Not long ago Yvonne Strahovski, who plays beautiful, ruthless, deeply complicated Serena on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” was forced to watch early scenes of her character’s cruelty.
Of course, Serena was being cruel to long-suffering heroine June (Elisabeth Moss). It wasn’t a nice experience to relive.
“I was dying. I wanted to vomit! It was horrible,” Strahovski said in an interview, of footage played at a panel event. “To go back and look at that was insanely jarring.”
To which longtime “Handmaid’s” fans would likely reply: Tell us about it, Serena! We’ve gone through hell and back ourselves, for 56 episodes.
Rapes. Mass hangings. Shootings. Torture. Kids torn from mothers, tongues from mouths. And more. The searing Hulu drama about a totalitarian state that treats women as property, based on the Margaret Atwood novel, may have been brilliant. But the brilliance came from abject darkness.
So praise be, loyal fans: Creators of the show felt your pain. They want you to know that this, the sixth and final season, will be different.
It will still be Gilead, to be sure. As Bradley Whitford’s ever-quotable Commander Lawrence would say: “Gilead’s gonna Gilead.” But it will be faster-paced, and more satisfying. There will be catharsis and redemption — rewards for all that fan loyalty.
There may even be … levity?
Yes. Don’t take it from us (though we’ve previewed the first eight episodes). Take it from June herself.
Moss, who not only stars but directs four episodes this season, says it was around season 4 or 5 when creators realized they wanted to move away “from too much in-your-face darkness.”
Of course, the show’s hardly turned into a sitcom.
“We wouldn’t be ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ if we didn’t have those dark moments,” she says. “It would be dishonest.” But, she says, “We did want to bring in more lightness and levity.”
Helpful in that regard: Whitford’s whipsmart characterization of Commander Lawrence, who tosses off memorable one-liners like “Serena, are you suffering from an irony deficiency?”
Whitford confirms a reporter’s suspicions that he’d come up with that one himself. “I’ve been telling that joke for years,” he says. “I pitched it … and I’m very proud of it.”
The series will move faster, too
Eric Tuchman, showrunner with Yahlin Chang, recognizes people had started to find the show “a hard watch … and that was honestly a way we as writers were beginning to feel.”
So, along with shunning the most extreme cruelty, the show has abandoned what he calls the “more languid pacing” of the past.
“We had a lot of stories we wanted to tell in 10 episodes,” Tuchman says. “We wanted the season to have a feeling of momentum and to be propulsive.”
Adds Chang: “It was a now-or-never thing — this is the last chance we get to tell these stories with these characters."
We can likely expect fewer endless gazes into June’s tearful eyes. There’s stuff to get done.
It’s decision time: Are you good or evil?
A number of characters have flirted with the other side, morally, in the show — good people doing terrible things, terrible people occasionally doing good. Well, it's time for everyone to take a stand.
“People don’t stay the same,” Moss says. “Someone’s gonna go to the dark side, someone’s gonna go to the light. But … you can’t just plod along, avoiding choosing a side. At a certain point, you have to choose.”
Of course we’ve always known where June stood, as the show's moral compass — even if many viewers were stunned/perplexed/annoyed each time she returned to Gilead of her own accord.
But June’s gonna June, as Lawrence might say.
When we left her in season 5, June had just escaped Toronto, where the tide was turning against refugees from Gilead. She boarded a train headed westward, along with baby Nichole. Then she heard another baby’s cry, and it turned out Serena, her former tormentor from Gilead, was there too, with her own baby. “Got a diaper?” Serena asked.
While the upshot of this train ride is one of many forbidden spoilers, it’s safe to say June and Serena’s relationship remains … thorny.
Is everyone redeemable — even Lydia?
Strahovski herself isn’t sure Serena is redeemable.
“She has softened. She’s made redeemable choices. And if there’s ever going to be a bigger redeemable moment, it may occur this season,” Strahovski teases. But she adds: “I don’t know if any of it is entirely forgivable.”
Then there’s Aunt Lydia. The very name strikes terror for those who remember the horrid things she did to those handmaids.
But Lydia is already showing signs of change. (She’s also going to be central in an upcoming sequel, “The Testaments,” based on a later Atwood novel.)
Ann Dowd says it’s all about love — for Janine, her favorite handmaid.
“Love changes everything,” Dowd says. “It’s the most powerful thing in the world.”
The ‘Handmaid’s Tale' actors have changed, too
“This role has really pushed me to corners I never imagined,” Strahovski says. “It’s made me a better actress for it, 100%.”
As for Moss, she says her “whole professional life has changed on this show.” Not only as actor, but as director and producer.
“For me, that’s been massive,” she says. “I love acting so much, but I did need something more to sink my teeth into … I wanted be more involved in all sides of what we do, and I have learned so much.
Current events have seeped into the script
“The Handmaid’s Tale” premiered in 2017, six months before the #MeToo movement erupted. In 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“As a woman, I have fewer rights now than when I started on the show,” says showrunner Chang. “I never thought that we would lose Roe v. Wade, even working on the show … And that does start to get infused into our writing.”
Whitford brings up the plight of pregnant rape victims “who do not have access to contraception or abortion care, or the healthcare that they need.”
“It’s certainly been in our consciousness,” he says, “It’s a reason why you need a show like this, about resistance.”
As for Moss, she prefers to cite the continuing relevance of Atwood’s story, 40 years on.
“Of course it had a relevancy that you couldn’t ignore in 2017,” she says. “But I don’t know when this book and this material has ever not been relevant … You look at the show and go, God, are they trying to make that connection? No, I think we’re just trying to be honest and tell the story of these people in this place, and it happens to be something that is incredibly relevant and present."
