Why The Handmaid's Tale Needs To End With Season 5 (& How It's Set It Up) (2024)

Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale is well set up to end after season 5, with the series dogged by increasingly varied critical reception to a stale and cyclical plot. The showrunners announced in August 2021 that The Handmaid's Tale team is discussing ending June's story, with the distinct possibility that season 5 could be its last. Based on the 1985 novel of the same name, The Handmaid's Tale season 5 will expand further on Margaret Atwood's original dystopian narrative, still centered around renegade Handmaid June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss).

While critical reception has dwindled,The Handmaid's Tale continues to be a streaming success, meaning Hulu has also purchased the rights to Atwood's 2019 sequel,The Testaments. Set 15 years after The Handmaid's Tale, this new narrativemoves away from Offred's heroics, instead choosing to tell the story from the point of view of three different characters.These will beAunt Lydia (Ann Dowdin the Hulu series), a young girlnamed Agnes, and a Canadian woman called Daisy, who will all expound on the state of Gilead and the wider world.

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To do justice to Atwood's original vision, The Handmaid's Tale must end with season 5. After moving in circles with its narrative for too long, season 4's ending finally set The Handmaid's Tale up for a worthy climax to the series. The announcement thatit will be set up by The Handmaid's Tale's final events further hastens the need for a clean transition out of the series. Here's why The Handmaid's Tale needs to end with season 5 and how it is set up.

Why The Handmaid's Tale Season 5 Should Be The Last

Why The Handmaid's Tale Needs To End With Season 5 (& How It's Set It Up) (1)

When The Handmaid's Tale first exploded onto screens in 2017, Atwood's story delivered a fresh yet horrifying dystopian portrait of human society. Gilead's authoritarian measures were as shocking as they were extreme, with Elisabeth Moss amplifying these emotions with her taut performance as June, one of many Handmaids trapped in Gilead. Fast forward to 2021, however, and The Handmaid's Tale feels stale. The narrative, so tense across the first two seasons, is now often pedestrian, with the cycle of fear, hope, and despair suffered by the Handmaids becoming less impactful each time. Moving June to Canada finally broke free of this established circular narrative, but with all Offred/June's loose ends still hanging in Gilead, there is a risk of falling back into the narrative rut of season 3 if the showrunners try to eke out a few more years of story.

How The Handmaid's Tale Has Setup Its Ending

Why The Handmaid's Tale Needs To End With Season 5 (& How It's Set It Up) (2)

Despite pacing issues across much of season 3, The Handmaid's Tale's narrative has finally built to a head after the ending of season 4. In particular, Fred's (Joseph Fiennes) death in No-Man's Land at the hands of the Handmaids is a key event that will accelerate the ending of the series. As the co-founder of Gilead and a de-facto dictator for his vision of America, Fred being killed will be the catalyst for greater conflicts on a larger scale in the show. Gilead's impending lack of leadership may prompt Canada and other free countries of the world to finally take action and unveil the atrocities happening there, altering Gilead's standing within The Handmaid's Tale world.

On a more insular level, Fred's demise will also hasten a conflict that the showrunners have mostly skirted around to date,Serena Joy vs. June. Despite displaying more humanity than her husband over the series, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) unrelentingly despises June, which will only intensify after receiving her dead husband's finger in the mail. June's brutal murder of Fred also signifies thatshe will now cross any line to enact deserved revenge on her former captors, which will likely be the climax of the series, given all the main antagonists will be dead by her hand.

Related:What Does Commander Lawrence Want For Gilead? Role In Fred's Death Explained

The Handmaid's Taleseason 4 also laid breadcrumbs for the sequel The Testaments, which the showrunners promised will continue into season 5. Hulu's head of scripting has already stated that the writers want to "introduce the sequel ofThe Testamentsin a way that feels organic to the work that has already been done on the platform," before going on to add that "The birth of The Testaments on Hulu and the eventual end ofThe Handmaid’s Taleare related."This organic approach between the two shows is clear inThe Handmaid's Tale season 4, best exemplified by Aunt Lydia's character arc. There, Lydia is reprimanded and generally disrespected by Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) despite being a central pillar of Gilead's belief system. These events, alongside her reinstatement as an Aunt, foreshadow both The Handmaid's Tale ending and The Testaments spinoff, in which Lydia is one of the three main characters.

Why The Testaments Is Better For The Handmaid's Tale's Future

Why The Handmaid's Tale Needs To End With Season 5 (& How It's Set It Up) (3)

Given the fluctuation in warmth from critics over its past two seasons, The Handmaid's Tale should aim to deliver Gilead a dramatic climax worthy of its debut season. By resolving key plot points established in season 1, such as Gilead's fate and Offred's showdown with Serena, The Handmaid's Tale season 5 can provide a wholly satisfying ending to the show. Creating a sequel, The Testaments, allows for a fresh take and narrative on the otherwise rapidly aging Handmaid's Tale plotline while still staying true to the show's origins. While June sometimes narrates in The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments would allow for a new method of storytelling as the plot switches between three characters' perspectives, likely breathing fresh life into the franchise.

It is also critical to note that since the end of season 1, The Handmaid's Tale surpassed its source material, which may have contributed to how stale the narrative became towards the (assumed) midpoint of the series. By ending The Handmaid's Taleafter season 5 and moving forward with The Testaments, the showrunners will also have fresh Atwood source material to work from in the form of her 2019 novel. This may be the key to recapturing some of The Handmaid's Tale canon's lost fire and making The Testaments pack as much of a punch as The Handmaid's Tale did in its initial season.

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Why The Handmaid's Tale Needs To End With Season 5 (& How It's Set It Up) (2024)

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