Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the series finale of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
After eight years, Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s award-winning dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has come to an end.
Since 2017, the Emmy Award-winning series has followed June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) as she fights to dismantle a radical theocratic regime that has taken over America and enslaved women to bear children for the ruling class.
At the beginning of season six, June was reunited with her mom, Holly (Cherry Jones), who she assumed was dead. June and her husband, Luke Bankole (O-T Fagbenle), and friend, Moira Strand (Samira Wiley), also started planning to take down Gilead’s crooked commanders.
The rebellion group, known as Mayday, then launched its attack. The penultimate episode saw the last of the top-ranking commanders meet their demise in a plane explosion, orchestrated by June and commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford).
Comparatively, the series finale of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is streaming on Hulu, was a much less dramatic installment that focused on tying up the loose ends following the fall of Gilead.
Here’s a recap of how things ended and what happened to every major character in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
June is living in America again after Boston is freed from Gilead occupation
Hulu
The final episode begins with June confirming that Boston has been returned to America and is no longer part of the Republic of Gilead.
The episode is filled with painful goodbyes and tearful reunions. June magnanimously forgives Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) in their final conversation before Serena and her son step on a bus headed for a refugee camp.
Elsewhere, June reunites with Janine Lindo (Madeline Brewer), Moira, her mom, and her daughter Nichole, all of whom she hasn’t seen since before the Mayday attacks.
In a particularly uplifting moment, June and some of the women are seen singing along to the Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide” at a karaoke bar.
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Emily makes a surprise appearance in the finale
Later on in the episode, Emily Malek (Alexis Bledel) makes a surprise return.
The character, who hasn’t been seen since 2022’s fourth season, tells June that she’s been fighting Gilead from the inside while posing as a “Martha,” a domestic servant who works in the house of a commander sympathetic to the cause.
While it appeared that she had abandoned her wife, Sylvia (Clea DuVall), and their young son Oliver, Emily says that she wasn’t gone from their lives.
June decides to write her story down
In a conversation with Luke, June shares her plan to rescue Hannah, their now-teenage daughter, who she has learned is enslaved as a handmaid to a commander in Washington, D.C.
Luke echoes something that Holly tells June earlier in the episode: she should write a book recounting her survival.
“It wasn’t all horrors, right?” Luke says when June brushes off the suggestion. He reminds her of the allyship she found in others who worked to bring Gilead down. “People like Janine, Emily, Lawrence, Nick,” he says. “They’re all worth remembering.”
In the final moments of the show, June returns to the house previously owned by the commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes).
Sitting in the room where she was once held prisoner as a handmaid, she takes out a dictaphone and begins to recite her story — Offred’s story — from the beginning.
The spinoff ‘The Testaments’ will reveal the fate of June’s daughter, Hannah
Hulu
While Hannah’s rescue is an overarching theme of the series, fans may be dismayed that June doesn’t get her long-awaited reunion with her daughter in the finale.
Instead, there is a poignant recurring flashback to a moment before Gilead’s government took over; June and Hannah are seen enjoying a night at a fairground, which momentarily turns into a nightmare when June loses Hannah in the crowd, only to find her standing by a ride, unharmed.
While “The Handmaid’s Tale” give Hannah’s storyline closure, it’s possible, but unconfirmed, that they will reunite in the greenlit spinoff series, “The Testaments.”
The series, which is being developed by Hulu and MGM Television, is based on Atwood’s follow-up novel of the same name and takes place 15 years after the events of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Ann Dowd reprises her role as Aunt Lydia, while newcomers Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday will play Agnes and Lucy, two young women with connections to Gilead’s darkest days.
