. It not only felt relevant but prescient. Considering the times we live in, The Handmaid’s Tale should be no less relevant now, but the drop in quality and consistency has left many fans and formerly raving critics exhausted and even exasperated. I would include myself in both categories.
Before I cued up the first three episodes of this season, I had to go through several recaps from season five just to shake the cobwebs loose. Having done so, I can say that I’m pleased to report that while the series is unlikely to regain its former mojo, the first three episodes were genuinely gripping. The season debut (well-directed by Moss) finds June and Serena in an unlikely alliance on a train bound for Toronto with Serena’s child in tow. Having separated herself from Gilead, Serena’s Canada-bound train requires her to falsify her identity among other women who were former handmaids. June’s inherent decency in helping her former captor is less about Serena’s semi-rejection of Gilead and more about the safety of Serena’s child.
Most of the episodes take place on the train, and Moss uses the claustrophobic atmosphere to heighten the tension of their circumstances. If Serena is recognized, all hell is likely to break loose, as the person who was the female face of Gilead is among those who would like nothing more than to rip her to shreds, even if it means going through her baby to get to her. When the time comes and Serena is uncovered, Strahovski meets the moment with a foolish, but character-perfect, speech about her support for the intentions of Gilead, even as she is about to be taken apart by an understandably empathy-free mob. The resulting effort of June to rescue Serena and her infant child is shot with uncompromising and hair-raising deftness and muscularity by Moss and her DP Nicola Daley. You can feel your own mixed emotions tangle with the desire to see Serena escape before she and her child suffer a horrendous fate.
Episodes two and three consist of multiple thorny reunions and a long-in-the-wait face-to-face between June’s husband Luke (a desperate and ragged O-T Fagbenle), and the newly-minted Commander Nick (Max Minghella), June’s former lover in Gilead and hiding-in-plain-sight resistor of his position and country. June loves both men, and her conversations with each are as complex, delicate, and well-written as one would hope they would be. Luke has a court case that could lead to confinement for him (all is not as easy in Canada as one might wish), and Nick is forced to make a decision that will no longer allow for him to exist in the “half-in/half-out” world that he’s been navigating. While his choice is not surprising, the decision to make the moment of violence required by Nick to be “off-camera” is a pretty brilliant one. The faces of all those involved after Nick resorts to the only option left to him tell more of a story than showing the event, or to see the characters discuss it afterwards ever could. They all know Nick has now gone too far to go back.
Speaking of going back, Serena is offered the opportunity to return to Gilead to an island for former handmaids by Joseph Lawrence (the ever irascible Bradley Whitford)–whose conscious-driven nature can be seen trying to create change from within and form a “kinder, gentler” Gilead, and sees Serena as the engine for change. Their union of sorts is a complicated one. Joseph is a politician willing to work with someone whose philosophy he does not share but who may well be a means to his ends.
With seven episodes to go in The Handmaid’s Tale’s final season, it is far too soon to declare the show’s sudden return to form a full-on success. Still, for those who lost confidence in the show in recent seasons, hope is surprisingly alive and well both on the screen and in the writer’s room.
“Praise be.”
