As The Handmaid’s Tale ends its six-season run, Boardroom reflects on the show’s cultural legacy, streaming dominance, and what comes next.
The Handmaid’s Tale might have ended this week after six seasons, but its warning still echoes.
I’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale since it premiered on Hulu in 2017. From the very first episode, the show captivated me with its raw, unsettling depiction of a dystopia that felt too close for comfort. And now, after seven years of emotional investment, of screaming at the screen, and of sitting in stunned silence as the credits rolled, it’s finally over.
Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale imagines a totalitarian America transformed into Gilead — a theocratic regime where fertile women are enslaved and forced to bear children for the elite. The show’s brilliance lies in how it expanded upon Atwood’s vision, building out a vivid world where resistance simmers beneath ritual and repression, and where acts of defiance are both deeply personal and politically seismic.
Before I dive into the emotional impact the series had, it’s worth reflecting on just how successful The Handmaid’s Tale became — not just as a cultural touchstone, but as a defining force in the streaming era.
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The Stats and Accolades
The Handmaid’s Tale has been a cornerstone of Hulu’s original programming and a defining series for the streaming era. When the show returned for its fourth season in 2021, after a production break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it delivered a massive comeback. The premiere set a major record for the platform, amassing 1.04 billion minutes viewed during its debut week. That figure marked the highest ever for any Hulu original at the time. Its final season also launched strongly last month following another multi-year hiatus, drawing 921 million minutes of viewing time in its debut week, significantly outpacing the 581 million minutes from the Season 5 premiere in 2022.
Beyond its streaming performance, the show has been widely recognized by critics and has easily become the people’s choice for Hulu’s most successful original series. Critically, the series has garnered numerous accolades. It made history in 2017 by becoming the first streaming series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Over its run, the show has won 15 Primetime Emmy Awards and received 77 nominations. Additionally, it secured two Golden Globe Awards in 2018: Best Drama Television Series and Best Actress in a Drama Television Series for Elisabeth Moss.
“I first worked with her when she was 17 years old on The West Wing … and I worry about kids in show business. But this kid was really poised. I got to see her become the engine of the golden age of television,” Bradley Whitford, who plays Commander Lawrence, said during an event at The Paley Center for Media NYC on Elisabeth Moss’ career arc. “I’ve never seen anybody do what this person has done on this show. It’s like she’s doing Sophie’s Choice, the series, and directing it herself. As June does with Lawrence — he doesn’t even realize it — she’s inspiring him. And I am eternally grateful.”
These milestones reflect not only the show’s resonance with viewers but also its role in validating streaming platforms as serious contenders in prestige TV. I wrote a deep dive on streamers’ success during the awards cycle, which you can read here.
My Sentiment
While the show’s grim tone and graphic violence made it hard to watch at times, I kept returning. I kept coming back for June Osborne — played masterfully by Moss — as she navigated motherhood, vengeance, and rebellion. I kept coming back to see if she’d finally reunite with her daughter, Hannah. I kept watching Serena Joy, trying to decide if she was redeemable. And of course, I stayed long enough to witness Fred Waterford’s richly earned demise.
What The Handmaid’s Tale taught me — perhaps more than anything — is patience. The pacing could be glacial, and June’s progress toward freedom was anything but linear. At times, the narrative felt like a slow crawl through Gilead’s mud, but that tension was the point. The show invited me to sit in the discomfort, to understand how systems of power grind people down, and how revolution takes time, proper planning, sacrifice, and impossible choices.
And yes, I’ll admit: I sometimes found myself rooting for the “wrong” people. I wanted June and Nick to find peace together, even though their relationship was forged in violence and secrecy. I wanted Commander Lawrence, a man who helped build Gilead, to defect and do the right thing sooner, not just because he offered comic relief, but because he seemed to get it in a way the other commanders didn’t. The moral ambiguity was baked in. No one in Gilead walks away clean.
As a woman and an activist, watching this show has often felt like holding up a mirror to the most terrifying “what ifs” of our time, especially in today’s volatile political climate. Gilead doesn’t feel like a fantasy. It feels like a warning. But for all its darkness, The Handmaid’s Tale has also been a powerful meditation on survival, sisterhood, and what it means to fight for a future worth living in.
Hulu Calls Actions on The Testaments Sequel
For fans like me, the end of The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t mean saying goodbye to Gilead altogether. In 2019, Margaret Atwood released The Testaments, a long-awaited sequel set roughly 15 years after the events of the original novel. The Testaments shifts the focus to three new women narrators — including Aunt Lydia — and explores the slow unraveling of Gilead from within.
Hulu has already announced that it’s developing The Testaments as a follow-up series, with Bruce Miller, the showrunner of The Handmaid’s Tale, returning to adapt the new story. While there’s no release date yet, the new series went into production in April. The Testaments promises a fresh perspective on the regime’s eventual collapse, and could serve as a more conclusive epilogue to the Gilead era.
If The Handmaid’s Tale was about enduring and resisting, The Testaments is about reckoning and remembering. It’s a reminder that history is written by those who survive it — and those who choose to testify.
All I know is, I bought the book and will likely read it a few times before the new series hits Hulu.
Final Thoughts
I’m still sitting with how the show wrapped up. Not all of my questions were answered. Some characters never got what they deserved, while others surprised me with where they landed. But maybe that’s the point. Revolution isn’t neat. Closure isn’t guaranteed.
Still, The Handmaid’s Tale gave me something rare: a show that challenged me to think critically about power, control, and the thin line between fiction and our very real reality. It wasn’t just a story about a woman escaping a regime; it was about the cost of freedom and the fragility of democracy.
And now, as the red cloaks disappear from my screen, I’m left grateful for how fiction can illuminate the power of resilience and hope.
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