*Warning: This article contains full spoilers for The Handmaid's Tale season 6, which has aired in the US but is yet to air in the UK.*
So, this is it. After six seasons and 66 episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, June Osborne’s extraordinary, death-defying saga has reached its close. Well, for now, at least. Her story is far from over, but we'll get to that.
Given just how much the show has expanded on and deviated from Margaret Atwood’s seminal work, the question of how series creator Bruce Miller would bring this frequently violent, at times beautiful and always depressingly, deeply relevant story to an end long remained shrouded in mystery.
What would happen to the protagonist, who miraculously managed to escape Gilead, with a little help from her friends, old and new, only to journey straight back into the belly of the beast in the name of rebellion?
And who would she choose? Luke? Or Nick? Perhaps neither.
And would she be reunited with her firstborn, Hannah, and successfully free her from the shackles of the regime?
And after all this time, would she be able to resume her role as Hannah's mother in the most literal sense of the word?
Some of those questions were answered by Atwood’s follow-up novel The Testaments, which is also being given the TV treatment – although that will naturally deviate from the source material also – while Nick’s betrayal of June in episode 6 and his death in the penultimate episode made her choice significantly more straightforward – although there are still question marks over whether her and Luke’s relationship can withstand the weight of their combined trauma.
But how did The Handmaid’s Tale sign off June's story?
Read on for a full rundown of where the finale left all of the major players.
June
The episode opened with June narrating what had happened in the aftermath of the initial strike on Boston in episode 9, which was carried out by Mayday and the US army.
With the city's Commanders firmly out of the way, courtesy of Lawrence's sacrifice, the regime had begun evacuating and, in the end, it only took 19 days to take it back.
A US flag was hoisted outside a church. Later, June watched on as a red cloak burned on a bonfire.
But, as she noted, that was just the beginning. Other cities, then states, still needed to be toppled, Colorado being one, where Hannah had been living with the Mackenzies, that is until a number of the western district commanders had been promoted, meaning she's now based in DC, which is 2,000 miles closer.
Not that distance would have stopped her. June won't rest until she brings her daughter home, which sadly means leaving Nichole with her mother Holly for a little while longer. How long, she couldn't say.
"I'm not safe, and neither are you, and they are never going to stop coming for us," she said. "And even when we're gone, they're going to come for our children and our grandchildren.
"Fighting may not get us everything, but we don't have a choice because not fighting is what got us Gilead in the first place. And Gilead doesn't need to be beaten, it needs to be broken."
It was during that conversation that Holly also encouraged June to write a book about what she'd endured, and is still enduring, but she initially resisted.
"It's not a very good story," she said. "There is so much violence and fear and loss."
But Holly was quick to chime in.
"No, it's about never giving up," she responded. "This is the story for people who may never find their babies, who will never give up trying. Write it for your daughters, June. Tell them who their mother was."
And that's exactly what she began to do.
In the drama's final moments, she went back to the Waterford house and entered her old room, where 'Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum', don't let the b**tards grind you down, had been graffitied on the wall in white paint.
After taking it all in, June perched on the windowsill. She then symbolically extended her hand towards Hannah, who also reached out to touch her, in turn saying goodbye to The Handmaid's Tale and hello to The Testaments, which follows three central characters, Agnes (Hannah), Daisy (Nichole, who is living with adoptive parents in Canada), and Aunt Lydia.
"For these young women, growing up in Gilead is all they have ever known, having no tangible memories of the outside world prior to their indoctrination into this life," reads the official synopsis.
"Facing the prospect of being married off and living a life of servitude, they will be forced to search for allies, both new and old, to help in their fight for freedom and the life they deserve."
The Testaments adaptation will, you think, also make reference to June – and possibly even give us a glimpse of her (we’re not buying Elisabeth Moss’s word that she won’t feature).
But before the final credits rolled on The Handmaid's Tale rolled, June pulled out a tape recorder and began to tell her story. The truth will set you, and the world, free.
Luke and Moira
Luke is now wholly dedicated to defeating Gilead. He informed June that he's heading to the border near New York with Moira and Mayday to raise hell there. Then he'll come and find June and, together, they'll bring Hannah home.
But it's not clear if they'll ever see one another again. And even if they do reunite, it can never truly be as it was.
"We're so different now," he said. "Both of us. We don't know each other like we did before."
And like Holly, Luke also encouraged June to write a book about her life in Gilead.
"It wasn't all horrors, right?" he said. "You had people that helped you, like Janine, Emily, Lawrence, and Nick; people who loved you, people who you loved.
"They're all worth remembering."
And speaking of Emily, Alexis Bledel's character made a surprise cameo in the finale while June was taking a walk.
She had been living as a Martha under the roof of a Commander friend in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is a "hotspot for the rebellion".
She also told June that she was still able to keep in touch with her family, who were as solid a unit as they'd even been, despite the distance between them, in turn giving June hope that her family could do the same.
Serena
Serena's future is perhaps the most uncertain. Having turned her back on Gilead by playing an instrumental role in the death of her second husband, Commander Wharton, and his colleagues, she's now a refugee and is currently being housed in a shelter with her son Noah.
"You're all I need, you're all I ever wanted," she said while holding him tightly.
She obviously can't go back to Gilead, nor would she want to, and she can't currently secure a passport from Canada or the EU, which leaves her in limbo.
But she carries June's forgiveness (for real this time) with her after expressing her shame for the pain she had inflicted upon her during their emotional final farewell.
Janine and Aunt Lydia
Janine was finally released from the clutches of Gilead, thanks to Aunt Lydia.
In the middle of the night, June travelled to the regime's new border, with Mark, where Janine was dumped by two Guardians.
But she wasn't alone. Naomi Lawrence also emerged, flanked by Lydia, with Janine's daughter Angela and returned her to her rightful mother.
But while Janine's story ends there, as previously mentioned Aunt Lydia will return to our screens in The Testaments, which picks up 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale in the book, but actor Ann Dowd has said it will be "four to five years" in the show.
"I think that her level of control is kind of getting sapped by herself," said Miller in line with the season 6 premiere of The Handmaid's Tale (via Deadline). "She’s undercutting herself and saying, 'I want to control these women, but I can’t, because I feel like that’s wrong,' and she’s a very right and wrong person.
"But I think that what she does, what this season brings her to, is the idea that... what happens to someone who enjoys control when they realise they have nothing? They don’t just fold under. What happens as we move forward and as we move into The Testaments is she tries to get more control.
"What becomes someone like Lydia, who has not just desire to be in control, but confidence and actual competence in being in control? What happens to someone like that? Well, they don’t just sit by the wayside. They actually, if you tell them no and beat them up, they take your country."
How does The Handmaid’s Tale book end?
Atwood’s book ends on a somewhat ambiguous note.
On returning to the Waterford household after carrying out her shopping duties, June is confronted by Serena, who has discovered the dress that she wore to Jezebel’s with the Commander.
But later that night, before she can unleash whatever punishment she might have had planned on her Handmaid, Nick arrives, and he’s not alone.
Along with a pair of Eyes, he enters the house and heads to June's room, where he informs her that this is Mayday's doing. They're getting her out. But she doesn't know if he's telling the truth or if this is just a means of encouraging her to climb into the black van that’s waiting, without any fuss, which she does.
"And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light."
And that's the last we hear of June, that is until the epilogue, which is a partial transcript from a Symposium on Gileadean Studies conducted by two professors in the year 2195.
We learn that she recorded part of what happened to her onto tapes, which were discovered on the edges of Gilead, which has long since fallen, near the Canadian border, and have since been written up into 'The Handmaid’s Tale'.
So, it seems that Nick was likely telling the truth, that he was indeed part of the resistance, and that June managed to make it all way to the border, although we do not find out if she made it across or if she was captured, right at the death.
The Handmaid's Tale airs on Hulu in the US and Channel 4 in the UK.
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