‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: How Each Character’s Story Ended
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale series finale.]
The Handmaid’s Tale revealed the fates of all its characters in the series finale that debuted on Tuesday, May 27, on Hulu. It was an open-ended but hopeful ending, one that leaves the door open for June (Elisabeth Moss), Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and those fighting for Mayday to return in The Testaments spinoff. In fact, so many characters survived, and The Testaments takes place in such a near future, anyone who ended the series alive could arguably be seen again.
The Handmaid’s Tale ended by taking things back to the beginning. As finale writer, executive producer, and former showrunner Bruce Miller told TV Insider about the series finale, there’s the sound of a recording device turning on in the very first Offred scene in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 1 Episode 1. This was put in place for the sole purpose of circling back to the sound in the series finale, whenever that would be.
Miller said that reading Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale novel made him realize that June’s whole story is basically an audiobook already. The only reason people know the tale is because this Handmaid took the time to record her memories, and those memories became an important part of Gilead’s history.
“The story in the book of the Handmaid, even though it’s told at the end as historical notes, is that that woman who was Offred recorded this story at some point, she was not yet free, and Gilead did not fall immediately. So her recording that story is part of the character that we know,” Miller said. “One of the very last things, but one of the most important things you find out about her is, she decided to record this horrible, difficult story of loss and pain, but you record it because there were so many people in it who are worth remembering, so many women especially who are worth remembering.”
The Handmaid’s Tale series similarly ended with stories of loss and pain, but also hope. Here, we compile how each character of The Handmaid’s Tale story ended. How many of them will continue in The Testaments?
The Handmaid’s Tale, Seasons 1-6 Available Now, Hulu
June Osborne
The series finale picked up 19 days after June was nearly murdered by Gilead in the penultimate episode of Season 6. Mayday’s attack thwarted the mass murder of June and the other Handmaids who killed Gilead’s commanders, and then they liberated Boston and the whole of Massachusetts.
June tied up loose ends with Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), grieved Nick’s (Max Minghella) death and his choices that led to it, agreed to go separate ways (for now) with husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle), reunited with mother Holly (Cherry Jones) and daughter Nichole in Boston, and revisited the destroyed Waterford house in the series’ final moments.
While sitting in the same windowsill where we first saw her as Offred, June began to record the first page of her book. Moss recited the first page of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale novel verbatim as June saw a vision of her daughter, Hannah (Jordan Hutson, previously played by Jordana Blake).
Luke and Holly encouraged June to commit all of her memories of Gilead to writing so those killed in the authoritarian regime could be memorialized and so that a true depiction of the horrors of Gilead would be committed to history. Her final line of the series was, “My name is Offred.” While we won’t see the next part of June’s story, it will be defined by her journey to save Hannah and reunite her family after Gilead tore it apart.
Serena Joy
Serena Joy got everything she wanted in the end, but it came at a high price. The formerly bitterly evil woman evolved over the course of six seasons into someone who rejected the Handmaids system and much of Gilead’s practices. While she was still endorsing Gilead in the final season, she eventually gave Mayday the information it needed to kill the remaining Boston commanders, including her new husband, High Commander Gabriel Wharton (Josh Charles). This won Serena aid from the U.S. government.
In one of Moss and Strahovski’s final scenes together, June and Serena grieved Nick’s death. June, struggling with his previous betrayal compounded with his tragic death, said that he lived a “violent” life and died similarly. Serena said that if he felt like he had any real power of choice between Gilead and June, he would have chosen June.
Serena ended the series forgiven by June and heading off to a refugee camp with nothing but her infant son, Noah, and one plastic bag of belongings. All she had by way of a home was a cot in a refugee center that wouldn’t remain available longterm. In a tearful monologue, Serena expressed gratitude for having her son, whom she said was all she really needed. Did Serena deserve a relatively peaceful ending?
Aunt Lydia
Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) climactic moments came in Season 6 Episode 8, when she let the plotting Handmaids continue their plot to kill the commanders, and Episode 9, when she joined her girls at the gallows as punishment for her crime against Gilead. She cried out on the platform that Gilead was ruled by “Godless men” who abuse women. Lydia’s arc from physically and mentally abusing women into submission at the Handmaids training center to someone who supports the Handmaids’ right to fight back against their oppressors was the show’s most substantial character arc.
Mayday’s attack saved Lydia, who went on to save her surrogate daughter, Janine (Madeline Brewer), who was missing after the attack. She helped bring Janine to the Boston-Gilead border to set her free, with Naomi’s (Ever Carradine) help, and reunited Janine with her child.
Lydia will be a main character in The Testaments spinoff, and Dowd will reprise her role. Lydia is still living in Gilead in the series, and she’s still training a group of girls, but it will be a much different story.
Luke Bankole
Luke became an important leader in Mayday in the final season who provided valuable skills to the resistance. In the series finale, he got the electricity back up and running for the whole of Boston, and he intends to continue fighting to liberate more American states with the resistance from now on.
Luke and June decided how they each wanted to go about finding Hannah and getting her back without consulting each other. This was the sign each of them needed to prove that their romantic partnership was over, at least for now. They still love each other, but becoming resistance fighters and leaders fundamentally changed who they were as people. And right now, those two people don’t fit together as a couple. Luke and June’s last interaction of the series was making an agreement that one day soon, they will reunite to save their daughter. June is heading to where Hannah is right away, whereas Luke believes that liberating every state Gilead still controlled was the best way to set his daughter free. Neither is the wrong plan, they’re just completely separate ones.
We’d wager that viewers haven’t seen the last of June and Luke. The Testaments feels designed to be the way fans of The Handmaid’s Tale will finally see June and Luke reunited with their baby.
Nick Blaine
Nick met a tragic end in the penultimate episode of the series. The impressionable man was always more inspired to rebel against Gilead when it was specifically to help his lover, June. Outside of those moments, he was complacent with the regime as a means of staying alive. He remained committed to that strategy until the very end, and in fact it brought about his end.
June and Nick’s relationship was done for good after it was revealed that he divulged Mayday’s plans to attack the commanders at Jezebel’s, leading to the mass murder of every woman forced to work there except for Janine. Nick leaned into his role as a Gilead commander after that rejection out of a lack of any other safe path forward. He also had a son on the way with wife Rose (Carey Cox), the daughter of Commander Wharton.
Rose encouraged Nick to take more of a leadership position after the other commanders were killed. He took her advice and arrived unexpectedly at the plane set to take the surviving commanders to D.C. for an emergency meeting. What he didn’t know was that June and High Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) were planting an altitude-triggered bomb on the aircraft to take out the commanders.
Nick smiled at Lawrence as he sat down in his seat, saying that they picked the side of the “winners.” As Miller explained to TV Insider, Nick was happy to be on this side because it meant staying alive. Tragically, on this night, it meant the exact opposite. Nick died in the explosion alongside his father-in-law, Wharton, and the last few men leading Gilead’s forces in Boston, including…
High Commander Joseph Lawrence
…Lawrence. Whitford’s character was meant to plant the bomb on the plane and flee with June driving the getaway car, but Wharton and the commanders arrived early. The only way to make sure the plan succeeded was to make it a suicide mission.
Lawrence was one of the architects of Gilead. His late wife, Eleanor, suffered a mental break because of the horror her husband unleashed through the creation of Gilead. This caused a major change in Lawrence, who realized the error of his ways and began trying to dismantle Gilead from the inside out. He always knew that he would die for creating Gilead. In the end, he died trying to destroy it. His actions helped restore Massachusetts as an American state. Hopefully, the rest of the country will follow.
Janine Lindo
Janine was put through the ringer yet again in the final season. After Commander Bell (Timothy Simons) became grossly obsessed with her at Jezebel’s, he spared her life from the mass execution in Episode 7. He proceeded to physically abuse her as his Handmaid, but June soon arrived to kill him.
Janine went missing in the aftermath of the Mayday attack but was found by Aunt Lydia and Naomi. Naomi had adopted Janine’s daughter, Charlotte, after she was taken by Gilead. Janine and Charlotte were at last reunited for good in Janine’s final scene of the series.
Moira Strand
Moira (Samira Wiley) has been a Mayday fighter for several seasons now. She and Luke helped make the plan to bomb Jezebel’s in the final season before June showed up. She and June returned to Gilead disguised as Handmaids to lead the secret plot to kill the Boston commanders with their bare hands.
Moira’s ending in the final episode was rather up in the air, but she’s going to keep fighting for the resistance. Her final appearance was in a dream sequence (pictured above) that imagined what life would’ve been like for her, June, Janine, Rita (Amanda Brugel), Emily (Alexis Bledel), and their fallen friends had Gilead never taken over.
Rita Blue
Brugel’s former Martha was reunited with her sister in New Bethlehem earlier this season and played a major role in the commanders plot in Episode 8. Rita baked Serena’s wedding cake that was laced with sleeping agents. The Handmaids attacked while the commanders and their wives slept after the wedding.
In the Mayday attack at the gallows in Episode 9, Rita was the one who saved June by cutting down the noose from which she hang. Rita ended the series at peace back in Boston, and will seemingly continue with the resistance.
Hannah Bankole
June and Luke’s daughter was last seen in Season 5, when Serena used her as a political pawn in the spectacle that was Fred Waterford’s (Joseph Fiennes) funeral. There were new flashback scenes to a June and Hannah mother-daughter day in the series finale, with a new actor playing younger Hannah.
The last thing we learned about Hannah in the finale was that her commander father was moving their family from Colorado to Washington, D.C. She still goes by Agnes and is still a “plum,” a.k.a. a daughter of Gilead in training to become a wife. Hannah will be a main character in The Testaments, but she will be about five years older and played by Chase Infiniti. The Hannah viewers saw in the finale’s final moments with June was played by Jordan Hutson.
Nichole
June and Nick’s daughter had been living in an American refugee camp in Alaska throughout this final season. June got her there herself, where she was unexpectedly reunited with her own mother, Holly, whom June long believed to be dead after seeing a picture of her working in the colonies in Season 1.
Holly brought Nichole back to Boston in the series finale, and June had a touching moment when she explained to the toddler that she had to leave her again in order to find her sister, Hannah. The sisters have never met, but could they in The Testaments?
High Commander Gabriel Wharton
Josh Charles debuted as Wharton in the final season. His character originally acted like he was a more evolved man than Fred Waterford, Serena’s first husband, but Serena was a fool to think that a commander of higher rank than her dead husband was less loyal to Gilead’s oppressive society. He brought a Handmaid into their home against Serena’s wishes on their wedding night, prompting her to flee the house.
Wharton died alongside Nick, Lawrence, and the last two Boston commanders in that plane explosion in the penultimate episode.
Naomi Lawrence
Naomi Putnam became Naomi Lawrence in Season 5. This marriage meant viewers got more glimpses of the character outside of her relationships with Janine and Serena, and unsurprisingly, she proved to be a rather heartless mother to Janine’s daughter, Charlotte (whom she called Angela).
Lawrence grew to love Charlotte during his limited time as her stepfather, and his kindness to the child softened Naomi’s rigid demeanor. Naomi still supported Gilead in the end, but she realized that it was no place for a child — and that it was the right thing to reunite Charlotte with her mother. Naomi’s final appearance was bringing Janine to June in Boston with Aunt Lydia.
Mark Tuello
Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger) worked with the American CIA and Mayday to fight against Gilead throughout the series. He revealed his rank, commander, in the series finale. Tuello helped arrange Serena and Noah’s place at the refugee camp and will continue his work to take down Gilead with the U.S. military, intelligence forces, and Mayday.
Holly Osborne
Holly returned to Boston with granddaughter Nichole and urged June to write a book documenting her experience in Gilead. She’s staying behind in Boston to care for Nichole while June goes to find Hannah and Luke (who had been raising Nichole as his own in Canada after June got her out of Gilead with Emily’s help) works with Mayday.
Emily Malek
Alexis Bledel made a surprise return as Emily Malek in the series finale. Emily had been a fixture of the series from Season 1 through Season 4, but Bledel unexpectedly left the show ahead of Season 5. Her absence was explained by having Emily leave her wife, Sylvia (Clea Duvall), and their son in Canada to go back to Gilead, find Aunt Lydia to seek revenge, and fight for the resistance from the inside.
Bledel and Moss retraced Emily and June’s steps on their daily walks from Season 1 in their series finale scene. It was here that Emily revealed that she had been in a nearby town in Massachusetts ever since she returned. She returned to Boston after the state was freed so she could find any surviving friends.
Ava/Aunt Phoebe
D’Arcy Carden debuted in the final season as Aunt Phoebe, who was really an undercover CIA agent. She helped carry out the attack on the Boston commanders in Episode 8, and then was a major fighter in the Mayday attack in Episode 9. The series finale revealed that she and Tuello have known each other for a long time. Ava will continue with military operations alongside Tuello.
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