The 6th And Final Season Of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Is A Wild Ride, Says Elisabeth Moss

In an interview before the sixth and final season of Hulu’s award-winning series, The Handmaid’s Tale, a smiling Elisabeth Moss discussed what the fans can expect as June Osborne continues her fight against the evils of Gilead.

“It’s such a wild ride,” began a wide-eyed Moss, adding how shocked she was as the newly written scripts were passed around the set during prep and filming. She said that much of the time behind the scenes was spent with her team in awe. One would think that with 50 episodes already under their collective belts from the first five seasons, she and her colleagues would be used to the craziness of this story, but she made it clear that this new season takes things even further than they’ve ever gone before.

Based on Margaret Atwood’s bestselling novel, the series created by Bruce Miller has been off-book since the second season, and the writers have done a phenomenal job of creating intricately-woven storylines and deeply-layered characters over the seasons.

Overall, the series has won a total of 15 Primetime Emmy Awards since its premiere in 2017, including awards for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress for Moss, and supporting acting categories.

The sixth ten-episode season will premiere on Hulu on Tuesday, April 8, with three episodes. New episodes will drop weekly through May 27. Moss also serves as executive producer and directed four episodes this season: the first two and the final two. She has also directed episodes in past seasons, and as she explained, since she is in almost every scene and always on set, it’s not too much of a stretch for her to wear both hats.

Season five left fans waiting to see what would happen after June and Yvonne Strahovski’s Serena Joy Waterford barely escaped Canada with their children on a train to safer lands. As far as karma goes, Serena had been edged out of her protected position as the Wife of a powerful Commander. Not only was she no longer protected, she was left as a single pregnant woman who soon became a Handmaid. At the time, Strahovski told me that it was “quite emotional” filming those episodes.

Strahovski had just had her second baby, who was eight weeks old when she went back to film the fifth season. “Things were just quite close to home. I remember reading one of the episodes, and I had to read it with one eye. It was just too much. As an actress, you have to imagine a lot of things and then play them. So, it wasn’t very hard to imagine what it would’ve been like having a child for these scenes, and it was incredibly emotional.”

In a separate interview during season five, Moss discussed June’s harrowing plight as Gilead strengthened in power. She was on the run after she and a pack of Handmaids viciously killed Serena’s husband, Commander Fred Waterford. Her relationship with Serena has gone from enemies to, at various points, saving one another from the ravages of war.

Though each has continuously tried to destroy the other, they share a common understanding that no one else will ever fully comprehend. As executive producer Warren Littlefield said of the June/Serena dynamic in an interview pegged to season six, the term “frenemy” doesn’t do it justice. “Their relationship, which is filled with hate and the desire to eliminate the other person, becomes almost love and a mutual respect. This has been the central relationship of the series. And I think we end in a really satisfying place.”

Simply put, there is no June without Serena, and vice versa. To survive, they’ve been forced to work together and put their tormented history aside to ensure survival. Fans have had to wait a while to see how this will all unfold.

The two-and-a-half-year gap between seasons five and six was due to two back-to-back Hollywood strikes. During this time, Moss also became a mom for the first time.

Moss looked happy and excited to share the culmination of June’s story with the world as she reiterated the incredible job the writers did with the series finale. She recalled talking with her colleagues as new scripts were passed around. “I remember sitting there like, ‘And then this happens! And we all just sat there like, ‘Wow! What?’ You would never think in a million years that would have happened!”

Moss was being coy, careful not to give away any spoilers, but her eyes lit up as she talked about the progression of the storylines. At this point, the media had been given the first eight episodes, and we were left with one of the show’s best cliffhangers yet.

“So much happens. It’s jam-packed,” added Moss, promising plenty of surprises. Without giving anything away, it’s fair to say that those still trapped in Gilead are more determined than ever to escape, and Mayday this season is a decidedly more organized effort.

It takes time to build an army of rebels. In Gilead and real life, when everything is stripped away from a group of people, even their names in the case of the Handmaids, the result is a dangerous mob with nothing to lose.

“We’ve been waiting, but revolutions aren’t built in a day,” Moss explained. “It has taken a while to get there, but now there’s an infrastructure to support this rebellion. They’re becoming more organized. In previous seasons, it was more of a random camp here and there. There’d be one group of people here and another group underground there. Now, there is a headquarters and a coordinated effort. There’s a plan, which is something we haven’t had before. It’s about time.”

The show brilliantly puts June at the center of a love triangle with her husband, Luke Bankole (O-T Fagbenle), and Nick (Max Minghella), in such a way that the fans seem equally split as to who she should end up with. Even though Nick is by all accounts a Nazi, we see what June sees in him. Moss explains that in times of war, people do things they’d never do otherwise to survive.

“These are desperate times, and people are doing desperate things,” she states, assuring a resolution to this storyline by the end of the final season. “It is a thousand percent going to go to a place that will surprise people. It’s going to take some twists and turns that will be pretty definitive, which we’ve never done before in that love triangle.”

She tells me she’s often asked who she thinks June should be with. “I don’t think that answer is interesting,” she admits. What she finds interesting is that June genuinely loves both men for different reasons, and they love her. “I think we’ve done a really good job of making sure that the love triangle is even. We’ve built it well, so you don’t know who she will be with.”

Moss concludes by describing The Handmaid’s Tale as a survivor story. “My favorite part of the show is that June started as this regular woman. She was one of us: a mom, a wife, a friend, and she has become, I think, what you or I would become in that scenario, with all of the flaws and strengths. I hope I have the strength and heroism that she has. I hope I would rise up and lead a resistance movement. I hope that’s in me. There are things that you would have to do that you would not be proud of to survive. That’s unfortunately the reality of the situation she’s in. She’s a person who has learned what she has to do in the moment. There’s something that happens this season that tests June’s resolve in a way she’s never been tested before, and I don’t think she will ever be tested like that again.”

You’ll have to tune in to find out how it ends. Though Miller didn’t give away spoilers in an interview before the final season’s debut, he did say it was important to stay true to Atwood’s books. “I feel we’ve done the best work when we’ve stuck to Margaret’s structure and storytelling,” he said, adding, “June, in my eyes, has already won, and what she’s doing this season is showing us the woman she’s become. Any victory she gets along the way, I’m hugely for. The way I approached it from the beginning was not to think about what the audience wanted, but what I thought June would get. I tried to be as realistic about how far June could get if she pushed. We’ve followed June for so long, and we want to see what the Handmaid can achieve before her tale ends.”

For fans in need of a refresher before digging into season six, here is Moss’ breakdown of the season five finale.