So it's with gritted teeth that a long-suffering audience returns to the God-awful world of Gilead five seasons on for what we are promised – praise be – is the final season. Reminder: this is a world where in a fit of evangelical pro-natalism, America has been rearranged by gender, with the few remaining fertile women being designated handmaids and dressed in red robes and white blinkers, subjected to ritual rape, pregnancy and childbirth. Vessels, not humans.
Over five seasons, our protagonist and titular handmaid June (Elisabeth Moss) has played the victim-turned-rebel-warrior of the regime and, happily for people who are thirsty for more bloodshed, she remains hellbent on bringing down Gilead in season six. Plot twists and foiled escape attempts plus reckless killing or maiming of key characters has made for gripping if depressing drama. Strategic use of high stakes music has drummed feeling into you even once you’re numb from the violence.
This is the problem the show has suffered since season two: it simply can’t get much worse. The acting may be superb, the camera shots may be picturesque, the production smooth. But even bloody horror becomes bland once you’ve been subjected to 66 head-pounding hours of it.
And that’s a problem because whilst the plot may have lumbered on past all probability, its parallels with America have only become more pronounced.
“I’ll be known as the fertilisation president,” the newly elected Trump said this March, echoing JD Vance’s first address as VP in which he said: “I want more babies in the United States of America.” Pronatalism, the idea that the state should encourage higher birth rates, is gaining traction amongst conservatives and tech bro rightwingers across America.
We recently learned Elon Musk’s personal mission involves impregnating multiple women, and has sometimes even courted women via DM. Musk is even encouraging mothers of his children to live together in one deeply dystopian ‘compound’. It’s all very Gilead.
Indeed, since 2017 when the show first aired, women’s rights in America have been hacked away. Greater controls exist over women’s choices: abortion is now limited or banned in 19 states, and voter ID checks are targeting those with changed last names.
In this case, life imitates art to the worst effect possible. Can you walk back from being a pronatalist, or a pro-Gileadean? The show asks this question mainly through the character of Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) – formerly high up in the movement that created Gilead, who has slowly come to terms with its darkness exposing an incredible yet convincing degree of doublethink.
The show is at its best when women assemble, united. The trademark group aerial shots of the red-robed handmaids are just as impactful as they were in 2017. This season, will they finally overthrow Gilead? We can but hope. The cloaks become their uniform, but will the handmaids become an army? “Red is the colour of blood,” June says slowly. “They [Gilead] forgot that it’s also the colour of rage.”
Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is the only character whose story moves me, probably because she goes on an emotional ‘journey’ – unlike most of the others who have been static since season one. It turns out that Lydia is capable of bringing me to tears with a quivering chin. Will she be able to change her mind? Even if it involves accepting the violence, rape and murder she has coordinted? “Surely, in your heart you know rape is rape?” Do morals exist for those embedded in a system? It’s all satisfyingly muddy.
In the political climate of 2025, I would have appreciated an explanation of the mechanisms of the Sons of Jacobs’ rise to power. I want to know exactly how this hellscape came into being. Part of this mystery is High Commander Joseph (Bradley Whitford), who looks like a cross between a polar bear and Keir Starmer. He has somehow managed to ridicule religion and make snide comments about blessings – yet is also the ‘architect of Gilead’. Eh? Although, before you go there guys, that does not mean I’m asking for a prequel.
Unfortunately, we’re getting something even worse. Hulu is not done with this grim universe yet and we’re getting treated to a sequel – The Testaments – based on Atwood’s book of the same name set 15 years on from the original novel. It would seem God is not finished testing us yet. But then again, neither is America.
The Handmaid’s Tale season six is on Channel 4 from 3 May
