“The Handmaid's Tale” summary: Where are June and Serena Joy? The overview for everyone who lost it

“The Handmaid's Tale”, season 1–5: This has happened so far

On April 8, 2025, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) is inOn the way to the literal last crusade: in the last season it will be about their freedom and that of women in Gilead, rights and a future in peace. But what has happened so far? And where are Handmaid June and her opponent Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski)? Here the recap comes to everything inSo far - so that you can easily get on the last episodes.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 1 (2017): Welcome to Gilead

Season 1 is based on Margaret Atwood's bestseller of the same name from 1985. The United States is no longer available after a nuclear incident and a civil war. In her place, Gilead, a Christian-foundal dictatorship isolated from the world, stands in which women were revoked all rights and only men are in charge. Women are divided into boxes: wives and maids that are forced to forced labor in the household, bed or radioactively contaminated colonies.

The “handmaids” take a special role: they have lost all rights and also their names and were enslaved for sexual services. More specifically, due to falling birth rates and infertility, they are raped by men every month on their fertile days in a pseudo traditional ceremony in the presence of the wife in order to be able to give birth to as many children as possible. Those who violate the rules of the regime risk hard punishments or even death.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 1: June Osborne

June Osborne, her husband Luke and her daughter Hannah are taken up by soldiers on the run from the USA and separated from each other. June is enslaved as a handmaid and assigned to the commander Fred Waterford - her name is now no longer June, but “desfred”, ie “von Fred” (in English: “offred”). On a monthly basis, she is raped several times in a “ritual sleep”, but June does not get pregnant. Fred Waterford's wife Serena Joy persuades her to sleep with the commander's driver, Nick, to finally get a child (for her).

In her wardrobe, June finds a sentence scratched into the wood that sounds Latin but is not Latin. It should mean "don't let the bastards be finished". Under the board on which the sentence is carved, June also finds letters from previous handmaids in which they share their suffering.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 1: Serena Joy Waterford

Serena Joy is the strict woman of commander Fred Waterford. She reluctantly picks up June as a handmaid in her house because she can no longer get children herself. Until June gets pregnant, Serena Joy treats her badly - to do her and in her presence June sleeps with the driver Nick, from whom she finally becomes pregnant and in contrast to Fred Waterford. However, when Serena Waterford finds out that her husband spent time with June outside of ritual after sleep, she wants to get rid of the handmaid. It is only when the pregnancy test is positive that it can be soothed.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 2 (2018): This is Hell

The second season of “The Handmaid's Tale” continued without a book template. In Gilead, mass suspensions, torture, suicide attacks of the maids and stones are the order of the day. But in one of the latter, June and the handmaids from their district do not participate. The result: the handmaids are tortured. In a detour, June not only learns that her daughter Hannah, but also her husband Luke: Hannah is used by Serena Joy as a means of pressure for good behavior, Luke manages to contact and make the letters of the handmaids accessible to the world public. A global moral shitstorm fell on Gilead and the male leadership.

Nick is inevitably married after Ms. Waterford notes that her driver was not just the sperm donor for her/junes baby. However, his wife falls in love with another - this is also not to be tolerated in Gilead: Nick's wife and her partner are arrested while fleeing and publicly drowned in a swimming pool.

In season 2 you notice that there is no longer a book template: the “Handmaid's Tale” tells slower but no less drastic. In addition, the many slow motion shots of the handmaids in their red robes have a long time on white snow.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 2: June Osborne

June tries to flee several times. As a result, the pregnant young woman is heavily tortured and abused - but does not give up. June joins “Mayday”, one underground organization that wants to bring Gilead down. In the middle of it, her second child gives birth to her alone, who calls the little daughter Holly. Holly is immediately renamed Nichole by the Waterfords, to whom June is delivered again. After June can see her first daughter Hannah again, she decides to escape to Canada. However, when she is on the inside of the Border with Canada and her freedom, she returns: she hands over her baby to a friend and returns to Gilead to save her daughter Hannah.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 2: Serena Joy Waterford

Serena Joy Waterford is torn in Gilead: she is abused by her husband, but also wants to be the child that June has to do for her (and to whom she is in no way of a relationship). Serena Joy, formerly successful business woman, also wants to teach girls reading. The male elite of Gilead sees this as an affront and cuts off the commander's wife's little finger of the left hand. Her husband goes with the authorities and blesses the mutilation.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 3 (2019): This isAmericaGilead

In Gilead happens in thefew. Torture, oppression andare still the order of the day, while the revolution is slowly but surely formed in the underground. At the forefront: June Osborne.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 3: June Osborne

After June chose the struggle for freedom in Gilead and put her child in the arms of a confidant on the border with Canada, her husband Luke and BFF from pre-Gilead period, Moira, Baby Nichole. So far so good. June himself is kept as a handmaid in the house of the Waterfords, which you take to Washington DC to fight for the return of Baby Nichole. There, June sees handmaids for the first time, who in the truest sense of the word can no longer be able to say a word: they were partially riveted with clips, or they have to wear a mouth protection that is supposed to prevent them from speaking.

In the course of this season, June passes into attack mode: she stabs a commander with a ballpoint pen and organizes an airplane on behalf of “Mayday” that certainly flies 86 children and their supervisors to Canada.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 3: Serena Joy Waterford

Serena Joy ignites his own house from anger over her lost finger and hatred of her husband, but is saved by June. She doesn't want to go back - the baby she thinks is entitled to. On a trip to Canada, she ambush her husband who is charged in outside of Gilead for war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, Serena Joy did the bill without her nasty husband, because Commandant Waterford pulls his wife into the misery - and is also charged.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 4 (2021): This is Bad News

Also inChange in the everyday life of the residents: Little inside of Gilead: they are suppressed, they have to live according to strict rules, and a small elite has all power.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 4: June Osborne

June is enough: she now uses vigilante and condemns a man who enjoyed Gilead's privileges. After a poison attack on a brothel in which she killed with other handmaid commanders, June is arrested and sentenced to forced labor in an agricultural colony. From there she can flee with other maids and finally follows the resistance in Chicago. When Chicago attacks Gilead, June almost survived a bomb attack. Surprise: When she then opens her eyes, she saves her BFF Moira and wants to take her to Canada (this time real).

However, June still has an invoice with her old “owner” Fred Waterford: a prisoner exchange is pretended to dismiss him back into freedom/to Gilead - however, June revenues, manipulates the deal and plunges into her rape in the forest with other handmaids. Fred's story ends on a tree where he is hung up by the Mägden.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 4: Serena Joy Waterford

Serena realizes at the beginning of the season that she is pregnant - from her husband! And even if he forced her to the sexual act with which she might have been pregnant, she is overjoyed. She asks June for forgiveness, but it cannot be softened. The hostility between the two escalates.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 5 (2022): This is Reality

Times change in: Canada has taken up a lot of refugees from the United States, but the country is divided by an increasingly nationalist movement: there are protests against people from the neighboring dictator. For Gilead, it is about the bare survival: Without international and global policy recognition, the state is doomed to failure, because Gilead is not able to survive in its isolationist course. So should the strict pseudo-religious rules be relaxed in order to be able to play on the world politics parquet again?

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 5: June Osborne

At Fred Waterford's funeral, June sees her daughter Hannah and Serena Joy together at the coffin. Hannah wears a purple coat - a sign that she should be married soon. As if she had needed one more sign, June wants to bring her child to Canada - it costs what it wanted, be it. Together with her husband Luke, she tries to get across the border to Gilead, but the two are picked up and arrested at the border. Thanks to her contacts, June comes free and can free her husband on probation.

June is ran over several times by a xenophobic attacker on her doorstep, but survives. Her husband Luke beats the driver of the car to death and is finally arrested at the train station after June and Baby Nichole certainly climbed into one, the last train, for the two of them to the west, to Alaska - the state that is not yet part of Gilead and where they are certainly in front of xenophobic hatred from Canada. However, June sees a well -known face on the train: Serena Joy Waterford also escapes.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 5: Serena Joy Waterford

Serena Joy stages her husband's funeral service as a global TV event, but is treated in Gilead like a second-class woman: she is widowed and pregnant-very bad prerequisites in a country that only listens to the word of men. She reflects on Gilead's values, but quickly realizes that charity is one of them: a friendly commander picks her up in his family, but his wife then treats Serena Joy like a handmaid, patronized and suppresses them.

When she is allowed to go to Toronto to the opening of a meeting center for Gilead, the pregnant woman takes all courage together and flees - then on the train towards the west coast on an old acquaintance: June Osborne.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Staffel 6 (2025): This is the final Countdown

The last ten episodes of “The Handmaid's Tale” run at MagentaTV from April 8, 2025. At the same time for the US broadcast, the last season and thus the final showdown between June and Serena with three follows, after which a new episode is broadcast every week.

“The Handmaid's Tale”: That is why this series is so important

No other series, no other show has dealt with women and hatred of women. Sure, everything never really happened, “The Handmaid's Tale” is one. However, if you look a bit in our world in 2025, you notice thatjust be accepted.

What is currently inGileadThe USA happens is scary: based on religious writings, women become free health care and thatHolded out, their rights and their will are kicked with feet. “The Handmaid's Tale” is a dark vision of the future. However, we have how far this future is still removed and whether it ever becomes true.