The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 6 Review
We’ve decided to withhold a longer review since we feel, in this final season, that the complete picture is necessary to form our true opinion. We are extremely grateful to have been allowed access to the episodes in advance and we know our friends in post-production are still hard at work polishing the last two episodes of the series. We’ve received many DMs asking us for a review, and we hate to disappoint our listeners who we appreciate so much, so we’ll just share a few thoughts on the eight episodes we’ve seen so far.
First and foremost, the direction, lighting, editing, locations, music, sound, costumes - and the many more details we’ve come to rely on season after season to elevate this cinematic experience of The Handmaid’s Tale - are more stunning than ever. The writing, as always, can move from evoking sad tears to happy tears in a moment, and is sure to hit every other emotion in between, often many at once. In all these ways, The Handmaid’s Tale is closing its incredible run with the same tone and language it created back in Season 1, and that’s no small feat, and will be appreciated by long time fans.
The first several episodes in particular were an absolute delight to watch, due in large part to reunions of well loved characters, new character pairings sharing the screen (truly, such an unexpected pleasure to see these), and also so many callbacks to the early seasons we fell in love with. Despite all of those beautiful allusions to the past, the show also manages to feel fresher this season than it has in a long time – the addition of brilliant new actors to the cast (Josh Charles!!) feels like a breath of fresh air, and the departure from some long relied upon formulas (for Nick and June especially) are received with much joy.
June and Serena kick off the season on the train with the frenemy dynamic we’ve become quite familiar with by now - but there are small and important changes injected into both characters across the season. June’s increased openness to vulnerability and occasional attempts at self reflection are a welcome relief after June’s anger took the driver’s seat last season. Elisabeth Moss, of course, crushes her performance of this new side of June every chance she gets to explore it. Meanwhile, Serena’s stated intentions of considering more than just her own future leave you wondering if she has finally started to actually care about others - or if it's still about power. Regardless of where you stand on Serena’s redeem-ability, Yvonne’s mastery of playing her is worth a watch in and of itself.
In addition to the leads, most of our favorite characters are back and better than ever. Madeline Brewer especially stands out this season as Janine and fully embraces a new, and beautiful side of herself not yet seen. And of course, Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia is basically the yin to Janine’s yang and she delivers an equally new, raw and heartfelt performance as both they and their dynamic change dramatically this season. Bradley Whitford as Commander Lawrence is back to his best form after flirting with a different tone in Season 5 and with the addition of his new wife Naomi and “their” (Janine’s) child Angela/Charlotte, he is at his most heartfelt and entertaining yet. Ever Carradine, flaunting her shiny new last name as Naomi Lawrence this season, is even more hysterical and we find ourselves more grateful than Ever (pun intended!!) that she was finally upgraded to a long deserved series regular. Amanda Brugel got to sink her teeth into some beautiful new storylines for Rita, and had us in tears right out of the gate. Samira Wiley as Moira is back in the action again thankfully, and always pairs well with the incredible OT Fagbenle as Luke, but it’s her brutally heartfelt and honest scenes with June that are season standouts for us. Luke is feeling the rage this season which is a big and welcome change for his character in his fight to find his daughter Hannah, and OT delivers this new side of Luke perfectly.
And as for Nick and June, since we know that’s specifically what so many of you really want to hear about from us, we can tell you that there are reasons for both epic highs and lows, so be prepared. We truly have no idea where it will land but suggest bracing for impact, in case it does not land where we all hoped it eventually would. We will be discussing this in much greater detail in our podcast episodes of course, so please tune in for our further thoughts. But to end this on a happy note, you can dive in knowing that Max and Lizzie’s chemistry remains unparalleled in their scenes together, and for the first time since Season 2, they get to spend a little bit of actual quality time with each other – such that in their first episode reunited, they’re on screen for longer than they were in the entirety of Season 5! Max Minghella especially is allowed finally to show a range of emotions we’ve not seen in Nick before and it’s an absolute honor to watch him deliver such an incredible performance this season as Nick. We will leave you with that to look forward to, and trust that we are as anxious as all of you are to find out how their story will end, come May.