5 Ways 'The Handmaid's Tale' Season Six Finale Episode Differs From The Ending Of Margaret Atwood's Book

Elle

07-07-2025

Farewell, The Handmaid's Tale. After six seasons, 61 episodes, countless tear-streaked closeups of Elisabeth Moss, and more emotional trauma than you could shake a stick at, The Handmaid's Tale has finally bowed out. The series finale (season 6, episode 10, which aired on Channel 4 last night) doesn't just wrap things up, though — it burns the house down, literally and metaphorically.
But how closely did the show stay faithful to Margaret Atwood's haunting 1985 novel that inspired the series? In truth, it didn't. The hit Hulu series evolved, expanded, and made peace with characters the book didn't even try to remember, let alone forgive. For Handmaid's Tale-philes, these are the precise ways that the TV show took Atwood's seminal dystopia and reimagined it into something far more hopeful.
By the final episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Gilead is finally crumbling. We see that the Boston uprising is just 19 days away from completely collapsing the regime, while June is finally free, with her daughter Nichole by her side, her mother, and a new baby, Noah. And in the final, closing moment of the show we see our heroine June beginning to tell her own story.
In the book, however, Atwood's ending is more ambiguous. Offred (whose real name is never confirmed) steps into a black van — maybe for rescue, maybe for torture. Then we time-jump 200 years into a cold academic symposium dissecting her 'handmaid's tale' on cassette tapes.
Perhaps for cinematic spectacle, Hulu's adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale interpreted the sterile framework of Gilead and coloured it with rebellion, Canadian refugee politics, and underground railroads of handmaids escaping via Chicago or Little America. Essentially, the show's finale depicted June battling a fascist state as a parent in exile while she dismantles a system from within.
Atwood's world in the novel, though, is dramatically smaller and more limited — a nod, perhaps, to the limitations of Offred's life. Throughout the novel, we stay mostly in one home, inside her thoughts, and occasionally glimpse the wider world through rumours and whispers.
Throughout season six, we saw Serena in captivity with baby Noah, reflecting on her complicity in the oppressive Gilead regime. June, of all people, offers her empathy, while Aunt Lydia, once a twisted mouthpiece for Gilead's horrors, also begins to regret her role — especially in Janine's abuse.
The episode simmers and offers a sense of redemption for both characters, while in the novel, both Serena and Lydia are much flatter. Serena is a bitter, smoking wife obsessed with Offred's fertility, and Aunt Lydia is the embodiment of authoritarian femininity. Neither is afforded nuance, much less absolution.
The most heartbreaking part of the show's finale was that, while June gained freedom, her daughter, Hannah, remained trapped in oppressive Gilead. The unanswered questions about Hannah and her future are actually, though, what form the emotional core of The Handmaid's Tale sequel, The Testaments (which is currently in development).
In the novel, though, Offred's daughter appears early and disappears fast; she's essentially less of a plotline or ongoing narrative.
In the final scene of the final episode, June enters the ruins of the Waterford house and begins recording her story — quite literally her 'handmaid's tale'. She even breaks the fourth wall with the line, 'My name is Offred.'
The book, however, painted this scene a little differently. Atwood framed this moment as a story that Offred tells on cassette that people only learn about via cold historians centuries later.
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Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years' worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.