Is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Ending With Season 5?
June (Elisabeth Moss) made it to safety and freedom in Canada in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 — and killed Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) in the finale — so could the end be closer than we might think for the Hulu drama?
Jordan Helman, the head of scripted content for Hulu Originals, isn’t saying, but he hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility. “We’re having conversations right now about what the future of The Handmaid’s Tale holds,” he told Variety. “What [executive producers] Bruce [Miller], Warren [Littlefield] and Lizzie [Moss] have delivered for us over the course of the past several years really warrants a tremendous amount of trust both ways. And so I have the deepest belief that they’re going to come to us with a plan about how much longer the show needs to go on.”
While it’s unknown at this point, Helman does think that they’ll have the answer “in the coming months” and if Season 5 is indeed going to be its farewell, “that would happen sooner rather than later.” And it’s no surprise that it sounds like Hulu’s not going to cancel the series; it has grown in viewership season over season, with Season 3 to Season 4 up 32 percent.
As fans of the Margaret Atwood novel on which the series is based know, there’s more to the story of Gilead, in a sequel book and series, The Testaments. That’s also part of the conversation about the drama’s future. “There is also a conversation about how and when we introduce The Testaments into the larger world of Gilead on Hulu,” Helman told The Hollywood Reporter. So even if The Handmaid’s Tale ends sooner rather than later, there’s more to come in that world.
As we wait to find out the drama’s future — including when we’ll even see Season 5 — we know we can expect to see “June finding a way to go forward” following that shocking finale, Miller told TV Insider. “I think what June is realizing is that every day you have to put your head down and fight. How is she going to do that and still be a whole human person? Or maybe she’s just gotta give up being a whole human person and put her head down and fight anyway.”
Sophie Giraud/Hulu
And whenever the show ends, we have to see June and Luke (O-T Fagbenle) reunite with their daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake), who’s still in Gilead, right? “I feel like [the reunion with Hannah is] the end of the show,” Fagbenle shared. “I feel like to want for that is to want for the end of the drama, and I think as long as that reunion is unresolved, we’ll have more episodes of Handmaid’s.”
Whether that happens soon or not, Miller did say that Hannah’s parents will be “as active as they can be, [and] they will continue to be,” when it comes to getting her back.
But whenever that series finale comes (in Season 5 or beyond), don’t necessarily expect a happily ever after. “Those creatively sadistic creatives we have making the show, I don’t think they’re going to give us a happy ending where Luke and Hannah and June walk off into the sunset and build a new house in the Maldives,” Fagbenle said. “I think there’s probably more blood and torture on the horizon.”
The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 5, TBA, Hulu
