After eight years and six seasons, The Handmaid’s Tale has finally reached the final page. The Hulu series stretched Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel into a long saga, following June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) as she tried to survive life as a Handmaid in the ultra-religious regime known as Gilead. In the last episodes of Season 6, it seemed like everything was pointing to a happy ending, with many Gilead commanders dying in two different rebel attacks.
But in the final episode, June falls victim to one of the greatest flaws in the series’ writing: her inability to allow herself to finally leave the place that harmed her so much.
In the final moments of The Handmaid’s Tale, we find June right where we met her, saying the words we first heard her say back in Season 1 Episode 1. “A chair, a table, a lamp...and a window with white curtains,” she says. “And the glass is shatterproof. But... it isn't running away they're afraid of. A Handmaid wouldn't get far.”
The series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale ends where it began: in June/”Offred”’s room in Boston.
It’s a full circle moment, but it’s not fully complete. June and the rest of Mayday have liberated Boston, but the fight is far from over. From the jump, Hannah and her husband Luke has been fighting Gilead with the hope of getting their daughter Hannah back. Hannah was adopted into a Gilead family, renamed Agnes, and, by this point, was in training to become a wife. “They still have Hannah,” June tells her old friend Emily. “And it doesn't matter how angry I get. It doesn't matter how unfair it is. They stole my life.” She sets out to find her daughter, no matter what it takes.
We never see if she does, but the last moments of the series — showing Hannah’s small hand reaching out to her — seem to imply that they are eventually reunited, even if we don’t see exactly how it goes down.
But this moment of symmetry just doubles down on the worst part of the show’s structure. It’s a problem that traces back to the Season 2 finale, when June had arranged safe transport out of Gilead and into Canada. But instead of taking the sure path to freedom, she hands her newborn daughter over to Emily and remains in Gilead, determined to save Hannah. This repeated over and over, going as far as June arranging transport to Canada for a plane full of children, but not crossing the border herself. Finally, in Season 4, she actually goes to Canada, but it’s short-lived as she realizes she needs to go back to Gilead to do more work on the ground.
June’s execution leads to the liberation of Boston, but that’s not enough for her to rest.
Multiple times in the last two episodes, characters tell her to rest and enjoy the safety she’s created. “You're finally safe, June,” Commander Lawrence says in the penultimate episode. “No one is safe,” June replies. “Not while those men are alive. Let's see this through. Together.”
One might argue that June’s insistence on returning to the front lines is a testament to her passionate search to look for her daughter, even though the last time June saw Hannah, she was met with a scared little girl who didn’t recognize her. But, arguably, June’s masterminding of the Boston liberation means she’s better off focusing on being a tactician in Canada or behind the scenes of the liberation instead of doing undercover work. In fact, at this point, she’s the most notorious rebel in the movement, as it was her execution that was met with a Gilead massacre.
We’ve seen June turn away from freedom over and over again. Now, she’s actually free, able to walk the streets of Boston as herself, but that’s not enough for her. The ending of her story is set far after the ending of this series, even after eight years. Her refusal to leave Gilead for good is what allowed the story to carry on for so long, but it’s also the reason this ending doesn’t feel complete.
June’s ending is indicative of the show, and franchise at large: it just never ends. No matter what, The Handmaid’s Tale will always revert back to its miserable status quo. And with a spinoff series on the way, it seems like we won’t be leaving Gilead behind anytime soon.
