Warning: contains finale spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season five. After June and the other formerly enslaved Handmaids tore Fred Waterford limb from limb at the end of season four, season five was all about June v Serena. (June confessed to the murder but because it had taken place in No-Man’s Land and not on Canadian soil, she faced no charge and was allowed to go free.) The two women circled and taunted and threatened to murder each other, before ending up in the finale on the same train and in the same position: running for their lives out of a country that was once a beacon of safety. In between, Serena was forced to experience life as a Handmaid-lite in the household of some wealthy Gilead wannabes, and June was almost killed by a Gilead-sponsored assassin on Canadian soil. Both women were driven by a need to be with and protect their children – Serena with her and Fred’s baby Noah; and June with her and Nick’s baby Nichole, and her and Luke’s daughter Hannah, who’s still trapped in Gilead and facing the threat of child-marriage. Meanwhile, Commanders Nick Blaine and Joseph Lawrence remarried new Gilead Wives, Janine recovered from another near-death experience with Aunt Lydia, and Mark Tuello gained a valuable intelligence resource in Nick. Here’s what else you need to remember going into The Handmaid’s Tale season six. From the very start of The Handmaid’s Tale, Canada was the promised land; if only Gilead’s prisoners could cross the border to reach it, they would be safe. Luke, Moira and Emily all made it there, and eventually, so did June. They were housed as refugees, and Emily and June were even welcomed like war heroes. But it didn’t last. In season five, The Handmaid’s Tale showed Canada changing from a promised land to a regular place where refugees were resented, protested against, and eventually, run out of town. The Canadian people, it turned out, didn’t all share the same politics. A growing pocket of Christian fundamentalists including women unable to conceive, decided that instead of a brutal and inhumane regime, Gilead was #goals. They aspired to its clean air, Godliness, and pregnant bellies, and they worshipped its martyred figureheads Commander and Mrs Waterford. To the Gilead fan club, who staged candle-lit vigils for Fred Waterford, June Osborne was public enemy no. 1. June was abused in the street, and almost assassinated at a memorial service for Canadian pilots shot down by Gilead while on a failed mission to extract June and Luke’s daughter Hannah. Eventually, a truck sporting a Gilead bumper sticker ran June down outside her house and would have killed her had Luke not intervened and beat the driver unconscious. Unfortunately for Luke, the driver later died which put him on the hook for manslaughter. With Luke facing arrest and the anti-refugee sentiment boiling over, Mark Tuello arranged for Luke, June and Nichole to board a refugee train going west. At the station, Luke sacrificed his own safety by turning himself in to allow June and Nichole to board the train. In doing so, he assuaged some of the guilt he’d been harbouring for not managing to save June and Hannah from Gilead years earlier. On board the train in the season five finale, who should June find there but Serena and baby Noah. Serena the Symbol Fred’s savage murder was the best thing that could have happened to the Waterfords’ public profile. For those drinking the Gilead Kool-Aid, his death turned two war criminals into a tragic victim and his stoic widow – a woman whose holiness God had rewarded with fruitfulness. The beautiful, pregnant Serena Joy Waterford was a powerful symbol, and great PR for Gilead. The Sons of Jacob clearly thought so. They allowed Serena to stage Fred’s funeral as a televised state occasion (which she cunningly used to flaunt her access to June and Luke’s now adolescent daughter Hannah, as an act of revenge against June, who’d sent Serena Fred’s severed finger in the mail). But that didn’t mean that Serena was wanted back in Gilead. A powerful, educated woman? There’s no place for her in the regime. Enter: the Wheelers. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Part of the growing pro-Gilead movement outside the regime, the Wheelers were a wealthy childless couple who’d chosen to cosplay as a Gileadean Wife and Commander. They welcomed the pregnant Serena into their home as a guest, but it was soon clear that she was more like their prisoner and, in a stunning twist of fate, Serena was essentially subjected to life as a pregnant Handmaid. So, she escaped. Serena’s day job, as decided by the Sons of Jacob, was to spearhead a new Gilead Cultural Center to promote the regime in Canada and to work as a diplomat there. She didn’t miss an opportunity while there to taunt June, even inviting her to the launch with an invitation addressed to “Offred”. Serena also taunted Luke about his failure to protect June and Hannah, prompting him to undertake a dangerous mission into No-Man’s Land with June to get information about Hannah’s new Wife School. When that mission led to June and Luke being arrested by Commander Wheeler’s private army, Luke was released, but June was due to be executed. Serena begged Wheeler to be allowed to witness June’s death, and then to be the one to shoot her in revenge for Fred’s murder. However, instead of killing June, Serena turned the gun on the Wheelers’ bodyguard and she and June escaped together. Serena went into labour in a barn on the road, and instead of abandoning her, June delivered the baby and got Serena to hospital when she became seriously ill. In revenge though, Luke informed the authorities and Serena was arrested and separated from her newborn, who was given to the Wheelers to foster. Now branded a criminal, Serena’s Handmaid-lite experience came full circle as she was forced to live as a prisoner with the Wheelers and to breastfeed her son while Alanis Wheeler raised him as her own. Cleverly, Serena managed to escape with Noah during an event at the Cultural Center, and to get fake ID papers that let her on the refugee train. Commander Lawrence, New Bethlehem, Janine, and Nick & Rose Joseph Lawrence came up with a plan to bolster Gilead’s standing on the world stage, which involved the creation of an enclave called New Bethlehem on a New England island. There, refugees from Gilead would be welcomed back to live under a less restrictive version of the regime and to show the world that Gilead wasn’t without compassion. Lawrence invited June, Luke and Nichole to live there, promising to bring their daughter Hannah there too. He also invited Commander Nick Blaine and his new second wife Rose, the daughter of a powerful DC High Commander. Luke and June refused, choosing instead to try to get Hannah out of Gilead altogether, but Nick and Rose seemed amenable to the move. As a result of the Gilead-sponsored attack on June’s life, Nick Blaine finally agreed to become a spy for Mark Tuello and the Canadian government. He’s been very open with his pregnant wife Rose, who knows that he’s in love with June Osborne, and who doesn’t seem to be as vehement a Gileadean as you’d expect from the daughter of a High Commander. Meanwhile, teenager Esther (the former Wife June met on the lam, who’d been ‘rehabilitated’ to become a Handmaid by Janine and Aunt Lydia) was raped by Commander Putnam at Fred Waterford’s wake. In response, Esther fed herself and Janine poisoned chocolates in a suicide-murder attempt, and they both went into comas. Janine recovered from hers, while Esther was discovered to be pregnant as a result of the rape. To punish Putnam for the rape of “unassigned property”, Commander Lawrence and Nick executed him. Lawrence then married Putnam’s widow Naomi and gave a home to Angela, the baby Naomi had stolen from Janine. Naomi offered for Janine to come and live with them as their Handmaid, but was ferociously rebuked, which led to Janine being arrested by the Eyes. Hannah June and Luke’s daughter was kidnapped by Gilead aged five and has spent the last seven years under the name “Agnes” and being raised by a Commander and his Wife. Now nearing puberty, she’s been transferred to a Wife school to prepare her for marriage. Until now, it hasn’t been clear how much the girl remembers about her life pre-Gilead but one short scene in season five gave us an indication. Despite women and girls not being allowed to read or write in Gilead, we saw her illicitly use a stolen pencil to write her name in the childish scrawl of the five year-old she was when she was first taught her letters. The name she wrote? Crucially, it wasn’t the Gilead-imposed “Agnes” but her pre-Gilead name “Hannah”. She’s still her mother’s daughter. Episodes one to three of The Handmaid’s Tale season six stream on Hulu in the US from April 8, with new episodes weekly. Season six will air on Channel 4 in the UK at a later date.