How June’s Story Ends, Taylor Swift Cameo

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” now streaming on Hulu.

Bruce Miller has known he wanted to end “The Handmaid’s Tale” since before the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book debuted in 2017. And fans who tuned into watch the series finale Tuesday will see Miller stuck with that ending, and he’s got the receipts to prove it.

“Well, if you go back and watch the pilot, at the beginning of the pilot, you can hear her click that tape recorder that she clicks at the end of the series to start recording ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in the audio — and we didn’t go back and put that in, that was there,” Miller told Variety.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” series finale ends with June (Elisabeth Moss) returning to her bedroom in the Waterfords’ now-destroyed home to begin recording her tale, which begins with the first voiceover monologue given by June as the handmaid Offred from the series premiere, in preparation to write a book about her time in Gilead.

“I always thought it made natural sense. The last thing you know in the book about Offred is that she recorded this,” Miller said. “And so when Lizzie and I were talking at the very beginning of the project, you talk about where you’re going to go. If you could wave a magic wand and magically go six seasons — which is incredible — then what would we do? And hopefully you ended where the book ended, which is she’s recording this in a cabin, and then she leaves it behind. We changed it a little, but the sound department — who is the same sound department we’ve had all along, is very excited that we’re paying off the Easter egg that they put in the very first episode.”

The ending of “The Handmaid’s Tale” series is not the ending of the world of Gilead, which won’t be toppled until Hulu’s adaptation of “The Testaments,” Atwood’s 2019 sequel to her seminal 1985 novel. Miller is shepherding that series, which is currently in production, and working alongside much of the same team, including Moss as a producer.

In the interview below, Miller breaks down how “The Handmaid’s Tale” finale will lead into the plot of “The Testaments,” and what changes will be made to the sequel series from its source material — as well as how he decided where to end June’s story.

I was so excited to see Alexis Bledel come back as her character Emily for the finale. How did that come about?

It was always understood, at least for me, that I would do anything if there was ever a time that it made sense to bring her back. We loved her, and she loved being on the show. It was a logistical piece at the end, because you only have a certain number of weeks to shoot it and it was very important to me that she was in that part of the show that was shot in Gilead where June was back. Because her being back in the neighborhood meant a lot less if you didn’t find out what happened to Emily. So it felt like she was part and parcel of that. But it wasn’t a difficult decision at all, it just felt like the the tumbler that needed to fall into place, but getting it to happen, as always, is more difficult.

I didn’t even realize until the final lines triggered me to go back and watch the pilot that the entire scene in front of the ice cream shop is also a scene from the pilot. The aquarium scenes with Hannah and Luke are another reference to the pilot.

In the novel, this was June’s story and she was the point of view, so you only knew what she knew, and that’s what made it scary. That’s what made it a story at all. It wouldn’t be a story if you saw it from 30,000 feet. It’s because June doesn’t know what’s going to happen today or tomorrow or in that van or in that room or anything. So it was important to me to keep it in that arena — that the show was her experience. It’s called “The Handmaid’s Tale.” So what I was thinking is, where shall I start and where shall I end?

How are approaching “The Testaments” TV series based on where you concluded “The Handmaid’s Tale”? That book centers on the stories of June’s daughters Hannah and Nichole, as well as Aunt Lydia, but takes place 15 years after the events of “The Handmaid’s Tale” book. Is that the time jump you will follow?

No, it can’t really be that, because it covers Hannah when she’s kind of in her 14, 15, 16-year-old years. So it’s about five years after “The Handmaid’s Tale,” probably more like three or four, depending on how we judge — there’s always a little bit of guesswork involved, it’s not a real world, but it’s somewhere around three or four years after. And the biggest and the only reason it’s any different is because none of that stuff tracks age-wise. Because our show takes place over a certain time frame, and babies only grow over a certain time frame, and people aren’t just the right ages. Nichole is not going to high school, and so we had to make changes for that. But I have to say, Margaret came to speak with me about “The Testaments” being an idea, and we spoke very early on about the notion of it. There was just as much of her giving me hints then.

So it seems like, now you have to pivot the show — but that pivoting happened a long time ago, just by discussions between me and her about, “This is where I’m planning to go with Aunt Lydia,” and she said, “Oh, cool.” She was telling me what she wanted to do, and I was thinking of ways that mine tracked with hers, but she was also asking questions about the show and where it would track. So we had a long, ongoing conversations. She wasn’t asking me for permission, by any means, but she was giving me insight into what I should do with the characters to put them in good stead naturally for “The Testaments.”

What other characters might you carry over into “The Testaments”?

Anybody who has an hour free, I would carry over, if I could manage to make it work. There are, of course, business concerns, but story-wise, I think a lot of them fit into “The Testaments” world. These are spectacular people, and they’re my friends, and they do their jobs beautifully, and I would be honored to have them come back and be part of the story again whenever we can figure it out. They’re very connected. I mean, it’s not like a sequel like some other things where you’re just cutting it off. The first set of characters matter hugely to the second set of characters. So these stories are very tied together, and it’s very much a continuation of this “Handmaid’s Tale” that we’ve seen. You’re just following the daughter instead of the mother.

How will June be referenced? Or Nick? In “The Testaments,” Nick has a different role within Gilead versus how “The Handmaid’s Tale” TV series ends, so how does that affect what your version will look like?

We’ll certainly reference them, and bring it into relief a lot more than it is in the book, and earlier. Because the book is really focused on on her life, Agnes and Lydia, and all those points of view in their life, and only does it come to bear at the end. But I think where we are and what we’re doing with the story, with a few slight differences, they are thinking more in the front of their minds, but characters are thinking more about the particular people who made the changes in the end of the last series. So I think that June is much more present. And although Agnes doesn’t know in the story that that’s her mother, she’s telling a story in retrospect in “The Testaments,” just like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” so that Agnes certainly knows the whole story. So her very strange, very influential collection of mothers is a big part of the story. It’s amazing when you start thinking about who the women are in her life who have influenced her, and, of course, she’s got a lot of June in her, which means she’s big trouble.

A lot of people have had a hard time accepting Nick’s death at the end of Episode 9. There’s been a lot of mental gymnastics people have made to be like, “He got a parachute, and he’s gonna come out of the plane and we’ll see him in the finale.” On top that, there’s also a lot of people who want to believe that he was in on that plan to blow up the plane, that he knew about it, and he actually was part of Mayday, like he is in the book. So can you set the record straight on what Nick knew and didn’t and whose side he was on in the end?

My sense of this is he always thought every plane he was going to get on to was going to blow up. Because he knew, just even if he wasn’t in with Mayday, he was an Eye, and he knew how strong they were. And I think every day, he often thought it would be his last. I felt like Nick, when he got married and when his wife got pregnant, he couldn’t be the man we wanted him to be, that he was, that June loved, if he didn’t change his point of view to put his child first. And that’s what she tells him to do. She says, “Children look to their fathers.” And I think that if the choice is, literally, probably die fighting or abandon your wife and child, I can’t imagine that he isn’t thinking this is the safer route for protecting his family, is to stay in the status quo. It’s moving up to be safer.

So to me, it didn’t have anything to do with Mayday, really, it just had to do with being a good man. That’s all he wanted to try to be is a good man. And once he got married and put down roots in Gilead, I thought, he really has put in his lot. And he says very clearly, at the end of Episode 9, “It’s nice that you join the winners.” He doesn’t say the right people. And that’s all that’s important to him to protect his family, is that he’s on the winning side. Because June is not with her child, raising her child. It is a lot harder. So to me, it was a natural progression of the good man that he was, and also the good man that June kind of pulled out of him, that he would never in a million years abandon his responsibility to this son that’s coming into the world. That’s what I thought. So he’s absolutely knows the potential for Mayday to kill him all the time. And I think he wasn’t surprised by a lot of this stuff, that he could have stopped a ton of it, but he let it all go through. But I think in the end, I don’t think he would’ve been surprised. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Lawrence had told him beforehand. And I think he still would have gotten on the plane.

There’s a lot of references made to Nick throughout the episode as well with June looking up over the garage and things like that. I know there wasn’t a ton of time to unpack her feelings surrounding his death, but how much did you want to incorporate that and how she’s dealing and grieving through that?

Oh, absolutely. It would have been eight episodes about that, and I think it will the next 25 years of her life. We did it as much as I thought she would be dealing with it at this stage, this close to when it happened. But it underlies the entire episode. It’s kind of why she’s having trouble deciding to tell the story or not, is there are people like Nick, people who she was in love with and this is how that thing ended. A lot of her stories end terribly, so do you tell them or not? And I think Luke says, these people are amazing, and they can’t be lost to history, including him. So I think the mourning process is just beginning. She loved both of these guys, but I think she was in love with Nick on a really big level and through his faults and her faults, I think they loved each other and always wondered what would have happened in a different situation. And I don’t think that’s going to go away. I don’t think there’s anything in the episode that makes you think June is anywhere near that. She’s about to tell you how she met him when the show ends. The next thing she says is, “There was this hot guy in the garage.”

Going to the other hot guy — Luke, and how that ends for June. It’s left open ended, where they plan to meet back up and are still working toward getting Hannah, but aren’t actively a couple. Why end it that way?

I think they’ve changed it a lot, and because of that, it really did seem like the only way that they could end responsibly, because they’re not going to stop and get to know each other — although I think they tried to do the short version of that when they got together in Toronto. They’re realizing it’s going to be a long, complicated relationship, however it ends up. And I like that the fact that they love each other has never been in question — it’s just the fact of whether their lives are going to be completely together or partially together. He came into his own this season in a way where he felt like he wasn’t going to try to make someone else’s life better, he was going to do what he thought was right and good for the world. He was really living his life for the people around them and tried to keep them happy, including his daughter. But I think here he was thinking, “If I’m not just looking around for someone to be sad, what am I doing?”

Going back a few episodes here — this has been sitting with me since they brought it up: Moira and June were having a conversation about what Nick did to betray Mayday, and they bring up Angelina Jolie, Rihanna and Halle Berry. Where are these women, Bruce? If these people exist in this universe, did they become Handmaids? Are they Marthas? Where’d they go? Did they get to Hawaii?

I bet all of them, all those people, are smart enough to get far, far away. Absolutely. Rihanna would never be caught anywhere near this, or Angelina Jolie or Halle Berry. So I think they absolutely are all in the most beautiful, safest country that they could possibly find.

Hopefully attempting to save us, still.

Hopefully attempting to save us, but I don’t think any of those people were swept up in the horribleness. Thank God.

One of the bright spots in the finale is the alternate reality scene June dreams where she is out with all the Handmaids and Rita at a karaoke bar singing “Landslide.” In a packed finale, how did you decide that dream sequence should be included here?

I was trying to think of, really, when you go through a situation like this, in the end, what does June want? Because she doesn’t want things back the way they were, because then you don’t know Janine or Alma or Nick. So the big question here is, what does she want? She finally says, “I want things the way they should have been” — and should have been means you do know Janine, and you do know Alma. So at the beginning of the show in the first few seasons, June didn’t have any dreams. She had memories. The future was terrible. What would she dream about? She had memories, and she would lay in bed and think about her daughter. Now, as we get to the very end of the show in the very last season, it’s the first time we have any dreams in the show. And she has a dream at the beginning of Hannah, and then she has a dream in this final episode and it was because she has reached the point where she’s dreaming again, where she has aspirations for how the world should be in positive ways, not just bloody commanders everywhere. And so that’s really the end, in some ways, this big part of her life as a Handmaid, is when she could finally dream again.

We don’t get a ton of Serena in the finale, but we do get closure for her, and we get forgiveness from June — which I feel like is very bold, and is going to be a controversial decision. Especially because two episodes prior, and from the beginning of the season, she said, “No, I don’t forgive you. I don’t. How could I forgive you?” So why did she make that choice, and does she genuinely mean it? Or was she saying it because she doesn’t think she’s going to see Serena again, and so let’s just end it this way?

I think it was aspirational, like, “I hope I can mean this,” because right afterwards, she says, “You have to start somewhere.” So I think the idea is she’s not really committed to embracing anything about this woman, but she is willing to let go of what ties them together, if she can. And I think that’s what it was about. It wasn’t more about, “I’m not going to see you again,” it’s, “I’m not going to have you as my terrible thing anymore. You’re going to go away. And I have lots of other things to think about. I have a busy life. I’m done with you, and so I have to forgive you, to let you go.” And it has to be brought up a few times where she’s thinking, “I actually don’t fucking forgive you,” earlier in the season. And here, thinking about it, it’s not, “You did something that was OK,” it’s, “I’m forgiving you.” In the book, that’s something Margaret Atwood said, is that’s what real power is — who gets to forgive who. So that went back to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Janine is alive. Janine is free. And Janine has Charlotte. And that’s all most people were hoping for at a certain point by the end of the series. What motivated you to give that one big happy ending to a character who has been continuously beaten down?

That was amazing, and I think we’ve been working towards it for the whole season, in terms of the puzzle pieces slowly coming together to let that thing that should have happened so long ago finally, finally happen. Lydia has been going through a very interesting arc that Ann Dowd has been playing for two or three seasons of reforming, at first to see Janine as a human, and then to see all her girls, as she calls them, as humans. I think that this is the fruit that that all bears, is finally, in this season, Lydia puts her money where her mouth is a few times — and this is one of them. And what I wanted to show was that Lydia and, in a certain sense, Naomi [Ever Carradine], wasn’t going to let her die in there. When she got taken by the Eyes, and they were going to do something to her, Lydia was not going to let that happen. It’s such an emotional center of the show, those two women.

But also Naomi has come a long way in terms of how much she believes in the Handmaid system, but also how much she believes in the stability of Gilead as a future for her daughter. And you can’t be a woman in Gilead and not think about your daughter’s future, if you have a daughter. But I think that Naomi in particular was always thinking, “My daughter is going to end up being at the top echelon of society,” like someone like Agnes in “The Testaments,” and so she won’t have very many worries. As that starts falling apart around her, she realizes that this child will be safer with Janine, and that Janine will do absolutely everything to take care of this child and would lay down her life. So it felt like this natural progression for the other characters, besides Janine, so that when Janine finally really needs help, she’s laid this groundwork from Lydia, from the first friggin episode of the television show, that pays dividend to that moment. And she plucks her out of there, and she does exactly what Janine told her not to do: “Leave me alone. Don’t bother. Don’t butt in anymore. I’m fine without you. You just fuck things up. Don’t do anything.” And then she did, and she got her out.

The use of “Look What You Made Me Do” (Taylor’s Version) in Episode 9 had Swifties going crazy. Fans have inspected some of that scene and noticed a character shot only from behind that’s walking in such a way they think it’s Taylor Swift herself. Was that her? Did Taylor have a cameo?

I can’t say anything. I’m not allowed to say anything.

“Not allowed to say anything”? Well, that makes the speculation worse!

All right, I’m good at making things worse — that’s how I make all of my money.

How long will it be until we get to see “The Testaments”?

We’re well on our way towards making it. And we’re in the middle of production, and it’s such a pleasure. We brought over so many people from “The Handmaid’s Tale” that we could: the crew, and Elisabeth Moss and I are working together again, and Warren [Littlefield] and Steve Stark, and Lauren [Thorpe] and all these people all back together. It is a pleasure to be doing that, and the quality of the work is still so amazing that every time I’m blown away. So it’s coming much sooner than I think the next season of “Handmaid’s” would have come, but we’re well into it, and it’s coming along just splendidly. I think it’ll be a lot of — in the way my show is a lot of fun, I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

This interview has been edited and condensed.