The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6: What to Remember

June’s fight to rescue her daughter, Hannah, and to stop Gilead once and for all, continues.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” has returned to Hulu, with the first three episodes of its sixth and final season now available to stream. It’s been a few years since viewers last saw June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss); the finale of Season 5 aired on Nov. 9, 2022. On the show, both Gilead and Canada — where Gilead refugees typically escape to — have both changed significantly over the previous seasons of the Emmy-winning drama.

In Gilead, Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) is hard at work trying to establish New Bethlehem. It’s a place isolated from the rest of Gilead and reserved for fugitives and traitors, so that those who have fled the country can return and find safety and protection. Lawrence intends for New Bethlehem to operate differently from the rest of Gilead. It’s also, crucially, a tactic to stymie the trend of people trying to leave, and to fix Gilead’s image on the international stage.

That safe haven could also be an alternative to the normal escape route people take out of Gilead. In Canada, the anti-refugee and anti-American climate has been escalating. The country, which first warmly welcomed Americans, has turned cold toward them, as some Canadians take to the streets to protest against them. Americans are now taking westbound trains and trying to relocate beyond Canada.

The tensions between Gilead and the U.S. government have also been growing. In Season 5, Americans tried to rescue children out of Gilead, including June’s daughter, Hannah. That particular mission failed, with several Americans being killed, but the conflict is far from over.

Here’s where all the major characters are at by the beginning of Season 6.

June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss)

June and baby Nichole are on a train going west, trying to find a safer place where June can continue to work on getting Hannah out of Gilead. At the start of Season 5, viewers saw June reckoning with her murder of Commander Fred, which unfolded as a hunt in the woods with other women who’d been in Gilead. Her distress mounted when a televised funeral for Fred featured Hannah, now wearing purple garb. The color was revealed to indicate that Hannah was enrolled in a school for wives-in-training.

That discovery led to June and her husband, Luke, to venture into No Man’s Land to get more information about the school. They obtained a hard drive with that knowledge, but were then captured. June eventually found herself at Serena’s mercy and was spared; June then, as luck would have it, delivered Serena’s baby and was later reunited with Luke.

In Season 5, June also mulled over the idea of accepting Lawrence’s invitation to live in New Bethlehm so that she could see Hannah. June became hopeful that the American rescue mission would lead to a reunion with her daughter, but that was unsuccessful. In the Season 5 finale, June was deliberately hit and run over by a car bearing the Gilead symbol. She and Luke then planned to get on a train with Nichole to go west before Luke turned himself into Canadian authorities so that he wouldn’t hinder her escape. As June and Nichole made it onto their train, June found herself face-to-face with Serena once again in the final moments of Season 5.

Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski)

Serena has her newborn, Noah, back from the possessive and creepy Gilead-inspired Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler. She’s on the same train as June after a whole season of realizing that she doesn’t have a place either in Gilead or in Canada. At the start of Season 5, Serena returned to Gilead to throw a lavish international spectacle of a funeral for Fred, and hoped to stay permanently. Her plans were thwarted by the male leadership, who instead placed her as an ambassador in Canada who could steward the Gilead Information Center. That endeavor was quickly shut down by Luke, who got the Center in trouble for building code violations. Serena was taken to the home of the Wheelers, where she was fêted by a bunch of wannabe Gilead women — part of a growing crowd of Gilead sympathizers in Canada. But the home quickly became more like a prison, as Serena was prevented from leaving the house.

Once June was captured in No Man’s Land, Serena convinced Mr. Wheeler to let her execute June. But Serena ended up shooting her security guard Ezra and escaping with June, quickly going into labor afterwards. Serena, unsure what to do in the aftermath of shooting Ezra, entreated June to raise Noah for her. June refused, and Serena agreed to go to a hospital, where she was detained by immigration officers. She returned to the Wheelers so that she could see Noah again, eventually escaping with him.

Luke Bankole (O-T Fagbenle)

In the Season 5 finale, Luke fatally beat up the driver who ran over June. On the train platform, he realized that he would be caught by authorities when he tried to board the train and that the incident would prevent June and Nichole from leaving. Luke purposefully turned himself in, whistling to authorities to get their attention. His act of sacrifice was a culmination of his guilt over not doing enough to help June before. But that guilt was planted by Serena, when he visited her at the Gilead Information Center in an attempt to convince her to free Hannah. Serena suggested that he hadn’t protected June enough, an idea that June later disputed.

Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford)

Lawrence is going all-in with New Bethlehem — even trying to convince June in Season 5 to come back so that she can safely see Hannah again. He’s been increasing his power recently, and over the most recent season, he got rid of Commander Putnam, who was somewhat of a contentious opponent. (Putnam was killed for raping Esther, a Handmaid, before she was officially assigned to his home.) Lawrence, who was hearing from Gilead society that he needed to remarry if he wanted to keep his status, then married Putnam’s widow, Naomi.

Commander Nick Blaine (Max Minghella)

In Season 5, Nick struggled to balance his marriage to Rose with his attachment to June. Rose is pregnant, and within Gilead, Nick played the part of a Commander who socializes with the elite and works closely with Lawrence. Yet, he also continued to be a resource for June. He was the one who informed her about the meaning of the purple clothing, and he also visited June in the hospital after she was hit by the car. At the start of the fifth season, Nick declined to work surreptitiously with the Americans. By the end, he reversed his decision, and agreed to help with the resistance against Gilead.

Moira Strand (Samira Wiley)

Although June and Luke decide to flee Canada at the end of Season 5, Moira’s still there. Presumably, she can use her connections within Canada to help Luke after his arrest. In Season 5, Moira was, at first, wary of June after her murder of Fred, but continued to work with her and Luke to get intelligence on Gilead. Moira told June and Luke about a group of refugee women at the border, who turned out to be part of Mayday and were able to help June connect to Nick in order to learn about the purple clothing.

Janine Lindo (Madeline Brewer)

Janine’s fate is uncertain. During the Season 5 finale, she was taken away by Gilead authorities in a van going to an unspecified destination. It was retribution for speaking out of turn to Naomi, who was set to become Janine’s new mistress. Through Aunt Lydia’s suggestion, Naomi had agreed to take Janine in as her and Lawrence’s Handmaid. The assignment would have allowed Janine to live with her daughter, Angela. But when a Martha informed Janine of what had happened to June — and what can happen to women even after they leave Gilead — the news distressed Janine so much that she rejected Naomi calling her “Ofjoseph” and admitted to Naomi that she hated her.

Although Aunt Lydia tells the men taking Janine away that she would contact Lawrence for help, they inform her that the punishment was Lawrence’s call in the first place. Janine also faced a near-death experience earlier in Season 5 when Esther poisoned herself and Janine.

Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd)

Aunt Lydia has started to see the violent hypocrisy of Gilead for what it is, despite her justification for it. The mistreatment of Esther led Aunt Lydia to confront Lawrence and demand punishment. Though Putnam died for his crime, Lawrence initially told Aunt Lydia that surely, she must know about how Gilead men abuse Handmaids. Esther herself confronted Aunt Lydia with the fact of how her own actions lead to such violence. Aunt Lydia maintains her faith in Gilead’s religious principles — but the horrific events that contradict them seem to hint at her beliefs possibly cracking, even this late in the game.

Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger)

Mark Tuello is a U.S. government agent and serves as a political liaison between the Americans and Gilead. He travels easily across the border, aiding June and the refugees but also remaining cordial with Commanders. In Season 5, he helped Serena travel back to Gilead to organize Fred’s funeral and seemed to be sympathetic to her situation. He also, crucially, tried to pull off a failed rescue mission to save children from Gilead, including Hannah. Tuello helped facilitate June and Nichole’s escape in the Season 5 finale.