Boston is finally free in the series finale of Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ The sixth season focuses on June and her friends continuing to fight against Gilead, inflicting one major blow after another to the authoritarian regime. The penultimate episode has Mayday make a major breakthrough by killing the extremist Commanders of Gilead in one single blow, even if it means sacrificing a couple of them along the way. The final episode of the show focuses on June reflecting on this victory, what it means for Gilead and America, and most importantly, where it takes her next. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Boston’s Win is Just the Beginning of Mayday’s War Against Gilead
The episode opens with a celebration. With its Commanders down, Gilead’s Boston meets the full force of the rebels and the American military, and the city is taken over. Soon, Gilead’s flag is torn down and replaced by an American flag. A bonfire marks the celebration, where June thinks about all that it took to get here, including Lawrence’s sacrifice and Nick’s death. It is revealed that the win in Boston is just the beginning. With no one to lead them, Gilead’s forces will quickly be taken over as the rebels capture the rest of Massachusetts, then New York, and Ohio move west.
This is a huge win, but June can’t help but think about the fact that her daughter, Hannah, is still thousands of miles away in Colorado with the Mackenzies, and considering everything, it will still be a while before Mayday can take over Colorado and free her. This only makes her want to continue fighting, a sentiment she shares with Luke, Moira, and everyone else working with Mayday. The next day, Mark tells her that there has been a shuffle in Gilead’s leadership, which has led to Commander Mackenzie being promoted. This means that he and his family have moved to Washington, D.C, which means that Hannah is much closer now, and her rescue might be earlier than expected.
Another person in need of rescue is Janine, who was taken away by the Guardians when June and the other Handmaids were almost executed. Mark reveals that she has been taken by the Eyes but is still alive. They are trying to locate her, and the person who has turned out to be the biggest help in this cause is Aunt Lydia. It seems she has turned to the side of the rebels and has become their inside man in Gilead. Mark also reveals that they are working to get a lot of other people out as well. In a heart-to-heart with June, he also reveals that his son is in Hawaii with his ex-wife, and it is the thought of leaving a better world, free of Gilead, for him that motivates him to keep fighting. Just like June and Luke can’t rest until they have a free Hannah and a ruined Gilead, he, too, cannot rest.
June Finally Forgives Serena and Bids Her Goodbye
It is 2-0 for Serena against Boston, as this is the second time she has played a critical role in the fall of the city. The first time, she worked for Gilead, and the second time, she helped the rebels kill the Commanders, including her new husband, to ensure that they win. Now, however, she is trying to find a place for herself and her son. Due to her reputation and her former position in Gilead, no country is ready to give her citizenship. As she doesn’t have an American passport and her Gilead identity is gone, she has no place to go or call home, for that matter. However, June points out that she still has her son, and that’s what she should focus on.
Like the rest, Serena is sent to a refugee camp, where Mark assures her he will find her and help her with the passport situation. Before leaving, she apologizes to June about everything she did, and unexpectedly, June says she forgives her. This is a major step for both women because, since Serena’s change of heart about Gilead, she has apologised to June several times, but June never lets her have the satisfaction of forgiveness. Now, however, she has decided to close this chapter, and she sends off Serena in good faith to find her own fate in this new reality. The departure of one familiar face is made up for by the arrival of another.
Mark gives June a pass to visit the Boston neighborhood where she used to live. He gives her a restricted access pass, asking her to use his name if she is stopped at a checkpoint, revealing that he is now a Commander. As June walks around the streets, she bumps into Emily, who disappeared into Gilead a while back. She reveals that she had been working undercover as a Martha all this while, and found a way to stay in touch with her wife and son in Canada. As they cross the Wall, where they once saw Handmaids and rebels strung up, they see the Guardians executed, a day they never thought they’d live to see.
Happy Reunions Lead June to Make an Important Decision
After a reunion with Emily, June gets some more happy news. She is woken up in the middle of the night and taken to the new border with Gilead, where she finds Janine being dropped off by the Guardians. But that’s not it. Moments later, Naomi Lawrence shows up with baby Charlotte in her arms. It seems that she has accepted the situation, especially after her husband’s death, and Aunt Lydia played a role in convincing her to give up the baby. The Aunt knew that Janine would never leave Gilead without her daugther, so she does that favor for her favorite girl. Janine is beyond happy to have her daughter in her arms again, and seeing them makes June realise that reuniting with Hannah is what she wants more than anything else in the world.
The reunions continue the next day as Holly and June’s mother arrive in Boston. While June is happy to be with her daughter again, she knows she can never rest until she has Hannah. So, she apologises to Holly for leaving her, but her mother gives her courage, assuring her that she will not be abandoning Holly by continuing her fight. At the same time, she also advises June to write a book about her experiences, to give hope to other women like her. At first, June doesn’t think she has a book in her, but later, as she talks to Luke, he also tells her to write her experiences.
He says it doesn’t have to be just about all the bad things that happened to her, but all the good people she met along the way, who helped her survive, loved her, and changed her life for the better. The couple also talks about how much they have changed over the years, and their paths are now moving in different directions, even though their destination remains the same. Luke is going to New York to find new ways to cause trouble for Gilead, while June has decided to find out what Mark is planning next and how she can free Hannah. But before that, she decides to go back to where it all started.
Whose Hand Does June Hold?
June’s journey in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ started at the Waterford house, so when the time comes to wrap it up, she goes back to the place which, at one point, she thought she’d never be able to escape. When she thinks about writing a book and telling her story, she knows that it must begin from the room where she’d spend her days wondering whether she would really escape someday or if death would claim her first. The Waterford house is abandoned now, bombed and broken. She walks through the halls of the place where she was terrorised by Serena, raped by Fred, befriended by Rita, and fell in love with Nick. She returns to the room with “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum” written on the wall, the phrase she’d found in the corner of the cupboard from the previous Handmaid, who hadn’t been lucky enough to survive.
June thinks about Hannah, who is still in Gilead and most likely moving towards the same fate that June and other Handmaids had to suffer. Even though she is adopted by a Commander, her identity as a woman puts her in a tragically subservient position. As June thinks about how she survived this ordeal, she thinks about her daughter, hoping that one day, she will see her again, where both of them are free. A lot of time has passed since she last saw Hannah, and she imagines her as a young woman, holding her hand, signifying that she hasn’t let go of her yet and will keep fighting until she has brought her home again. And then, she turns her attention to the room. “A chair, a table, a lamp,” she starts recording, which shows that she has decided to write that book after all.
Why Does June Call Herself Offred?
June’s words are a throwback to Margaret Atwood’s book of the same name that inspired the six-season Hulu series. These words and a lot of what follows are borrowed directly from the text of the second chapter, where we meet Offred in her room for the first time. Her lines are also a full-circle moment for the series, as these are the words that introduced us to June/Offred in the first season at the Waterford house, where she was sent after being captured by the Guardians. This means that the narration that we have been hearing from the first season is actually June’s recordings, maybe even the book that she has written to describe the hell that was Gilead.
The last line of the show is “My name is Offred.” This is curious because everything that June fought for was to get her identity back, to be June again and not be known as “of-someone.” The fact that she chooses to call herself shows that she is ready to go back to the memories of being a Handmaid, terrible and sickening as they might be. She is ready to reflect on her time in that prison of a room, where each day was poison that she was sure would kill her someday. Having escaped all that, it is not surprising to see that she would prefer not to revisit those memories. Perhaps this is also why she wasn’t so keen on writing the book, because she knew she would have to confront that pain of abuse and trauma again.
Now that she has decided to write the book and tell that story, she knows that she cannot leave out or not acknowledge Offred while telling June’s story. As she said to Emily earlier, no matter how angry she is about everything that happened, she cannot change the fact that it did not happen. So, in presenting her story to the world, she wants to share her experiences as well as those of other women, including but not limited to her friends like Janine, Emily, Moira, and others. And she cannot do them, or herself, justice without revealing the true extent of their horrors. More importantly, she cannot talk about their escapes and their wins without talking about their imprisonment and their losses.
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