‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Team on “Rewarding” Final Season and Ending in Current Political Climate: “The War is Not Over”

The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale is nearly here, and the cast and creative team behind the Hulu hit united at PaleyFest LA on Wednesday to both reflect on the show’s journey and tease what’s coming.

Stars Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Bradley Whitford, Ann Dowd, Samira Wiley, O-T Fagbenle, Madeline Brewer, Amanda Brugel, Sam Jaeger and Ever Carradine joined executive producers Eric Tuchman, Yahlin Chang, Bruce Miller and Warren Littlefield at the Dolby Theatre for a “clips and conversation” style event spanning all six seasons, as creator Miller noted, “It’s been a show that we started the way we wanted to start it; we’re ending it the way we want to end it.” Littlefield also commented on how the original goal was just to make a good TV show “and then along came our 45th president and we entered into a whole other world… We became a symbol of the resistance and a fight for human rights.”

Throughout the series of clips, the cast laughed and shed tears together while watching previous moments from the show, with Strahovski calling a season one moment between her and Moss “purely unwatchable” and Wiley, wiping away tears after another moment, deadpanning, “This show is rough.” Whitford — while applauding Moss for essentially “doing Sophie’s Choice, the series. It’s ridiculous what she has gone through” — also teased “I’m watching these clips and I’m bitter and my heart is the size of a raisin, and I’m crying.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming final season, co-showrunner Chang said, “We really felt like we wanted this season to be a love letter to our fans. You guys have really stuck with us through thick and thin — we all know that it’s not the easiest watch, this show” and mused that after writing “some really feel-bad episodes” over the course of show, “I was like, I only want to feel-good episodes. I only want to like, end with victory and feelings of hope and triumph and uplift… this season we wanted to feel rewarding.”

Whitford also spoke about ending the show during the current political climate, saying, “It is very weird that this show started shooting in 2016; here we are, unthinkable things have happened and we’re bewildered right now.”

“We need to meet this moment, and [Moss’ character] June is an example of the most fundamental thing we have to remember in this moment, which is that despair’s a luxury that our children cannot afford,” he continued. “Racism is not going to go away, misogyny is not going to go away, religious hypocrisy is not going to go away.”

Littlefield echoed, “In a world that we want to just kind of walk away because it’s so very painful, don’t give up the fight. Our women are not Marvel characters, they’re ordinary women who are doing extraordinary things. And so our message is actually the war is not over, but the fight continues. That gives us hope and that’s what we’re trying to put forth. That is our legacy.”

The Handmaid’s Tale season premieres April 8 on Hulu.