The Handmaid’s Tale is back for its final season. Here’s what we know

This story contains spoilers for season five of The Handmaid’s Tale.

It’s been eight years since Elisabeth Moss’ Offred first guided us around the horrors of Gilead, and she’s now diving back in to fight for its destruction. The trailer for the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale has just landed, promising an epic rebellion inside the dystopian authoritarian “hellscape”. But, with three years since the show’s last season – thanks in part to the actors’ strikes – it’s understandable if you’re feeling a little lost. Here’s what you need to know.

Where did we leave off?

The last time we saw June (Moss), she was hurtling away from Toronto – where building anti-refugee sentiment was becoming increasingly violent – on a train to Vancouver. Luke, realising he wouldn’t be able to board as he’s wanted for killing the Gilead supporter who ran June over with his car, stayed behind and surrendered to police. In the final moments of the episode, she’s unexpectedly reunited with Serena at the back of a carriage – her new baby, Noah, in arms.

Meanwhile, back in Gilead: much to Aunt Lydia’s dismay, Janine has been taken away by the Eyes after speaking back to the newly widowed Mrs Putnam at her new posting in Commander Lawrence’s house. And Nick, furious about Gilead’s attack on June, is in a holding cell after punching Lawrence in the face. He’s visited by his pregnant wife, Rose, who denounces him for still being in love with June and says she doesn’t want to be with him any more. Not that she actually has a choice.

What’s happening this season?

The official logline tells us that June will be pulled back into the fight to take down Gilead, with Luke and Moira also joining the resistance. Nick will face “challenging tests of character”, Serena will try to reform Gilead, and Commander Lawrence and Aunt Lydia “reckon with what they have wrought”.

Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia in the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale.Credit: Hulu

The trailer reveals that secret resistance group Mayday is working on a plan to kill extremist commanders, and Luke and June are heading back in – “two lunatics heading into Gilead on a wing and a prayer”.

Unfortunately, we can’t look to Margaret Atwood’s iconic 1985 book for clues on how the story will end. The entire plot of the book served as the foundation for the show’s first season, and the writers of the show have been creating new storylines ever since.

Who is in it?

All major cast members are returning, with the notable absence of Alexis Bledel (who played Emily). The actor announced her decision to step away from the show in 2022, and in the season five premiere her on-screen wife told June the character had returned to Gilead to fight.

Josh Charles (The Good Wife), however, has been added as a series regular – and is shown in the new trailer telling Nick to hold the “terrorist rebels” to account. Timothy Simons (Veep) and D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place) will join as guest stars, though it’s not yet clear what roles they’ll play.

What have the showrunners said?

At the end of last season, series creator Bruce Miller told Entertainment Weekly the team was “ending our show on our own creative terms” and has been “[thinking] about the stuff that happens in season six for a while”. He said he’d even been studying the final seasons of major shows such as Game of Thrones and The Sopranos to see where they went right or wrong.

“I’m thinking about it in really prosaic ‘history of television’ terms,” he said.

Elisabeth Moss in season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale.Credit: Hulu

Since then, however, he has stepped down from the role of showrunner to focus on the upcoming prequel The Testaments. Though he’ll remain as a writer and executive producer, former EPs Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang are now running the final season. Chang was nominated for an Emmy in 2021 for writing the season four episode Home. Speaking with Vanity Fair when it aired, she said there were three things she hoped viewers would take away from the series: “it’s wrong to rape, wrong to rip kids from their mothers, and that love survives”.

Speaking to Elle in 2022, Moss – who will direct four episodes in season six including the finale – warned we might not get a clean ending, especially with a sequel on the way: “I don’t think we feel an obligation to tie up the entire story of Gilead.”

What is The Testaments?

Based on Atwood’s 2019 novel of the same name, The Testaments is a new Handmaid’s Tale sequel (set 15 years after the events of the first book) set to start filming this month.

Moving away from Offred, the book is narrated by three women: Agnes, who was raised in Gilead; Daisy, a Canadian teenager; and Aunt Lydia, who is played in The Handmaid’s Tale by Ann Dowd. Dowd is set to return for the role, and Chase Infiniti (Presumed Innocent) and Lucy Halliday (Blue Jean) have been cast as the other respective leads. Bruce Miller will return as showrunner.

When can we watch?

The first three episodes will drop on SBS On Demand on Tuesday, April 8, then the remaining episodes will roll out weekly. The previous seasons are available on Stan (which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead).

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