The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss is happy with the show’s finale: ‘Can’t imagine it ending any other way’

With The Handmaid’s Tale officially wrapped up, actor Elisabeth Moss is finally reflecting on the ending of the series that shaped a major chapter of her career. Having portrayed June Osborne for nearly a decade, Elisabeth, in a recent interview with Variety magazine said she couldn’t have imagined a more fitting send-off for the character — or the show.

“I loved (the series’ ending). As someone who has lived telling this story for nine years, I can’t imagine it ending any other way,” she said.

The Emmy-winning actor pointed to the show’s final scene as a moment of profound resonance, both for her and for the audience. “When she starts to say ‘A chair, a table, a lamp’… That moment, for the audience, is something I crave. ‘Is that the original voiceover? Is that the way the book starts?’” she said. For Elisabeth, the callback to Margaret Atwood’s original prose was not only deliberate — it was a moment of “television gold.”

She emphasised that she was fully aligned with the creative decision to end the story in this way. “I would never have said yes to anything that I did not feel was exactly the way that series should end,” she explained. “This whole series has always been about the same thing. It’s the same thing that I fell in love with in the first episode, and the reason I said yes to it, and it’s the same story we’re telling in the final scene,” Elisabeth added.

That story, at its core, has always been about June’s fight — not only to protect her own children but to ensure that future generations would never suffer under the tyranny of Gilead. “That has been her story from the beginning, and it’s her story in the final scene. The fact that what she starts with is what she ends with, to me, is so f**king genius. And I can say that, because it’s not my idea. To me, there is no better way to say what the show is than her telling her story,” she said.