As stated by The Hollywood Reporter, The Handmaid’s Tale is filming for the ultimate season. On September 6, Hulu shared an Instagram post of head star Elisabeth Moss (Girl, Interrupted, Mad Men) posing with a slate board to ‘soft launch’ the first day of filming season six, which is the show’s final season.
Hulu has also stated the sixth season will be released in Spring 2025, making it a two-and-a-half-year gap from the season five finale on November 9, 2022. The production of the show was held back due to the writer and actor strike as they failed to pick up filming again on their scheduled date and started in fall 2023. Negotiations took place and writers and actors won better contracts for media companies they worked for. Additionally, schedules of cast members led to the production starting this week.
The fifth season finale resulted in a cliffhanger as Moss’ character June and other runaways from Gilead escaped Toronto with the intention of ensuring security outside of Canada and finding themselves in Hawaii. In the universe of the show, Hawaii is a section of the small-scale United States.
Bruce Miller (The Stranger Beside Me), the showrunner, informed THR after the season five finale of June’s safety of June and not to worry about her character’s death. “The show exists because June survived. The only reason the show is recorded history, in our fake world, is because she recorded it. So, she has to survive because it’s de facto what made this exist.”
Miller stepped down as The Handmaid’s Tale showrunner in 2023 as his priorities shifted to a sequel series, The Testaments, a novel by Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace, Cat’s Eye) turned into a television series. However, Miller stays as an executive producer on the show for its last season. The show is now being run by Yahlin Chang (Supergirl, Dirty Sexy Money) and Eric Tuchman (TimeShare, Anastasia).
The Handmaid’s Tale is produced by MGM Television. Joining Miller on the executive producer team is Chang, Tuchman, Moss, Daniel Wilson (The Powers of Matthew Stars), Fran Sears (The Moving of Sophia Myles), Frank Siracusa (The Good Witch) , John Weber (Vikings), Kim Todd (A Bear Named Winnie), Sheila Hockin (Penny Dreadful), Steve Stark (Wednesday) and Warren Littlefield (Fargo).
Along with Moss, the final season’s cast includes Ann Dowd (Compliance), Amanda Brugel (Kim’s Convenience), Bradley Whitford (Shameless), Ever Carradine (The Requiem Boogie), Josh Charles (Dead Poets Society), Max Mighella (Teen Spirit), Madeline Brewer (Orange Is The New Black), O.T. Fagbenle (Presumed Innocent), Sam Jaeger (Parenthood), Samira Wiley (Orange Is The New Black) and Yvonne Strahovski (Dexter).