The Handmaid’s Tale May Be Over, But Gilead’s Story Isn’t

Eight years ago, we met June Osbourne. Only at the time, we met her as Offred — a “handmaid” in the fictional(ish) totalitarian state known as Gilead, a patriarchal society that had overthrown the United States government in The Handmaid’s Tale. For six seasons, we’ve been following June as she fights the good fight to save her daughter Hannah and escape the clutches of their oppressors. And while the series officially ended on May 26, the finale did not wrap everything up in a tidy little bow. Rather, it teed up a spinoff that is already in the works: The Testaments.

After all of the fighting and the turmoil and the sacrifice, the finale may not have felt quite as satisfying as you’d hoped. But if you’ve read the bestselling 1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood, or its 2019 sequel, you know that life exists for June and some of her loved ones — and foes... turned maybe allies? — beyond The Handmaid’s Tale TV finale.

So, let’s dive into where the finale ends and what we know about where the spinoff will pick up.

What happened in The Handmaid’s Tale finale?

Spoilers ahead! The following article contains plot points critical to the series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale.

If you were looking for emotional closure for all the major characters you’ve come to know and love, well, keep looking. Having said that, there were a few beautiful moments that delivered hope.

Not only does Janine (Madeline Brewer) escape Gilead, but she also reunites with her daughter, Charlotte. It was a moment miraculously orchestrated by none other than Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) and Naomi (Ever Carradine). Proof that no one is beyond redemption, maybe? Or at least capable of the tiniest f*cking shred of humanity after being truly awful for so long?

Which brings us to Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), who somehow, in true Serena fashion, manages to claw her way back from oblivion and get just about as close to a happy ending as one could hope for. First, Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger) once again helps her flee Gilead (“I’ll find you” — stop, Mark, she doesn’t deserve you!). Then, she apologizes to June, and June forgives her. And, finally, sitting in a refugee shelter with her son, she has an epiphany: He is all she ever wanted. She may have escaped with barely the clothes on their backs, but she has everything she needs.

A few characters, such as Moira (Samira Wiley) and Rita (Amanda Brugel), appear only briefly as the finale progresses. The assumption? They’re still working with Mayday, doing what they can to break Gilead. We get a surprise cameo from Emily (Alexis Bledel), a full-circle moment where she and June walk through Boston, not so unlike their very first scene together as handmaids. There’s also this really beautiful dream sequence of how life should have been, or would have been, without Gilead, where some of our favorite handmaids — June, Moira, Rita, Emily, Janine, Brianna, Alma — sing “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac at karaoke.

June shares a heart-wrenching moment with her mom, Holly (Cherry Jones), as she tells her she needs to keep fighting for all the daughters who were stolen and are still trapped in Gilead.

As for Luke, he and June share a similarly bittersweet goodbye. He’s evolved so much as a character (Team Luke for life), and he supports her to do what she needs to do. He encourages her to write a book and remember everyone who meant something to her on her journey… yes, including Nick. And he reminds her that there was a them before and there will be a them after.

In the final scene, June sits in the very same window in which she started this story, back in the home where she was forced to serve as the handmaid of Fred (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena. She begins to record her tale, and it’s clear that there will be no heartwarming, life-affirming reunion between this warrior and her little girl. Not in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Still, we end knowing that June isn’t giving up the fight.

What is The Testaments?

Anyone who has read Atwood’s 2019 follow-up, The Testaments, knows that the victory June and friends find in Boston doesn’t exactly usher in the fall of the Republic of Gilead. It still exists 15 years later, during which time The Testaments takes place. Through the events that transpire in Atwood’s newer novel, Gilead does finally fall… but we don’t yet know if the spinoff TV series will follow the same arc.

It is certain that Dowd will reprise her role as Aunt Lydia, a central figure in the follow-up. The story alternates in narration between Lydia and two other characters: Agnes (aka June and Luke’s daughter Hannah), who has been raised in Gilead by a high-ranking commander; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada, who is actually Nicole, the daughter of June and Nick (Max Minghella).

Lydia, in her later years, is much like how we see her at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale — a mole who has come to despise Gilead and what it does to her “girls,” so she works behind the scenes with Mayday to help bring it down.

“Lydia is a fucking cat,” Bruce Miller, creator of The Handmaid’s Tale and, soon, The Testaments, told The Hollywood Reporter. “She has 900 lives, which is exactly how those people survived in those kind of regimes by being very good at stepping slightly out of the way when the shit starts to fall.”

Who else is returning?

If you ask Miller, he’d happily have all the major players make a cameo or slide into recurring roles.

“Anybody who has an hour free, I would carry over, if I could manage to make it work. There are, of course, business concerns, but story-wise, I think a lot of them fit into The Testaments world,” Miller told Variety, pointing out, “They’re very connected. I mean, it’s not like a sequel like some other things where you’re just cutting it off. The first set of characters matter hugely to the second set of characters. So these stories are very tied together, and it’s very much a continuation of this Handmaid’s Tale that we’ve seen. You’re just following the daughter instead of the mother.”

Although it’s unclear if Moss will be appearing as June in the series, it has been confirmed that she’ll be executive producing the series alongside Miller and much of the original Handmaid’s crew.

Any idea when The Testaments might come out?

If you felt a bit disheartened by The Handmaid’s Tale finale, perhaps this will cheer you up: It sounds as though The Testaments is moving along rather quickly.

“We’re well on our way towards making it. And we’re in the middle of production, and it’s such a pleasure,” Miller told Variety. “So it’s coming much sooner than I think the next season of Handmaid’s would have come, but we’re well into it, and it’s coming along just splendidly.”