The Handmaid-s Tale - Season 5 Apr 2026

Furthermore, the subplot involving Moira and the underground railroad is criminally underdeveloped. For a season about the logistics of resistance, we spend too much time in June’s trauma and not enough on the mechanics of the movement.

Two parallel narratives emerge. In Toronto, June becomes an accidental folk hero to the anti-Gilead movement, but also a toxic fugitive to the Canadian government. She is no longer the plucky survivor; she is a liability. Watching June struggle with her own bloodlust—confronting Serena in a brutal, raw no-holds-barred fistfight in a dusty farmhouse—is Season 5’s core thesis. Revenge doesn’t heal June; it hollows her out, leaving only the machinery of war. The Handmaid-s Tale - Season 5

Not everything works. The pacing, a perennial issue for the show, drags in the middle episodes. The “Luke and June” marriage drama feels like a distraction from the larger political collapse. And the show’s reliance on extreme close-ups of Moss’s face, while powerful, begins to feel like a visual tic rather than a technique. Furthermore, the subplot involving Moira and the underground

The season opens with a literal bang: the assassination of Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) in No Man’s Land. June (Elisabeth Moss) has her revenge, but the catharsis lasts approximately thirty seconds. The show quickly pivots from “can she kill him?” to “what does his death unleash?” In Toronto, June becomes an accidental folk hero

The answer, in Season 5, is grim, slow, and psychologically exhausting—which is precisely its genius.