Following six crazily emotional seasons, The Handmaid’s Tale has curtains on Hulu, and it’s not a quiet departure. Premiered on April 8, 2025, The Handmaid’s Tale Final Season is more of a look-back at society and a blazing call to action to resist, hope, and act.
Starring Elisabeth Moss, who also directs and executive-produces along with playing the fierce, long-suffering June Osborne, The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 is as intimate as it is political. While the world has never been more divided and disturbed, the show doesn’t just entertain—it asks us to listen. To do. To refuse to surrender.
The Start of the Finish: Where We Leave Off
Season 6 continues where we left off—June on her way to safety, baby in hand, with a blazing fight with Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), her former bully turned reluctant accomplice. These two women crackle with tension, their violent past sparking below every word.
What is astounding about this past season is that it refuses to fall into the trap of predictability. Rather than neatly tying all loose ends up in a bow, it presents us with the ugly, brutal reality of trauma, survival, and uprising. June and Serena’s partnership is not neat or convenient—it’s tender, emotional, and humanly painful.
Elisabeth Moss’s Quiet Goodbye
Behind the cameras, Elisabeth Moss shared a last day on set with poignant honesty. “It was a little day… just us as a crew,” she said to Yahoo Entertainment. “It felt very right.” That intimate, sentimental farewell was a world away from the tears her character had cried on television. Moss’s ride with June has been nothing short of revolutionary—both for the character and for her.
Having been playing June Osborne since the show initially debuted in 2017, Moss is now TV’s most powerful woman, in both front-of-the-camera and behind-the-scenes roles. Her own helm brings even more layers of emotional depth to Season 6, so the last arc rings with poise, determination, and gut-punching honesty.
Art Imitating Life: Fiction Meets Reality
One of the best things about The Handmaid’s Tale has always been its unsettling relevance to current events. From the right to reproduce to the misuse of power by authoritarian regimes, Gilead’s issues just seem to become more and more relevant with each passing year. And Season 6 keeps that tradition of reflecting reality with devastating accuracy.
Yvonne Strahovski, the actress who plays the complex Serena Joy, mentioned this in an interview. “No one could have anticipated the way our show would track alongside political events,” she stated. Samira Wiley, who portrays Moira, added, “It makes me feel an extra responsibility as an artist to share these stories honestly.”
And they do. The series mines the subtleties of trauma, collective pain, and women’s solidarity better than perhaps any show ever has. Each scene is a whisper of truth—sometimes gentle, sometimes a scream—but always telling.
The Cast Discusses: Resistance Isn’t Just On Screen
The last season isn’t merely a series wrap-up—it’s an incitement. The performers themselves have weighed in on the real-life lessons sewn into the show. Bradley Whitford, Commander Lawrence, the one with the compromised conscience, wasn’t subtle. “Culture alone will not get us to where we wanna be… we have to engage politically,” he stated.
Ann Dowd, with her heart-stoppingly intense turn as Aunt Lydia, delivered perhaps the most explicit directive to audiences: “Fight back. Pay attention. Put your phones down. Look at what’s happening and do something.”
It’s not exaggeration. It’s embedded in each line, each scene, each character development throughout Season 6. The writers want you disturbed—but more, they want you empowered.
A Spark of Hope Amidst the Despair
Despite its bleakness, The Handmaid’s Tale always had a thread of hope running through it, and Season 6 is no different. In so far as it’s an ending, it’s also a paean to defiance and the unbreakable will of human beings. June isn’t a character—she’s an icon. She’s a symbol. A beacon.
Yvonne Strahovski nailed it: “June is our symbol of hope.” And in this last season, even Serena, once a symbol of oppression, starts to reveal change. Her transformation isn’t to let her off but to demonstrate the bleak, painful process of awakening. Redemption isn’t swift in Gilead, and that’s the very thing.
Sam Jaeger, playing Mark Tuello, spoke the same. The intention, he said, was to bring “joy, hope, and inspiration” into the final arc to counterpoint the heavy emotional load. And it works. In the midst of the agony, there are moments that are like sunlight bursting through the storm clouds.
What’s Next: The Testaments
While The Handmaid’s Tale may be ending, its universe is far from over. Hulu has already greenlit The Testaments, a spin-off series based on Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel. Ann Dowd is set to return as Aunt Lydia—only this time, we’ll see a very different side of her.
“She’s a different person because of what happened,” Dowd explained. And if her arc in The Handmaid’s Tale is any indication, we’re in for a wild, deeply layered continuation.
Fans can expect The Testaments to dive even deeper into the internal mechanisms of Gilead, offering new perspectives and untold stories. It’s not a retelling—it’s a reckoning.
Elisabeth Moss: “It Doesn’t Feel Final Yet”
Even though filming has wrapped, Elisabeth Moss admits that the end doesn’t quite feel real. “We’re still making choices about the show,” she said in a recent interview. “It feels like the beginning of a new part of it.”
And she’s right. For many, The Handmaid’s Tale has been more than just television. It’s been a wake-up call. A companion in difficult times. A source of empowerment.
The last season does not shut the door. It leaves it partly open, leaving us to take the message away. In an age where rights are being diminished and political polarization is increasing, The Handmaid’s Tale is a reminder that stories matter—and so do those who tell them.
Final Thoughts: More Than a Show
In its last season, The Handmaid’s Tale does something that few series are brave enough to do—it faces you. It does not just request your attention. It requires your voice and demands you remain awake, rise up, not cease fighting.
As we bid farewell to June Osborne, we don’t let her message disappear. She is a character. The fight she embodies is very real. And it ain’t over yet.
