Quite a while ago, I wrote that Alejandro and I were watching episodes of "The Handmaid's Tale", a series based on Margaret Atwood's novel about a dystopian, theocratic society in the not too distant future in which women are viewed merely as vessels for procreation.
(Image taken from the internet)
The series finally came to a conclusion this year with the sixth season. Back before I made the move to Mexico, I had watched the first four seasons on Hulu. Hulu does not exist in Mexico, but we discovered that it was available here on Paramount Plus, a streaming service which Alejandro has. He had not seen any of the series, so we started from the very beginning, watching a few episodes each weekend. Even though I had already seen most of the series, there was much that I had forgotten, and I still found the show gripping.
Finally, the weekend before last, we finished it... Season 6, Episode 10. For those who have not seen the entire series, I am not going to give anything away. However, I will say the next to the last episode was the most climactic. The final episode seemed a little bit of a let down.
Those who have not read the novel, may not realize that most of the Hulu series (Seasons 2 through 6) is actually an extension of the original book. The novel is supposedly a first person narration recorded by a Handmaid. It had been discovered long after the fall of the theocratic regime of Gilead. The final episode of the series links in with the beginning of the novel. The protagonist June has been encouraged by more than one person to record her experiences, and the episode concludes with June thinking out loud, recalling her life as a Handmaid.
The series was created with the collaboration of Margaret Atwood. She had already written a sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale" called "The Testaments", and she did not want the extended TV series to contradict in any way the events of her sequel. "The Testaments" (which I have already read) centers on another major character, Aunt Lydia. Filming has already begun on an adaptation of that book. It will also appear on Hulu, but I hope that it will be available on one of the streaming platforms that Alejandro has.
I had read the book, so when it premiered, we watched the first season and thought it was very good. It was well-produced and more or less faithful to the story. But since the following seasons went beyond the book, I had no interest in watching the rest of the show. Plus, the first season felt so brutal that we had a hard time watching more than one episode at a time. I needed time to emotionally decompress after every one. I wasn't ready to do that again and again indefinitely (because I didn't know how long it was going to run). I hope the ending was satisfying!
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