How 'The Handmaid's Tale' ends after 6 years in Gilead: Does June live?
Spoiler alert! This story contains details from the series finale of "The Handmaid's Tale."
Gilead hasn't fallen quite yet, but June Osborne will keep fighting however she can.
The quiet, introspective finale of Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale" did not solve all the problems of the dystopian hellscape its protagonist (Elisabeth Moss) has been suffering through since the series' 2017 premiere. Fascist commanders are still subjugating and torturing women and children. There are still so many mothers separated from their children. June's eldest daughter Hannah is still trapped in Gilead's claws.
But amid the streets of the newly freed Boston, surrounded by the friends and loved ones she's been able to save, June finds something to hold onto: a purpose, if not peace. She's going to tell her story, her tale, if you will. She's going to keep fighting for her daughter, and all the daughters lost to the hell of Gilead. She's not going to give up.
"Fighting may not get us everything, but we don't have a choice, because not fighting is what got us Gilead in the first place," June tells her mother, Holly (Cherry Jones), explaining her decision to stay in the rebellion. "And Gilead doesn't need to be beaten, it needs to be broken."
Here's how "The Handmaid's Tale" wrapped up June's fight in its series finale.
"Handmaid's," based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel, is certainly a story about sticking with the fight for freedom, justice and what you believe in, no matter what, even if the show can't quite decide what it wants to say about motherhood: Is June's declaration that Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) "just be a mom" really the life for women June has been fighting for this whole time? Reducing women to their fertility is pretty much what Gilead was all about.
But "Handmaid's" is a distinctly imperfect show. It has been messy in its messaging and plotting for a number of seasons now, and the finale isn't any different. If its themes aren't perfect, at least "Handmaid's" goes out with the haunting aesthetics and depth of feeling for which it's known. The stark colors, the grim lighting, the determined face of Moss − these are images that the series ends on. And that feels fitting.
Boston is liberated from Gilead, and the Mayday fight moves on
June's narration tells the audience that it only took 19 days for Boston to fall (or rise again) after the bomb she and Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) planted on a plane killed most of the eastern leadership of the totalitarian state. June's sometime lover Nick (Max Minghella) was among the casualties, a man who could never commit to any side of the cause finally fell victim to his own sense of survivalism.
As the Gilead flag burns, June is stoic amid the celebrating Mayday forces. Mark (Sam Jaeger) finds out June's daughter Hannah has been moved to Washington, D.C., still under Gilead control. She runs into her old friend Emily (Alexis Bledel), inexplicably hanging out in the Boston ruins after an undercover stint in Connecticut, just in time to speak philosophically with June just like when they were Offred and Ofglen.
Janine gets the happy ending she deserves
Mark didn't get Hannah back for June, but he makes some kind of deal to rescue Janine (Madeline Brewer), the most tortured and tormented of Gilead's victims. She's brought across the border into the reconstituted America, along with her daughter Charlotte, who is willingly given up by her Gileadean "mother" Naomi (Ever Carradine) with help from Janine's protector Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd). It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is the happiest, most emotional moment in the finale.
June and Luke say goodbye, for now
Refugees are reunited with their loved ones as a plane from Alaska arrives in Boston, which brings June back together with her mother Holly and younger daughter Holly. She asks her mother to keep caring for the toddler for a while longer while June keeps up her place in the rebellion. But June won't be fighting alongside her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) anymore. The couple, who have aged into totally different people after their respective traumas, part in the most amicable split you've ever seen. They go their separate ways, and agree they will never stop looking for their shared daughter Hannah.
Serena's future is uncertain, but June forgives her
No one much cares what happens to Serena Joy and her son Noah in the brave new world. She has no passport or country and is moving from refugee camp to refugee camp at the grace of Mark. Before she gets on a bus to her next destination, she begs forgiveness from June for all the things she's done and allowed to happen. June forgives her, which is the greatest evidence yet that our weary protagonist is healing. She has, perhaps, finally learned that vengeance does not get her what she wants or needs.
June is ready to write her 'Tale'
In a clunky bit of full-circle plotting, Luke and the elder Holly strongly suggest that she should write down her story, for her daughters and for everyone else. In the final moments of the series, June walks through the ruined streets of Boston until she finds the house she lived in with the Waterfords; where she was raped and abused and where this story began.
She climbs the stairs to her old room, and sits in that same windowsill we first saw her in six seasons ago. She pulls out a tape recorder and recounts the same items of furniture we heard in the voiceover in the season premiere: a chair, a bed, a table. White curtains, shatterproof glass.
This is the handmaid's tale.