‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Boss Breaks Down June & Serena’s Escape, Return to New Bethlehem

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers about The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Episodes 1-3, “Train,” “Exile,” and “Devotion.”]

The revolution is here. At least, that’s what The Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Yahlin Chang promised when discussing the sixth and final season of the Hulu drama. Now that the first three episodes have premiered on the streamer, it’s clear that our hero, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), will have her work cut out for her on multiple fronts when she gets back into the fight.

After reaching relative safety on the train out west and reuniting with her mother at a resistance base in Alaska, June decides to leave Nichole there and get back to work. Meanwhile, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) and her baby survive an angry mob when her identity is discovered after June shoves her off the side of their train. She enjoys a bit of respite herself in a friendly religious sect she happens upon, which reminds her of time spent with her minister father, but then she’s recruited to come back to New Bethlehem to become the face of Gilead’s new neighborhood. New Bethlehem is meant to bring escapees back and normalize relations with foreign trade partners, and making Serena front and center is all Commander Lawrence’s (Bradley Whitford) idea.

Elsewhere, we learn that Janine (Madeline Brewer) has been sent to Jezebel’s, and Luke (O-T Fagbenle) gets out of jail … but only on bond until he can have a hearing about his defense.

To break down some of the standout parts of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s first three episodes of Season 6, TV Insider caught up with Chang.

There are some tense moments in the premiere, but there’s also a gentle dynamic between Serena and June on the train. Can you talk about crafting their conversations?

Yahlin Chang: Bruce Miller wrote that premiere episode, and we wanted to do justice to the evolution of their relationship. These two women probably had the most complicated relationship of any two women in the history of our show — maybe in the history of the world — in terms of everything they’ve gone through. There’s a bit of craziness in June in terms of the patience and the generosity that she continues to show Serena. It is an example of her extreme empathy — empathy taken to kind of absurd lengths, maybe, as she’s accused of. Some of the other angry women on the train accuse her of Stockholm Syndrome, but the thing about these two women is that they’re so intertwined. They’ve been through so much together, and they’re so tied to each other that June kind of just can’t let her go.

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When push comes to shove, June has to save her. But even in that gesture, she saves her by pushing her off the train, a moving train. Already, it’s a dual-edged gesture. So I remember pitching back to Bruce that June pushes Serena off the train, and it seemed like a wonderful encapsulation of their relationship because June hates Serena, loves Serena, saves her life by pushing her off the same train.

During Serena’s outburst on the train, she makes it clear she’s still a believer in the system she helped create. However, she seems to have regrets about Gilead in her conversations with June. We’re left with her going back to New Bethlehem and being the face of this. Where is her mind really at?

Yeah, Serena is very much like the hero of the story in her head. And in this story, she changed the world because the world was dying, and women weren’t having babies. And so she changed the world, and it worked, and people went and started having babies again. So she saved the world. But Gilead had those evil, corrupt forces, and Gilead took her vision and perverted it and thwarted it.

She always wanted women to be able to read and write, and obviously, then she turned out being oppressed by the system she created. So now she feels like she can have a do-over where she can fix her past. The stakes — these horrible men took her vision and screwed it all up, and now she could go back and redo it and make Gilead, through New Bethlehem, a newer reformed Gilead that walks in God’s path, because she very much believes.

No matter what she’s done, no matter what has happened, she takes very seriously her relationship to God. She continues to be an extremely religiously devoted person, and so she takes her spiritual integrity very seriously. So she’s always trying to kind of redeem herself in God’s eyes. So that is a huge driver for her, too, and that really dictates a lot of her actions.

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The other thing that happens is that when Naomi (Ever Carradine) and Lawrence come together in Episode 3, Naomi really gets under her skin because Naomi starts to feel proud. Naomi is the wife of the High Commander. Now all the wives are looking at her to set the tone, and she has so many responsibilities now being a leader. So there is, for Serena — the ambition is turned up, her pettiness and competitiveness… and then she sort of throws that all into a stew with her, “God wants me to be on this mission”….

Is there any part of her that intuited what June said, though, about Hannah? She seemed to really feel for her. Is that part of the Gilead that she supports still, taking children?

No, I mean, she definitely doesn’t support [taking kids]. You’ll see in the coming episode, she goes back to New Bethlehem and decides to try and reform the handmaid system. She doesn’t support taking their children away. So she has changed her relationship with June, and her closeness with June has really changed her. So yeah, she can’t stomach that part of it anymore.

Nick (Max Minghella) and June have a really gut-wrenching goodbye conversation. Is there more to come between them, or was that their final goodbye?

Oh, there’s more to come. There’s more to come.

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You mentioned Mrs. Lawrence being a de facto leader, but there’s an ironically funny moment when the commanders are talking about New Bethlehem, and she’s expressing her opinion. And it seems like the men are kind of holding back their disgust, in a way. I mean, isn’t Bethlehem a bait-and-switch play for these women?

100%. And I mean, I loved writing that scene, I have to say, because I took as my inspiration that moment of Ivanka at the IMF. Do you remember Ivanka Trump went to the IMF, and she was hobnobbing with all these world leaders and talking about the UN and trying to be all serious? And they were all rolling their eyes at her behind her back. So that totally was that scene for me.

And so, yeah, I mean, she’s just really trying hard to be part of the big boy club now. And Ever Carradine, everything she does with Naomi this season is pitch perfect. It is hilarious. And the truth is, we really need those moments of levity in the show, obviously, because it’s such a difficult backdrop. But also it’s realistic.

It’s a reminder that these are just real people caught in these extraordinary circumstances, and life is often just like — you do have to laugh at it because it is so tragic and dark and terrible. So it’s like a basic, primal human coping mechanism that you kind of have to appreciate that human beings are silly. You might as well laugh at it. So, I mean, Naomi doesn’t think she’s being silly in that moment… But I think we, as viewers, can look at that situation and go, “It’s very funny and very real, very authentic.” You see her, she’s just trying so hard.

The Handmaid’s Tale, Tuesdays, Hulu