“The Handmaid’s Tale” had a remarkable ending — for real-world reasons; CNN, May 28, 2025

Brian Stelter, CNN; “The Handmaid’s Tale” had a remarkable ending — for real-world reasons

"The show’s producers leaned in. They didn’t hesitate when asked about real-world comparisons to the radicalism portrayed on screen.

“We’re on a very, very slippery slope toward Gilead,” executive producer Warren Littlefield told me back in 2019...

“In early Handmaid’s days,” Littlefield said, “we present a world that was too preoccupied staring into their phones to see Gilead coming until it’s upon our characters and taken over their lives.”

Over the years, many reviewers have pointed to that as one of the enduring takeaways from the show.

“Handmaid’s” “showed the ease with which the unthinkable can become ordinary — a lesson crucial in the age of the Big Lie,” The Atlantic’s Megan Garber wrote in 2021...

One of the showrunners, Yahlin Chang, posited in a recent interview with TheWrap that the show “kind of failed” to serve as a cautionary tale, “or we didn’t caution enough people.”

“It’s shocking to me, when I think about when I joined the show, I had more rights as a woman than I have now,” she said...

The final episodes manage to be uplifting, at least in part, and Littlefield said, “Our message this year, in hopefully a compelling dramatic way, continues to be — like June, don’t give up the fight.”"