TL;DR: The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 finale feels less like a revolutionary goodbye and more like an emotionally indulgent scrapbook. What should have ended with a roar of defiance closes with a whisper of wistfulness. Gorgeously acted, hauntingly shot, but too narratively cautious.
The Handmaid’s Tale season 6
When The Handmaid’s Tale first arrived on Hulu in 2017, it felt like a gut punch to the cultural moment. A searing adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopia just as real-world conversations about bodily autonomy, authoritarianism, and women’s rights reached a fever pitch? Talk about timing. For five seasons, we watched Elisabeth Moss’s June Osborne spit fire in the face of a regime that wanted her silenced, a complex anti-hero forged in Gilead’s crucible. And now, in the sixth and final season, we got… closure.
But not the satisfying, cathartic closure you hope for after years of brutality, trauma, and rebellion. No, what we got was a slow, sentimental procession of goodbye scenes and wistful glances, a finale that felt less like a dramatic full stop and more like a curated exhibit of “Remember When?” moments.
If you’ve followed June’s journey from the Waterford household to the Canadian border, through blood-soaked retribution and moments of staggering loss, you’d expect the final stretch to maintain the show’s searing intensity. Instead, Season 6 trades its rage for reflection. June walks through the newly liberated Boston like a spectral tourist, touching memory after memory like they’re glass displays at a museum. Here’s where she escaped. There’s where she broke. And look, another flashback.
That structure would work, perhaps, if it were juxtaposed with forward momentum. Instead, it stalls. The series finale is heavy on message (“the children are our future” practically booms through the subtext) but light on plot. Characters appear, say farewell, and vanish like spirits. Emily’s return? Undercooked. Luke’s redemption arc? Skimmed. Even Hannah’s fate, once the show’s emotional lodestar, is brushed aside as a future problem. Apparently, that’s what The Testaments sequel series is for.
To be fair, the finale is not without beauty. Visually, it’s often stunning. June standing in a bombed-out Boston as the city’s lights slowly flicker on? Gorgeous. Janine’s reunion with her daughter? Heartbreaking, if underserved. The flash of revolutionary graffiti overtaking “The Wall”? One of the series’ strongest symbolic images in years.
And the acting. Oh, the acting. Elisabeth Moss remains one of the most magnetic performers on television. Even when the script hands her hollow lines or cloying sentiment, she finds something raw and truthful in them. Yvonne Strahovski’s Serena, ever enigmatic, gives a quiet performance that hints at so much bubbling underneath. And the return of Alexis Bledel as Emily might have been a clumsy plot device, but her chemistry with Moss remains electric.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the finale is what it could have been. The Handmaid’s Tale was at its best when it embraced chaos, when it leaned into the unpredictability of revolution. June’s character arc should have ended in fire, in defiance, in action. Instead, it ends in monologue. She sits, poised in the same window where it all began, and recites the opening lines of the book that inspired it all. A neat, literary loop, sure. But also a safe one.
And that safety feels antithetical to everything The Handmaid’s Tale used to be. It wasn’t a show about grace; it was about fury. About clawing your way out of hell and spitting blood on the way. Somewhere along the way, it seems, the show confused therapy with storytelling. Processing trauma is essential for real people. But for fictional revolutionaries? Sometimes they need to go out swinging.
Ultimately, the finale isn’t about endings at all. It’s about transitions. June says goodbye to one life and prepares for another. The baton is passed to future narratives, future children, future series. There’s talk of building a better world, of reclaiming names, of not letting the bastards grind you down. And while those messages are noble, they lack the punch this story deserved.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe after everything, the only thing left for June is the hope that her daughter won’t have to fight the same battles. Maybe it was never about vengeance or justice, but survival and legacy. If that’s the case, the show succeeded on its own terms. But damn, it could have done it louder.
The Handmaid’s Tale finale is a beautifully acted epilogue that mistook catharsis for climax. It closes a brutal, brilliant chapter with a whisper, not a bang. Worth watching for the performances and visual grace notes, but narratively, it plays it far too safe for a show that once made defiance its brand.
