Farewell to The Handmaid’s Tale, the Chapolavoro series

Who would have ever said that we would get to say: we will miss Gilead. Yes, we will miss that place of horror made of institutionalized rapes, religious repression, summary executions and submissive women. Yet, after eight years, six seasons, countless zoom on the pierced face of pain (and anger, and strength) of Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Such it’s over.

He will leave us a hole in the soul, as well as in the programming, because – without fear of exaggerating – we can say that The Handmaid’s Such It is one of the best TV series of the last decade. Is in the Olympus of Prestige TV together with a few, very few others. And his epilogue, however subdued and without spectacular twists, has been able to close the circle with consistency and, above all, with rare emotional loyalty to his universe.

The last season, composed of only ten episodes, has a different trend than the previous ones: more concentrated, more gloomy, less dispersive. The tension is there, but it is an underground tension, built on silence, looks and moral decisions. There is an explosion, yes, but not a triumph. There is not even a real closure: because Gilead does not really fall, but it is reduced, like a tumor that has not been removed, only content.

June, the ex -Agella protagonist who became the leader of the Resistance, returns symbolically where everything had started: in the Waterford house. It is a surrender of personal, inner accounts. The circle closes not with revenge, but with reflection. Although of action, in reality, there is, starting from the most iconic act – that net cut of the red cloak, that she herself sews to make it a flag – which summarizes the meaning of the narrative arc: the handmaids have truly rebelled this time, and they are ready for anything, also to use violence, to destroy the Gilead regime.

When in 2017 The Handmaid’s Such He made his debut on Hulu, seemed to speak directly to the present. It was the first year of the Trump presidency, the women with the white cap and the red cloak appeared to the events as a symbol of resistance. The series seemed to shout: look at what can happen if we stop supervising. And now that Trump is in the second term, while attacks on civil rights and personal freedoms multiply in America, that dystopian prophecy takes on an increasingly disturbing tone.

But The Handmaid’s Such It is not just a political j’Adus. It is also, and above all, a human story, the one that we will miss most is not only the tension of his episodes, or the brilliant staging: we will miss his characters.

Junes, heroin of the resistance but also ruthless assassin. Serena, the enemy who became a mother, a tragic and ambiguous figure until the end. Aunt Lydia, executioner yet devoted to a distorted idea of ​​justice. Nick, in love and accomplice. Lawrence, cynical intellectual overwhelmed by its own game. The great strength of the series has always been this: complexity. Nobody is only good or bad, they are all human, contradictory, wrong, ambivalent. The ending also confirms it: there is no definitive punishment, nor total redemption. There is only reality, and the possibility of changing.

The last episode, directed by Elisabeth Moss and built as a slow and inner farewell, prepares the ground for the future. Not only for the characters, but for the sequel itself: the story will continue with The Testamentsbased on the second novel by Margaret Atwood, set 15 years after the facts told here. Still, the meaning of the ending is all in the present. There is no gilead that explodes. But there is the awareness that power, the real one, transforms, reorganizes, moves. The resistance did not win, but resisted. The struggle continues.