The Truck, The Choice And The 'Handmaid's Tale' Finale

This review of the second-season finale of The Handmaid's Tale discusses in detail what happens in the second-season finale of The Handmaid's Tale.

The sound of the second season of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale coming to an end was the sound of a balloon, expertly inflated to the point where it seemed about to break, being let go so that it releases its tension in a long, anticlimactic raspberry.

For two seasons, June's goals have been to get her daughter and get the blessed fruit out of Gilead. But in the past — in the first season, when she tried to flee by train, and in the second season, when she escaped to the offices, and later in the second season, when she tried to escape in a plane, and even later, when she tried to escape in a car — she has understood that the first order of business was to get out of Gilead, where she couldn't help Hannah. She has watched other Gilead women be raped, beaten, mutilated, and murdered. She has now seen Serena, who has as much power in this society as any woman can, attempt to work, with great civility, within the system and lose a finger for it. She has a