In the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead’s right-wing, misogynistic dystopia has finally started to crumble—and with just two episodes left after this week’s “Exodus,” the full-on revolution viewers have long been promised has begun.
First, though, we have a wedding to attend—and what a memorable celebration! Did you get a look at that guest list?
A lot has certainly happened up to this point. But Nick’s heartbreaking betrayal is something we’re just going to have to put behind us—that includes you, June—as the only path to dismantling Gilead is the one that leads straight ahead… to Serena’s lavish wedding.
The event’s showiness has a purpose, which is to make the snooty Gilead wives respect Serena, despite her being knocked down a few pegs for being a widow (that association with Fred is sure hard to shake) and then daring to float the idea that New Bethlehem’s more liberal policies should be implemented throughout Gilead.
It’s also the perfect cover for the rebels. With their original plan ruined by Nick’s big mouth, they’ve had to scramble, recalibrate, and frantically enlist the help of everyone sympathetic to Mayday’s cause. Turns out a lot of people want to see Gilead fall, and the plan comes together in episode eight, “Exodus,” with grisly precision. It’s the episode Handmaid’s Tale viewers have been waiting to see since 2017, and there are still two episodes left ahead of the series finale to handle any additional catharsis and, hopefully, some real closure.
“Exodus,” though, is about violence. Pure and simple. It opens with one of June’s trademark voice-overs, musing about clothing. It’s come to mean something different for the women of Gilead than it did in the before times. The country’s choice of red for its handmaids was meant to evoke blood, but that the color has now come to symbolize their collective rage. “Tonight, we will use these robes to start a war,” June promises.
Somewhere along the way Gilead added a mask to the cloak-and-bonnet ensemble (without, thankfully, those mouth-binding rings glimpsed back in season three), enabling June and Moira to blend in with handmaids attending Serena’s wedding. The group is led by Aunt Phoebe (it’s always good to see The Good Place‘s D’Arcy Carden), who’s in on the plan, since Commander Lawrence (also in on the plan) sent Aunt Lydia (who’s completely unaware) on an assignment designed to keep her as far away from the festivities as possible.
Letting June be front and center at this crucial hour is a move that suspends logic a bit—yeah, her face is covered, but June is literally Gilead’s Public Enemy Number One!—but it’s not like The Handmaid’s Tale is going to head into battle without her.
We can only see June’s eyes, but we can feel her every emotion as Nick escorts his pregnant wife down the aisle. Serena, clad in a gown that’s both conservative and ostentatious at the same time, beams beatifically as she makes her solo entrance.
The tension builds during the ceremony as the handmaids surreptitiously pass knives to each other. There’s an awful pause when one slips and clatters to the floor, attracting the interest of a gun-toting Guardian, but thankfully the moment passes. And it’s here, and as the scene shifts from ceremony into reception, that we see why June had to be there. She’s the general readying the troops, except instead of making a speech, she’s motivating them with intense eye contact.
That eye contact switches to daggers as she stares at Nick, and it’s almost a worry that her emotions might jeopardize the mission. In fact, there are sketchy factors, including Lawrence being noticeably jittery at the party. Serena swans over to let him know she hasn’t forgotten their goals of reform, and to that end insists on interacting with “my most important guests”… the handmaids, naturally.
June groans as she and Moira slink to the rear of the group. Serena assures the women that “change is coming. I am making it my personal goal,” and rambles on about her own handmaid experience. (June’s eyes, again: scorching.) As she’s explaining how she and her former handmaid are now best buddies, Rita walks up, and Serena asks her to share her own perspective on forgiveness.
“You set a goal and you work toward it. Keep your eyes on the prize, ladies,” Rita says. She doesn’t wink, but it’s practically implied. Did we mention that Rita, who has baked a special dessert for today’s occasion, is also very much aware of what’s going on? Mercifully, Rita’s able to pull Serena away just as she’s talking about taking a group portrait with all the handmaids—unveiled, of course.
Speaking of the cake, it’s a red (ha!) multi-tiered confection, and as it’s wheeled into the room, Moira asks June how long it will take. “One to two hours,” June mutters back. “They’ll go home, and they’ll just fall fast asleep.” The drug-laced slices are handed out to the guests; we see Nick and Rose eating, Rita declining, Serena too busy to take a bite, and Lawrence encouraging the dreaded Naomi to chow down. The handmaids wrap their portions in napkins and stuff them under their chairs as they make their exit.
But just as they’re leaving—a major snafu. Aunt Lydia unexpectedly enters and immediately thinks she sees June (because she does). June manages to give her the slip, hurrying past Nick on her way out, as Lawrence assures Lydia that “June Osborne is in Alaska.” He tells Aunt Phoebe to get Lydia some fruit to eat, but Phoebe specifically says to get her a piece of cake. An awake Aunt Lydia is far more dangerous than a sleeping Aunt Lydia, after all.
As “Exodus” ticks past its halfway point, the feeling that hell is about to break loose intensifies. When the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Wharton return home, Serena is shocked and disgusted to discover a handmaid, odiously framed as a wedding gift, cowering in their living room. It’s the worst possible reality check. Her new husband was faking all along that he was progressive. He was just telling her everything she wanted to hear so that she would marry him. In fact, he’s just as cruel and controlling as Fred was. Maybe even worse? At least Fred didn’t deceive her about what an asshole he was.
Handmaid’s Tale fans could’ve guessed this heel-turn was coming, but it’s still devastating to see Serena, a character genuinely if clumsily trying to get back on the right path, have her eyes so rudely opened. It gets a bit scary when Wharton—now in his true form of evil Gilead slime—blocks her from fleeing. But he finally lets her and baby Noah walk into the snowy night, facing a future far more uncertain than the one she was envisioning just moments before.
Where will Serena go? We’ll worry about that next week. Back at the reception hall, Aunt Lydia is about to try the cake when she notices… all the discarded slices strewn beneath where the handmaids were sitting. While she takes that in, we see the handmaids are heading back to the Red Center or to the mansions where they’ve been enslaved. They’re armed, they’re amped, and the time is now.
We cross-cut with Aunt Lydia arriving at the Red Center. She knows something’s up. Aunt Phoebe does her best to keep her from raising the alarm—at one point it looks like Phoebe might actually shank her—but Lydia is determined. She realizes that while the girls are all tucked into their beds, they’re still wearing the red cloaks from the wedding. And their shoes.
Meanwhile, though June is no longer a handmaid herself, she has some handmaid business. The repulsive Commander Bell, who has made Janine his personal punching bag and sex slave, is dozing in his home, but snaps to when the phone rings. Then he hears footsteps behind him. “June Osborne,” he says.
“Nice to meet you,” she replies, and swiftly jams her blade into his eye. It’s a fitting way to off Janine’s abuser; Janine, of course, lost an eye for being disobedient all the way back in season one. June takes a gulp of Bell’s abandoned whisky and has a moment of contemplation before she hears Janine come in. “Thanks,” Janine says in the smallest of voices.
Now there’s just the problem of Aunt Lydia. And it’s a mighty one. In full religious fervor, she’s yelling at the Red Center girls with an armed Guardian standing beside her, insisting that God will “punish the wicked.” After all this time, and all she’s seen, Aunt Lydia still can’t understand who in Gilead is actually “wicked.” But her moment of reckoning is finally here, as June enters the room.
Very calmly, June reminds Aunt Lydia how horribly she treated them, and she also guesses that “you’ve seen things that you can’t unsee.” And what’s more, “I know that in your heart of hearts, you know that rape is rape. And you know it wasn’t our fault. And we don’t deserve this.”
When Lydia pushes back—still!—June asks her if she thinks “that God would allow all of this? Or is there a God that would empower a woman like you to stand up for us, to arc toward the light, and to finally declare enough? Because we, all of us together, we’ve had enough.”
While Lydia mulls this over, Janine comes over to drop even more real truth. “He hurt me, Aunt Lydia. They hurt us. They raped us. You gave us to them. If you want to save us, let us go.”
There’s a long, dreadful pause. But Janine, her favorite girl, has gotten to her, and at last she relents. The Guardian stands aside as the women hurry out, and Aunt Lydia, finally feeling the weight of everything, collapses to the floor, sobbing.
As the (former) handmaids stream into the dark streets, June takes us out with a voice-over that links back to her opening monologue, but also ponders a future where women will once again be able to make the kinds of choices Gilead robbed from them.
“The dress became a uniform and we became an army. An army to free ourselves from the prison of the dress. To free ourselves to become who we were meant to be. Who we deserved to be,” she muses, and the episode ends with a promise to fight—and to keep moving out of the darkness into the light.
Just two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale remain, arriving Tuesdays on Hulu.
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