‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Returning to Hulu for Sixth and Final Season

Hulu renewed The Handmaid’s Tale for a sixth and final season Thursday, just days before Season 5 premieres on Sept. 14. The series is based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel set in a dystopian future where the Republic of Gilead has overtaken the U.S. government and women are forced to have children for the ruling class. Hulu, MGM, and showrunner Bruce Miller are still planning to adapt Atwood’s 2019 sequel, The Testaments.

Late Thursday, Hulu shared a video of the cast announcing Season 6 is coming. They briefly recapped each season of the show as quickly as possible, leading up to a tease for the final season. That will not be the end of the streamer’s adventures in Gilead though, as Hulu and series producer MGM announced in 2019 that The Testaments is being worked on.

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“It’s been a very, very, very luxurious time that I’ve had to think about what happens at the end of this story and exactly how we’d like to get there as a company,” Miller told The Hollywood Reporter when announcing the new season. He said he was “very glad” MGM and Hulu are giving his team the opportunity to finish the show on their terms. “Dropping the curtain the way you want is such a huge privilege,” he added.

The Handmaid’s Tale helped turn Hulu into a place for scripted originals In 2017, the show made history as the first streaming series to win Outstanding Drama Series, beating out Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video. The Handmaid’s Tale was originally developed at Showtime with Ilene Chaiken as showrunner. Showtime eventually passed on the project. Miller wrote a new script, and Hulu picked up the series. Miller is credited as series creator, while Chaiken is an executive producer.

Miller has been thinking about where the series will end since he began working on it. “I’ve been thinking about the end of this story since I read The Handmaid’s Tale the first time. It’s one of those books that when you finish reading it, all you think about is the end,” he told THR. “So in the end, story-wise, we’ve been able to stay pretty close to what we had thought, from our initial discussions and what [Elisabeth Moss] and I had talked about, and what Margaret and I had talked about.”

The Testaments will pick up years after The Handmaid’s Tale, but Miller wants the two projects to be able to stand on their own. He described Atwood’s novel as a “continuation” that is also “like a separate chapter.” The horizons “are more limitless,” he told THR.

The Handmaid’s Tale‘s ensemble cast features Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd, Max Minghella, O.T. Fagbenle, Samira Wiley, Amanda Brugel, Bradley Whitford, and Sam Jaeger. Alexis Bledel starred in the first four seasons but chose to leave before Season 5. Moss, Dows, Bledel, Miller, and director Reed Morano have all won Emmys for their work on the show.