‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Stars Reflect on Season 4 and Look Ahead to Season 5

One of Elisabeth Moss’s goals for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 was to give the Hulu drama “a sense of triumph,” and the fourth-season finale showed her character, June, getting comeuppance on Commander Fred Waterford.

Luckily for fans, the Emmy-winning series has already been renewed for a fifth season, though there’s no word when those new episodes will start streaming. In the meantime, however, the Handmaid’s Tale stars are reflecting on Season 4 and speculating on Season 5.

In Elisabeth’s recent interview with The Crown star Gillian Anderson for Variety, Gillian mentioned that The Handmaid’s Tale showed parallels to Trump-era America and asked Elisabeth whether the show will change here in the Biden era.

“We tried this season to take our show to a new place, to fulfill some of the promises that we were making over the past couple of years, and we really tried to imbue a sense of hope and a sense of triumph,” Elisabeth replied. “A sense of victory, a sense of people coming together, of connecting and family and relationships. Of course, it’s still The Handmaid’s Tale, so the stuff hits the fan eventually, as always. But we really wanted to focus on a new day, and a new era in the show.”

In the Season 4 finale, June and the other handmaids beat Commander Fred to death, but actor Joseph Fiennes is fine with that plot development.

“I felt like I’ve come to the end of the road with Fred,” Joseph told Entertainment Weekly. “I won’t miss him so much. You know, I made a decision with Fred that he would toe a particular line. That there may be glimpses of opportunity to redeem himself, but he would never take them.”

The actor went on: “He is the face in many ways of the regime, and there are so many regimes through history full of people like Fred and they don’t seem to change. And that is the hard, sad truth, that you get enlightened people and you get people who are the opposite, and sadly I think Fred is in that darker corner. So for me as an actor, I think I’ve come to the end of the road, and I’ll look back fondly, but I’m happy not to wear the double-breasted suit again.”

As for Fred’s wife, actress Yvonne Strahovski told Elle that a fitting end for Serena Waterford would be “under Gilead rule or regime, being a Handmaid in the most awful household, and just being subject to all kinds of abuse, basically from both the Commander and the Wives.”

Barring that possibility, though, Yvonne could also imagine June separating Serena from her child to ruin “that one thing that [Serena] has been wanting all these seasons, the one thing, the one through-line that’s been the strongest for this character: her desire for a child.”

But the actress has a more realistic take on what might happen in future episodes. “For those people who call The Handmaid’s Tale a documentary, I think what’s actually going to happen is that Serena gets to keep it, and she gets to carry on and get into politics and win a seat in the Senate or something,” she said.