Logo text The Handmaids Tale delivered something unexpected when it ended last season. The cliffhanger finale to the penultimate season of the Emmy-winning saga put the complex pairing of June (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), along with their babies, on a train to the unknown with other Gilead refugees. That finale, titled Safe and written by creator Bruce Miller and directed by Moss, ended with a range of facial expressions from June that landed on a smirk.

At the very end it feels like June is powerless. She can barely walk after the car accident, she has her baby all by herself and is in misery shes starting at the bottom, Miller told The Hollywood Reporter at the time, recapping her harrowing season. But then he delivered some optimism about what was to come: Look at all these people who are acting under her influence. Shes a leader now [and] all the seeds shes planted are blooming. After that finale, which released back in November 2022, Miller said he wanted the audience to spend the next several months asking themselves about that smirk. Because I spent all this time going, how do [June and Serena] feel about each other? And, how does June feel in that moment? he said of the shows central relationship between the former handmaid and ex-Gilead wife.

But months would turn into years, due to the Hollywood strikes of 2023. Now the Hulu saga is returning with its sixth and final season, and viewers finally get to see how those seeds will bloom with the release of the first three of the final 10 episodes, which are now streaming.

As the trailers have teased, a red revolution is on the horizon. And its a rebellion that has been years in the making.

Before that season five finale released, Hulu had announced that the sixth season would indeed be the final one. The Handmaids Tale universe will continue on, however, with sequel series The Testaments, which is being adapted from Margaret Atwoods follow-up book to her bestselling hit and takes place after the events of Junes current story.

Miller remained an executive producer on the final season of The Handmaids Tale, and he is the showrunner on The Testaments. Longtime writers and exec producers Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang took over as co-showrunners for season six. Moss, star and executive producer, continued to direct, including the first two and last two episodes of season six.

When it came to plotting the end of The Handmaids Tale, Miller now tells THR that he had initially pitched the series as a five-season story, but that changed as they were heading into season five.

Chang recalls to THR, We were doing a little retreat before the beginning of the season five writers room, and we were talking with Bruce and Bruce was like, I think we have two more seasons. He was like, I think we should do two more. And were like, Okay, lets do it. Well do two more.

Moss adds, I remember we were contemplating season five being the end, and I think it was one of those things [where we said], Should we just do one more? [smiles]. I dont know if we knew how to get to where we wanted to go in the amount of time we had in season five.

Miller says that even with the added season, the ending that he had in mind from the very beginning didnt change. Moss says the only thing that shifted slightly was the location of that top-secret ending.

Interestingly, when I pitched the series and said, I think this is the end, that is exactly what we ended up doing, says Miller. And I pitched it right at the beginning. It was one of those things that I thought, Okay, we should aim for that.

June (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) pick up where the show left them in the season six premiere, Train. Hulu Moss explains that after opening up their dystopian series to follow so much of the sprawling ensemble which includes Bradley Whitford, Max Minghella, Ann Dowd, O.T. Fagbenle, Samira Wiley, Madeline Brewer, Amanda Brugel, Sam Jaeger, Ever Carradine and Josh Charles this season they needed one more season to do every character justice.

Maybe its because I started directing in season four, but I feel like this story really picked up that season and started to develop in a really exciting way with a lot of different characters, Moss tells THR. You started to see a lot more of different characters, so it felt like there was still so much story left to tell, not just with June but with all of these other people. It just didnt feel like five seasons was going to be enough, so thats what resulted in the sixth season.

She adds, And I think I was one of the only people who was then like, Seven? Anyone for seven. No? The cheese stands alone? Fine! (Laughs) I was like, okay, were done I guess.

Season five was about June and her feelings of revenge. As Miller put it then, how to exact revenge in a way that feels good and that feels like youve corrected some of the balance in the world. Season six, he says, moves her closer to being someone who has the ability to act and effect change. Miller has always summed up the show as being one thats easy to understand: They take something from June in the first scene of the series that she wants back, that shes not a complete person without. And thats the whole show.

What was taken from June was her oldest daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake), who is now a preteen renamed Agnes still in Gilead. Season six remains about June and husband Luke (Fagbenle), fighting to get their daughter back.

The final season theme is about rising up, and once again just like when the series launched eight years ago The Handmaids Tale is again coming out during pivotal times.

Many people have called the show a cautionary tale and it seems to me that not enough people were cautioned, and here we are again after a very consequential, shocking election, Tuchman tells THR, comparing the first and final season releases. I never would have anticipated thats where we would be. But here we are.

Chang, who joined the show in season two, points out, I cannot believe that as a woman I have fewer rights now than when I started on the show in 2017. I never thought that Roe v. Wade would get overturned. It seems like the stuff you would make up. I was working on a show where we make stuff up, right? Especially at that time with the #MeToo movement, it seemed like society was really moving forward.

Chang says that when working on The Handmaids Tale, in order to write the characters on the Gilead side, the writers get into the mindsets of authoritarians. Its about imagining what the worst people would do if given the reins of power, she says. You have to imagine if you have no moral compass, if you are completely guided by avarice and selfishness and cowardice and covering your own ass, how would you act and what would you do? In that way, whats happening now feels very understandable and predictable to a certain extent.

Though that all sounds grim, once again the team plans to deliver a surprise: more optimism. Its time, says Tuchman, to give the viewers what theyve been waiting for.

We really wanted this season to be, as Yahlin has called it, one of triumph and uplift, he says. Its been a lot of dark and disturbing stories in the past, but now its the final season, and its a season about fighting back, about defiance and resilience and courage and guts and hopefulness. Its time.

He continues, Our audience has stuck with us through the darkest times, and its time for them to be rewarded for that passion that they have for the show and that commitment that they have for the show, and were going to deliver it for them this season.

The Handmaids Tale is now streaming the first three episodes of season six on Hulu.