'The Handmaid's Tale' had a remarkable ending — for real-world reasons
Hollywood studios and streamers aren't exactly craving politically provocative shows and movies right now. Producers are thinking twice about liberal-sounding storylines. Media companies are downplaying diversity initiatives. And 'The Apprentice,' a biopic about President Trump that contained some critical scenes, struggled to gain US distribution last year.
That's what makes the timing of 'The Handmaid's Tale' finale all the more remarkable.
The acclaimed Hulu drama, which streamed its final episode earlier this week, was unavoidably and unapologetically political.
In the series, based on the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, America has been transformed into Gilead, a totalitarian theocratic regime where women are treated like property. The 'handmaid' in the title is June Osborne, played by Elisabeth Moss.
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Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. The actors and producers started working on the first season of the show in 2016 with the belief that Hillary Clinton would be the first woman president.
They described in interviews how the entire cast and crew were shocked by President Trump's victory.
Trump's election — following campaign trail narratives about misogyny and bigotry — changed how the show was received. The premiere in April 2017 spawned a thousand think pieces. Some anti-Trump protesters even donned red robes and white bonnets inspired by the show.
The show's producers leaned in. They didn't hesitate when asked about real-world comparisons to the radicalism portrayed on screen.
'We're on a very, very slippery slope toward Gilead,' executive producer Warren Littlefield told me back in 2019.
While awaiting the finale this week, I checked back in with Littlefield. He perceives that the slope is even more treacherous today.
'Our America is getting harder to recognize each and every day,' he said, 'and Margaret's speculative fiction written 40 years ago on a rented typewriter in Berlin becomes closer to reality.'
Moss, the cover star of this week's Variety magazine, was asked if the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade created a 'new urgency on set.' She said the vibe was already pretty urgent: 'The only way we've ever made this show was to have this sense of immediacy and relevancy that is not pleasant but is definitely galvanizing.'
Maybe the political overtones turned off some would-be viewers. But 'The Handmaid's Tale' didn't meaningfully suffer in this polarized media climate. Instead, it benefited — because it evoked meaningful emotions and was elevated by current events.
'Handmaid's Tale' had something to say, and a unique time to say it, and isn't that every artist wants?
'In early Handmaid's days,' Littlefield said, 'we present a world that was too preoccupied staring into their phones to see Gilead coming until it's upon our characters and taken over their lives.'
Over the years, many reviewers have pointed to that as one of the enduring takeaways from the show.
'Handmaid's' 'showed the ease with which the unthinkable can become ordinary — a lesson crucial in the age of the Big Lie,' The Atlantic's Megan Garber wrote in 2021.
The final season of the series was in production while Kamala Harris lost to Trump, and began streaming in April. The Hollywood Reporter TV critic Daniel Fienberg credited the show with 'perfect — or perfectly awful — timing' over the years, and said 'the show's topicality sometimes hit so close to the bone that it became difficult to watch.'
One of the showrunners, Yahlin Chang, posited in a recent interview with TheWrap that the show 'kind of failed' to serve as a cautionary tale, 'or we didn't caution enough people.'
'It's shocking to me, when I think about when I joined the show, I had more rights as a woman than I have now,' she said.
Conversely, Chang said in an oral history of the show that 'Handmaid's' was an opportunity to tell big-budget stories 'about refugees and displaced people' – in this case, about American characters who fled to Canada to escape tyranny.
'You can't just walk into a Hollywood studio and pitch that,' she said. 'The fact that we're able to give voice to have our characters as Americans go through what, unfortunately, people all throughout the world go through and where we can really empathize with them fills me with hope for humanity.'
The final episodes manage to be uplifting, at least in part, and Littlefield said, 'Our message this year, in hopefully a compelling dramatic way, continues to be — like June, don't give up the fight.'
Many of the 'Handmaid's Tale' producers are now working on a sequel series called 'The Testaments,' which will pick up about 15 years in the fictional future.
It will be another test of audience (and studio) interest in a show that both entertains and asks a serious question: 'Could it happen here?'
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