Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Hannah Sole | TV | April 7, 2025
The Handmaid’s Tale returns with season 6 on April 8th, which is [counts fingers] bloody ages since the season 5 finale aired in November 2022. Fortunately, nothing of depressing and terrifying note has happened since then to make us dread the final series any more than usual, right? Everything’s fine and that Impending Doom groany sound motif has absolutely not been playing in our heads every day for ages, to the point where it’s going to be a relief to hear it actually coming out of a telly?
Because I’m nice and the night is dark and full of terrors, here’s everything you need to know going into this final season, with no spoilers, a touch of blind optimism, and a wee bit of sass.
Where did we leave everyone at the end of season 5?
June had a season of rebellious shenanigans, including an incursion into enemy territory, a front row seat for a failed attempt at rescuing Hannah and some back and forth with Commander Lawrence. She’s the target of a couple of assassination attempts, and when Luke takes out one of these alleged Lone Wolf types, they decide it’s time to run before he’s arrested for murder. Luke turns himself in at the station to buy June time to escape with Nicole, on a train full of fellow refugees.
Serena is on the train too, with Baby Noah, having escaped the clutches of the Wheelers, who were treating her as their unofficial handmaid. Shockingly, she was not a fan of that.
Commander Lawrence has been working on Gilead 2.0, aka New Bethlehem — a kind of Gilead-lite, in an attempt to woo back escapees and fix Gilead’s international reputation. He tried to get June to be the face of New Bethlehem, and sensing it was a big steaming pile of poo barely masquerading as a trap, she told him to stuff it. With Canada becoming increasingly hostile to refugees, it might be enough to lure back some folks to the fold though.
Mark Tuello was stroking his chin dimple in glee that he had managed to recruit Nick to be an agent on the inside. Nick then immediately punched Lawrence in the face for targeting June, getting himself arrested in the process.
Aunt Lydia was instrumental in the matchmaking of Lawrence and Naomi Putnam, after her grotesque husband Warren (of Ofwarren fame) was executed. Aunt Lydia then placed Janine in the Lawrence house so that she could have the relatively painless posting with nice differently awful people and also hopefully see Baby Angela from time to time. But hearing about the attack on June was the final straw for Janine, who told Naomi to sod off, and was later arrested by the Eyes.
Hannah, you promised blind optimism. This all sounds bleak.
Well, duh, what show are you watching? But I am a sucker for two things in Handmaid’s Land. Firstly, Aunt Lydia. The recent announcement of an adaptation of ‘The Testaments’ is only feeding my delusions that Aunt Lydia’s going to become a rebel mastermind any minute now. This hope persists despite all evidence to the contrary, and is probably just because Ann Dowd is Ann Dowd. I can’t decide whether I want her and Lawrence to unleash chaos as a team, or if I just want her to use her cattle prod on him once or twice. But that narrowing of the eyes when Janine is taken away speaks of a woman with few f*cks left to give. Sic ‘em, Aunty L.
The second source of incessant suckery is the Jurena dynamic. I bloody love it, and it never gets old. The power struggles! Serena’s constant lack of awareness! All the times you can see June taking a deep breath so as not to punch Serena in the face! And now they are train buddies, riding off into the sunset together? PERFECT. Episode 1, ‘Train’, is Jurena-centric if you’re a sucker like me.
There are a few other long shots when it comes to blind optimism, and those belong to the dudes who talk a big game but always end up having less of an impact. Commander Lawrence has experimented with not being awful from time to time, but cannot be relied on. Nick has always managed to slither out of difficulties so far, failing upwards by keeping his powder dry. He has powerful in-laws now as well, and that might save him. Tuello can occasionally throw some zingers in to the mix as well. The dudes are all weighed down with internal conflict and spend so much time worrying about what they should be doing that they don’t do anything at all; for the women it’s easier. For Moira and June, something’s right or it’s wrong. Serena and Lydia embrace ideology until it hurts them or makes them personally angry, and they think that’s the same as knowing what’s right and wrong. But what the women have in common is when they decide it’s time, they get the job done.
The job this season? Check it out:
If The Testaments joins up with The Handmaid’s Tale, then some of the things we’d hope for may be unlikely to happen yet — but hush now, that’s a dread for another day. For now, we can dream of revolution and reunion, of sunshine and rainbows, and of awful men finally getting their comeuppance. There is a moment in episode one where I had genuinely happy tears, and finally, someone is joining me on Team Nick Sucks, for which they earned a cackle. Blessed be the revolution.
(If Janine dies, we riot.)
The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 is available on Hulu from April 8th.
