Although The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 will not premiere until 2025, viewers are already anticipating how Hulu will conclude its acclaimed series. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a dystopian and alternative version of the present in which Gilead, a patriarchal and totalitarian theonomic state, overthrows the United States government, transforming much of the East Coast and other regions into unrecognizable societies. As in the novel, the series centers on June (Elisabeth Moss), an educated woman who is forced to be one of Gilead’s “Handmaids.”
With infertility threatening populations worldwide, Gilead enslaves fertile women like June, forcing them to bear children for its ruling class. Assigned to Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), June is dubbed “Offred,” and forced to live with the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). Although Serena helped Fred and Gilead’s other higher-ups create their ultra-conservative principles, she’s subjected to the republic’s cruelties, which forbids women from reading, among other things. Although Serena, who believes she can’t carry a child, also abuses June, the women’s stories become inextricably linked throughout The Handmaid’s Tale‘s first five seasons.
In The Handmaid’s Tale season 1, Serena Joy was positioned as a cruel abuser. Not only did she help her husband, Commander Waterford, assault June, but she took her anger out on the Handmaid. At the time, Serena Joy thought she was the infertile one in her marriage, leading her to feel bizarrely jealous of aspects of June’s terrible life in Gilead. As the story continues, June tries time and again to escape Gilead and take her biological child, Hannah, with her. Often, Serena uses Hannah as leverage, dangling June’s Gilead-brainwashed child in front of her.
Eventually, Serena Joy starts to become disillusioned with aspects of Gilead’s patriarchal society. Accustomed to her life before the fall of the United States, Serena misses the power she had. When it becomes clear that Fred is the infertile one, Serena even ends up aiding June. While the two fight over custody of June’s second child — the alleged daughter of Commander Waterford — it’s clear that they’re both victims of Gilead’s abuse in different ways. In a recent interview, Elisabeth Moss reiterated that Handmaid’s Tale is “their” show, suggesting that, more than ever, it’s Serena and June’s story.
While Serena Joy being a victim of Gilead’s ongoing abuses against women does not excuse the ways she inflicted abuse on others, including June, Serena Joy’s story has become one of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s most compelling. Serena’s change of heart — if it can even be called that — is clearly self-motivated. More than anything, she wants a child, and believes that June’s second child, Nichole, is rightfully hers. When Serena herself becomes pregnant, her desire for self-preservation only deepens. At times, this means her motives align with June’s, but, often, the two are still at odds.
Despite being one of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s best characters, Serena Joy doesn’t feature in Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel, The Testaments. In the wake of the Hulu series’ success, Atwood revisited Gilead after decades. Set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments includes three different point-of-view characters: Aunt Lydia (Anne Dowd), a Handmaid’s Tale character and agent of Gilead, as well as a young woman living in Gilead and another living just over the border in Canada. That said, The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 doesn’t have any fodder from The Testaments for Serena’s story.
Although June doesn’t appear in the sequel either, the ending of The Testaments does reveal that the former Handmaid is under Canada’s protection. After years of struggling, she was even reunited with her daughters. That said, June’s on-screen story could conclude on a more open-ended note. Hulu has already green-lit a series based on The Testaments, with Anne Dowd reprising her role as Aunt Lydia. Although June is merely mentioned in the sequel, that’s more than Serena Joy gets.
Needless to say, if Serena won’t factor into the sequel at all — as she doesn’t in Atwood’s version — she needs a more definitive ending in The Handmaid’s Tale season 6. Already, The Handmaid’s Tale has set up The Testaments in some key ways, so Hulu’s creative teams need to figure out whether Serena Joy will appear in the spin-off series. Of course, even if they plan to continue the character’s story, Serena Joy still needs a satisfying ending for her Handmaid’s Tale journey to feel complete.
An incredibly complicated character, Serena Joy doesn’t have a clear-cut ending. The team behind Hulu’s Emmy-winning Handmaid’s Tale have many ways they could take Serena’s story, depending upon what they want to say about the nature of abuse, self-preservation, and one’s ability to change. Serena Joy could be left in Gilead, or she could be killed off. Serena Joy could even undergo a full redemption arc. It’s a challenging line to walk: too happy of an ending feels frustrating, as does something too ambiguous, but it would also be strange to neglect her redemptive qualities altogether.
Without a Testaments blueprint to follow, The Handmaid’s Tale season 6’s ending might have a challenging time finding a fitting conclusion for Serena Joy. Of course, given how much the series has departed from the original novel, the spin-off show could also go a different route by continuing Serena’s story. Even if season 6 isn’t the end for Serena Joy, the show needs to find a satisfying — and realistic — way to bring Serena Joy and June’s deeply intertwined stories to a close after nearly 8 years of The Handmaid’s Tale.