Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale series finale.
Finale? More like DVD Extra. The cast of a once-unmissable show reunited one last time for a series of watery-eyed goodbyes and I love yous. 55 minutes of June trundling around a recently liberated Boston remembering things and having feelings? The Handmaid’s Tale hasn’t delivered a more inessential episode since the ‘What Luke Did” flashback in season one.
You know what’s to blame: therapy. It’s taught us concepts like ‘processing trauma’ and ‘closure’ – both useful in their context but ruinous when mistaken for storytelling. Real lives may benefit from being lived with wisdom, growth and acceptance, but fictional ones can afford more chaos. Characters don’t all need to bow out of their story with instructive understanding; some should be allowed to kick their way out pulling a grenade pin between their teeth.
The Handmaid’s Tale made its name as protest art with iconic imagery, a killer soundtrack and attitude to spare. It could have sent June thundering into the flames, but instead, she got this weepy valedictory tour.
A beautifully acted weepy valedictory tour, one should say. The cast of The Handmaid’s Tale never let you down, but on rare occasions like this one, they’re let down by writing that cares more about completing its characters’ emotions worksheets than about entertaining an audience. Don’t mistake me, I’m pleased that June had all of those repetitive reunions – with Serena, with Emily, with Luke, with baby Holly, with her mother, with Lydia, with Serena again… I just don’t feel like I needed to witness ‘em. How about some story instead? Why not let us see, say, Hannah in wartime?
Why not is because that’s all being saved, along with Aunt Lydia’s next steps, for sequel The Testaments, a continuation that this episode dutifully set up without managing to raise much anticipation for.
The series finale wasn’t about looking forward, it was all about looking back. Hence the surprise return of Alexis Bledel’s Emily, who showed up magically at June’s side with a callback to the start of their tentative friendship in season one. Emily was just one of a rollcall of faces from the past. Those also came in the form of cameos from departed friends Alma, Brianna, and Janine’s right eye, as June fantasised about the karaoke night that might have been.
The episode’s closing moments, in which June revisited the Waterford house burnt out by Serena in season three, were another callback. June took up the same window seat position as she had in episode one and delivered the same opening lines to the Margaret Atwood novel that started all this. Except, now those lines were the opening lines to June’s memoir, bringing the show metatextually full circle.
Nothing in the finale mattered so much as its heavily insisted-upon message, which was all about parents fighting to create a better world to keep their children safe. June readied herself to leave little Holly again, bolstered by Emily’s assurance that it didn’t mean she was abandoning her family. Luke planned to reach Hannah by liberating one state from Gilead at a time. Naomi Lawrence returned little Charlotte to her mother to keep her out of a warzone. Even Mark Tuello was conjured up an off-screen son to motivate his military moves.
By the time Holly Sr had declaimed over not being able to keep June safe, and Serena had promised to dedicate herself solely to the raising of her precious baby Noah, it was hard not to feel a little Gilead propaganda going on in terms of children being the only reason that anybody does anything. I don’t recall that being the point Margaret Atwood was making back in 1985.
Nor was the finale’s ultra-serious, highly emotive tone always the way of things in The Handmaid’s Tale. June’s irreverence, not to mention her excellent way with an expletive, is part of what’s made her an attractive lead character over the years. Next to Gilead’s mannered prayer-card conversational style, she’s been a breath of fresh air. In this finale though, June’s wryness was replaced with her telling Serena to “go in grace” like she was issuing a papal blessing, and telling little Holly all about how much mommies love their babies.
There were flashes of beauty among the sap. The shot of June walking back along the bridge as Boston’s lights turned on was terrific both in idea and execution. Janine getting Charlotte back was a genuine – if unexplored – surprise. “The Wall” being co-opted by revolutionary graffiti and women reclaiming their own names was gorgeous.
Overall though, this was a repetitive and surplus hour that used its screentime to remind us of things that didn’t really require a reminder. June misses Hannah. June once loved Nick. Serena feels bad. The children are our future. We know. You already told us.
The Handmaid’s Tale season six is streaming now on Hulu in the US, and airing weekly on Channel 4 in the UK.
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