When a beloved series ends, the cast usually scatters to new projects, and the audience comes to terms with the goodbye. Every so often, though, the goodbye turns out to be a ruse of sorts, planned long before anyone watching had a clue.
That is roughly what happened with The Handmaid’s Tale and its follow-up, The Testaments. When the sequel series was announced, the one question fans kept asking was whether Elisabeth Moss would be back as June Osborne, the Mayday fighter at the heart of the franchise. Hulu and the production held the answer until the show premiered, at which point June returned. Now that the season finale is streaming, Moss can finally talk, and she says her involvement was locked in years in advance. The actor explained to The Hollywood Reporter:
“We didn’t officially know how Handmaid’s was going to end from Bruce and his writers room until while we were shooting that final season. But there was an idea. I had known for years from Caroline Preece Bruce [Miller] that June wasn’t going to get Hannah out [at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale]. I knew that’s what was going to happen. And then Margaret Atwood wrote the sequel, and Hannah didn’t get out. We were like, ‘Okay, cool. That’s confirmed.’ So I knew for a while that wasn’t going to happen.”
Speaking about the finale, Moss explained that June was always going to feature in the sequel, and that the hard part was making the two shows fit together. Since season one Moss has said June’s story isn’t over until Hannah is safe — that’s when it ends. An executive producer on both series and a director on the flagship, Moss knew the broad shape of it well in advance. She had known for years, from creator Bruce Miller, that June wouldn’t get Hannah out by the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, a trajectory Margaret Atwood’s sequel novel had already confirmed.
Keeping that quiet was its own feat. Moss noted the team was careful about what appeared on call sheets, and the reveal never leaked, which is rare for a property watched this closely. The hardest part, she said, was not being able to reassure fans that the Handmaid‘s ending “isn’t really even an ending” for June.
“It was difficult at times to not be able to tell the fans, ‘Guys, it’s okay. June’s story is so not over. The Handmaid’s ending isn’t really even an ending.’ It was hard not to be able to share that, but I knew and Bruce knew that June’s story was not just going to continue in a way of her being in one scene [of The Testaments]. We knew that I was going to have multiple episodes, and that there was going to be an arc and a larger plan for June with The Testaments.”
Rather than a one-scene cameo, June anchors the season as a mentor to Daisy (Lucy Halliday), the resistance spy who eventually tells Agnes (Chase Infiniti) the truth about her mother. The finale circles back to Agnes writing the name “Hannah,” and Moss is bracing for the response to another non-reunion. She fully expects fans to want June and Hannah back together, and admits she wants it too, but only if it’s done the right way.
As for whether June carries the same weight in the already-renewed second season, Moss couldn’t say, with Miller’s writers’ room still figuring it out. She was clear on one point, though: she has no intention of walking away. As long as there’s a Gilead, she says, June is never going to stop fighting.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
