The fifth season of The Handmaid's Tale premieres in Australia tonight – praise be!
It’s been over a year since we caught up with June and her rag-tag gang of revolutionaries and the latest instalment promises at least a glimpse of hope for the beleaguered women of Gilead.
Never fear, thought because there is plenty of torture, death and tension to catch up on from season four.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Where can I watch The Handmaid's Tale in Australia?
The first two episodes of The Handmaid's Tale season 5 will air back-to-back from 8:30pm Thursday, September 15 on SBS.
After this, episodes will air weekly on Thursdays and be available to stream on SBS On Demand.
If you want to catch up on seasons 1-4, old episodes are available to stream on Stan.
What's The Handmaid's Tale about again?
No shame if your brain is foggy on The Handmaid’s Tale – it has been a long year.
Based off the Margret Atwood novel of the same name, the show is set in a dystopian US, which has been overthrown by an extremist Christian sect who enforced a new totalitarian regime and christened the new land Gilead.
Gilead women are treated like property, the fertility rate is in steep decline and the government's main goal is to repopulate the country.
Women are split into classes, with the elite-but-still-oppressed wives of commanders at the top.
Infertile, low-ranking women are relegated to cooking and cleaning roles, while Handmaids are forcibly impregnated by commanders with infertile wives.
June is our main character; she was forced into being a Handmaid after trying to escape Gilead with her husband and young daughter at the start of the revolution.
For four (soon to be five) seasons we’ve followed June’s bid to survive, find her daughter and overthrow the patriarchal nightmare the US has become.
Can you give me a Handmaids Tale season four recap?
Certainly!
We opened on season four to find that June did not, in fact, die from a bullet wound to the gut.
She survived and was whisked away to a rural safe house with an enraged teen who was married off to her elderly husband.
Oh, and she also got 86 Gilead children to safety in Canada, which the Commanders in Gilead are pretty steamed about.
June’s former captors Fred and Serena Waterford are in a Canadian jail (although it looks more like if Apple made winter lodges). The toxic couple turn on each other but Serena brings out a trump card – she is pregnant!
Back in Gilead, Lawrence and Nick still can’t decide if they want to save June or save themselves but stay in powerful political positions just in case.
June is captured (again) and reunites with Aunt Lydia for some good old-fashioned torture to find out where her escaped Handmaid pals are.
It’s only when June is shown her imprisoned daughter that she gives up the info, only for her and some other Handmaids to escape Aunt Lydia’s clutches (again).
June and Janine then go to Chicago – where resistance fronts have eroded some of Gilead’s power. Here, she miraculously reunites with her estranged bestie Moria to a needle drop of Fix You by Coldplay.
After some back and forth, June finally agrees to seek asylum in Canada where she’s reunited with her husband Luke (no Coldplay this time, though).
While Luke and Moira are playing Canadian house with baby Nichole, June performs a lengthy testimony to a Canadian court that lays out all the horrors that the Waterford’s subjected her to.
But life is not always fair, and a political deal gives sees Canada swap Fred to Gilead in exchange for 22 Handmaids.
However, the swap is rigged and a vulnerable Fred is led into No Man's Land forest where he is torn limb from limb by June and some vengeful Handmaids.
So, we’ve got June with a powerful kill under her belt and Serena in custody but still pregnant – both are ready for one almighty clash.
What can we expect from season five?
The season five trailer shows June still on the warpath but with her sights set on Serena now that Fred is dead.
A large funeral procession is seen along with a VERY pregnant Serena.
Nick and Lawrence are still in Gilead government and while their actions seem anti-June, they were the ones who handed Fred to her so who knows where their allegiances truly lie.
We know for sure that Alexis Bledel’s Emily won’t be returning after the actress bowed out of production following season four.
Pre-screening reviews have been fairly mixed for this new season. Variety has called it a return to form after a few lacklustre seasons.
But reviews from Vanity Fair and indieWire say the show may have run out of steam.
The Handmaid’s Tale season five currently has a score of 60 per cent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Is season five the last season of Handmaid’s Tale?
We thought so, but then creator and showrunner Bruce Miller announced at the season five premiere event at the Toronto International Film Festival that the series had been picked up for a sixth season.
He also confirmed that the sixth season of the show would be its last.
However, Miller also announced that he is “actively developing” a follow-up series based on Margret Atwood’s 2019 novel The Testaments, a sequel that’s set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale.
