The Handmaid’s tale: season six (2025)
Episode #10: “Series Finale: The Handmaid’s Tale”

To spend eight years on a story — through its horrors, resistances, and moments of hope — is to make an emotional pact. And so it is with certain muted letdown that I watched the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which once seized us by the lapel and now sets us free with something more akin to a shrug.

That’s not to say the finale is poorly written. Technically, the show is as visually barren and tonally assured as ever. Elisabeth Moss, as June, still carries trauma around like a second skin — haunted, defiant, exhausted. She encounters several major characters, some of whom were presumed dead, and even forgives some of those who had previously been part of Gilead’s machinery. But here a gnawing suspicion: can forgiveness be so easily accomplished in a world based on such deliberate wickedness?

The climax appears to be saying that time, circumstance, or a gesture of decency at the last minute is sufficient to make amends. That might be interesting thematically, but as drama, it is unsatisfying. There is a nod to continuation — a strand left hanging tantalizingly for the next sequel series, “The Testaments” — but what is left behind is oddly static.

This is the strange paradox of longform storytelling: the challenge of knowing when to leave. Some shows bow out too soon, like “Breaking Bad” or “Ted Lasso,” but with still-rolling momentum in the tank. Others linger past their expiration date — “The Walking Dead,” “Game of Thrones” — and are reduced to specters of who they once were. The Handmaid’s Tale does that, its urgency dulled as the seasons passed.

Early seasons were a masterclass in restraint and mood — the claustrophobia of Gilead, the horror of its ruthless reasonableness, the fresh terror of each new corner that was uncovered. But the more the world opened out, the series didn’t always keep pace. The mystery of Gilead faded and was ultimately treated as a set piece, visited over and over with diminishing insight. What had been unpredictable then turned into a cycle: June avenges, suffers setbacks, clings, and repeats it all over again.

Even the interpersonal tension — namely the drawn-out stress between June, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and Nick (Max Minghella) — was more about plot wheel-spinning and less about emotional resonance. Some characters, like Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) and Moira (Samira Wiley), became repetitive. They appeared, spewed their lines, and left, their characters appearing to have been wrapped up only by default.

But there were exceptions. Bradley Whitford’s Commander Lawrence remained interesting — a man whose moral ambiguity never dissolved into cliche. Madeline Brewer’s Janine, too, remained a work in progress, delicate and volatile in equal measure. These were individuals who appeared to be going on as the show itself stood still.

There is one near the end where June returns to the Waterfords’ house — the very same place where her nightmare began. The set is gutted, now more a memory than reality. And it’s in this ghostly reversion that the series finale does something like poignancy. Not because it brings anything to resolution, but because it reminds us of what the show had once been. It’s a moment not of catharsis, but of nostalgia — a glimpse back, not ahead.

Perhaps that is what “The Handmaid’s Tale” finale ultimately offers: not a powerful goodbye, but a quiet curtain call. The kind where the lights dim, the actors take their bows, and we’re left remembering a time when the stage burned brighter.

VIEWED ON
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Disney+