when is season 6 of handmaids tale

By the fourth dimension the fifth season of "The Handmaid's Tale" rolls around, Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) is already in dire straits. Nonetheless stuck in a detention facility in Canada, she has lost nearly of her allies, as well as her power and status in Gilead. But it's after she learns that her husband, Fred (Joseph Fiennes), has been murdered that her world truly comes crashing down, every bit she's left to fend for herself and her unborn child, in a strange country and with the lingering fearfulness that her former handmaid June (Elisabeth Moss) — who, alongside a group of other erstwhile handmaids, is responsible for Fred'south murder — could come for her next. While the grieving, desperate widow summons June to the battlefield in an human action of retaliation, her main goal going forward, Strahovski argues, is to go on her head above h2o.

"I ever think that survival is kind of the key affair that'due south driving her, no matter what or where she is. And I think in this past flavor, it seems to be the most heightened class of survival, considering she, now, has lost Fred," the Emmy nominee tells Aureate Derby during a contempo webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above). "I mean, fifty-fifty though [she and Fred] have a complicated relationship, I think she does rely on him heavily. And, in fact, you know, in that moment, when we become back into Season 5, I think he'southward certainly given in to kind of supporting her. And he'due south given into his fate that he's non getting out of there — or he doesn't think he is at some point. Then, I call up she's going to utilize that… And she kind of really seems to lose everybody in the flavor — like, [Sam Jaeger's] Mark Tuello kind of peaces out, Fred's dead… Everyone kind of peaces out, and she's really left to her ain devices."

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Matters further take a plow for the worse for Serena when she is forced to leave the Gilead Data Heart — where she had been working and residing after existence asked to serve as a diplomat for Gilead in Toronto — for her own safety. Her new escort, Ezra (Rossif Sutherland), evacuates her to the home of Gilead sympathizers Ryan and Alanis Wheeler (Lucas Neff and Genevieve Angelson) — a secure location that quickly turns into a house of horror for Serena every bit she becomes a quasi-handmaid to her new hosts. When asked at what bespeak her character recognizes that she's essentially a prisoner in her new residence, Strahovski asserts that it'due south rather an early on realization.

"I think the idea comes into her mind early on, especially when Mrs. Wheeler kneels down," she says, in reference to a scene in the fourth episode, "Dearest Offred," in which Alanis drops to her knees and looks starstruck every bit she puts her hands on Serena'southward belly. "I remember the real, true confirmation is when she tries to exit and go talk to the lady who'south exterior with the flowers and Ezra stops her from leaving — I retrieve that's the moment where she realizes, 'All my fears take come true. What am I going to do at present?' But I mean, there [are] obviously a lot of clues, [there is] a lot of stuff that is indicative of the fact that she is a prisoner. I'm but not sure how much she wants to actually believe that she truly cannot exit. So that moment where it'southward literal, you know, 'She cannot get out!' — [that] slaps her in the face pretty hard, I think."

When Ryan informs Serena in the 6th episode, "Together," that June has been captured in No Man'south Country and he will send Ezra in to kill her, she pleads to witness the execution. But on the scene, afterwards Serena asks Ezra to manus her the gun so she can pull the trigger herself, she ends up shooting Ezra instead and drives off with June as she suddenly goes into labor. After crashing the auto in the post-obit episode, "No Man's Land," the 2 seek refuge in an abandoned barn — one in which Serena is ultimately forced to give birth.

As Strahovski had given birth to her second kid, at habitation, not long earlier shooting this episode, she drew on her own experience to lend verisimilitude to the birth scene. "It was really important to infuse a sense of reality in[to] the birth — like, non have it be just a typical, sort of unrealistic motion picture/TV birth," the actor says. "So I spoke a lot to Elisabeth about our physicality… and what we could do. And I remember sharing with her how in the final moments, I was with my married man, and we were facing each other; I had my artillery wrapped around him. And I idea, 'Wouldn't information technology be so cool if we saw Serena with her arms over June and really physically leaning on her?' And I just idea, 'What an interesting dynamic that nosotros may not take ever seen them in, actually!'"

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Indeed, over the course of the dystopian series, June and Serena have had a toxic, dysfunctional relationship, to say the least. But at the cease of the mean solar day, Serena exchanged more than honest emotions with her erstwhile handmaid than she did with most other people in Gilead and, Strahovski asserts, likewise wants June to, in a twisted mode, be her "best friend" despite their history.

"I think that'south partly to do with the fact that she's super lonely, and has been for a really long time, and she doesn't trust anyone," Strahovski elaborates. "I mean, of all people, she shouldn't really trust June, but I practice retrieve they practise take such a rich history. And with Serena existence in the ability position, for the almost part, I call up she withal has this twisted view that they can come together and be friends in some weird way. I don't think she fully understands that what she has done is really, truly unforgivable. So she, I think, does alive in this sort of idealistic fantasy land [in which] they tin can really lean on each other… I mean, it's hard, because they do in a lot of moments — they do cease up relying on each other. Only it'south all circumstantial, because [they're merely trying to survive]."

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