‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Ended the Only Way It Could: With an Open Ending

The Handmaid’s Tale ended its run this week with an episode titled “The Handmaid’s Tale,” bringing June (Elisabeth Moss) full circle while also allowing Hulu to leave the door wide open for The Testaments, the upcoming series based on Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel to her 1985 novel. Emotional punctuation took priority over narrative closure, which felt like the best and only choice. After last week’s big revolutionary booms, including the airplane bomb that wiped out all of Boston’s most powerful leaders, Gilead has fallen—in Boston, at least. The Handmaid’s Tale has shown us glimpses of other parts of this changed country (notably season four’s visit to Chicago), but it’s temping to forget there’s more to the fight than just the characters we have become well familiar with. “The Handmaid’s Tale” makes it clear there’s still a long way to go; the rest of what was once America requires liberation, and Luke (O-T Fagbenle), Moira (Samira Wiley), and Tuello (Sam Jaeger), among others, pla ... Read full article.