The Handmaid's Tale is over after 6 seasons, but our obsession with dystopian TV will go on

If there's 1 happening you tin expect from a dystopian series like The Handmaid's Tale it's that it won't wrap up neatly with a beauteous bow. 

The show, based connected Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's acclaimed 1985 caller and changeable mostly successful and astir Toronto, has travel to an end. The last occurrence dropped connected the streaming work Crave successful Canada aboriginal Tuesday morning.

Don't worry. CBC News won't beryllium revealing immoderate important spoilers. 

For six seasons, June Osborne (played by Elisabeth Moss) guided america connected a disturbing and often brutal travel wrong Gilead — a nine built connected sex oppression nether a totalitarian, theocratic authorities that took implicit overmuch of the United States and forced fertile women to go "handmaids" in a beingness of servitude, maltreatment and rape arsenic a means of countering declining births.  

But it's arsenic overmuch a communicative astir Osborne's absorption arsenic it is astir the downfall of society. 

While The Handmaid's Tale has wrapped, there's nary shortage of TV shows with dystopian themes. Their popularity has lone grown in caller years amid fears astir the authorities of democracy, wars, a planetary pandemic and fiscal crises. Experts and critics who travel the genre say these shows tin assistance america marque consciousness of governmental oregon societal upheaval and taste change. 

"It's a mode that we statesman to benignant of enactment retired our fears arsenic a collective," said Shana MacDonald, an subordinate prof astatine the University of Waterloo. "We get to speech astir it astatine the h2o cooler."

LISTEN | How applicable is The Handmaid's Tale after six seasons:

A 'canary successful the ember mine'

Without giving excessively overmuch away, the last episodes centre on a rebellion led by Osborne, an service of handmaids and a resistance known arsenic Mayday, aimed astatine toppling Gilead and its oppressive commanders. 

For Osborne, it's an enactment of vengeance but besides different measurement successful her unrelenting quest to reunite with her daughter, Hannah, who was taken from her successful the precise archetypal occurrence and yet sent to unrecorded arsenic the adopted child of another Gilead commander. 

The amusement was acceptable successful a fictitious satellite successful a not-so-distant future, but MacDonald says one of the reasons it was truthful relatable was that it was connected the "edges of possible." 

Atwood, who wrote the publication much than 30 years earlier the bid debuted successful 2017, has said that 1 of her inspirations for the communicative was the governmental clime of the 1980s and the emergence of the spiritual close successful the U.S. 

"People, adjacent backmost then, were saying what they would similar to do, should they ever person a accidental to instrumentality power. Now that faction is successful powerfulness successful the United States," she said in 2017, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump, who had taken office just months earlier the bid premiered.

MacDonald sees similar parallels between what plays retired successful Gilead and what has happened successful the U.S.

She points to the repealing of women's reproductive rights nether Trump and the emergence of pronatalism — a movement to promote oregon incentivize people to person much babies for the involvement of society. 

"What's truthful striking astir it," she said, "is however overmuch it's go truthful adjacent to the information successful immoderate ways."

MacDonald, who researches misogyny and fashionable culture, admits that she finds the series too adjacent for comfortableness and can't bring herself to ticker it. 

"It's the canary successful the ember mine, for me," she said. 

But for regular viewers, women successful particular, a amusement similar The Handmaid's Tale tin beryllium "sort of similar doing a trial run" to recognize what 1 mightiness bash successful reality, said Jen Chaney, a freelance TV professional who has written reviews for Vulture, The Washington Post and The New York Times. 

"It's astir arsenic if we're preparing ourselves for immoderate hypothetical and present that seems overmuch little hypothetical than it utilized to," she said.

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Not truthful acold from reality

Some bid like The Handmaid's Tale or Apple TV+'s Severance, successful which a radical of bureau workers person their memories of their work lives surgically separated from their idiosyncratic lives, are acceptable successful times and places that intimately lucifer those in which we live.

Shows like Amazon Prime's The Boys, a convulsive satirical communicative of superheroes who maltreatment their powers, oregon HBO Max's The Last of Us, about a fungal corruption that turns radical into mutant monsters and brings astir the illness of society, may look a small spot beyond the realm of reality, astatine slightest connected the surface. 

The narratives "might beryllium a small far-fetched and mightiness not beryllium present yet," but the underlying themes are inactive relatable, says TreaAndrea Russworm, a prof of cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. 

For example, she notes that The Last of Us deals with topics like the dismissal of subject and medicine, arsenic good arsenic individualism and survivalism, portion besides exploring the convulsive lengths radical whitethorn spell to successful utmost scenarios. 

It gives america "a intelligence lane for exploring that darker broadside of humanity that present has escaped licence to conscionable unleash its violence," she said. 

But there's besides thing therapeutic astir facing your worst fears play retired successful these fictitious scenarios, said Lynn Zubernis, a objective scientist and prof astatine West Chester University successful Philadelphia. She besides researches the science of fans. 

Whether it's The Handmaid's Tale oregon The Boys — which she's penning a publication astir — Zubernis says dystopian shows tin assistance radical header with the uneasiness of what's happening successful nine due to the fact that you tin physique up your affectional regularisation skills and consciousness of resilience by "immersing yourself" successful a satellite that is "disturbing and frightening," adjacent though you cognize it's not real. 

Although she believes determination are benefits to viewing dystopian shows, she cautions that they aren't for everyone. 

"If you're missing that connection of anticipation and you're conscionable feeling wholly overwhelmed by each the acheronian oregon the violence," she said, "then it's not bully for you and you should not beryllium watching it."

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No blessed endings, but that's OK

MacDonald says that with a communicative similar this, you should ne'er expect a tidy conclusion. 

"It ne'er truly has a blessed ending due to the fact that the nine we cognize has collapsed and we're successful a caller place."

But she believes that tin be a bully happening due to the fact that the champion dystopian shows "plant the seed" that determination are inactive "possibilities of a amended future."

Even earlier the finale, the audience knows this isn't the past we'll spot of Gilead. 

Atwood wrote a travel up to The Handmaid's Tale, 2019's Booker Prize-winning The Testaments, which is acceptable successful Gilead 15 years successful the future. 

The Testaments is being adapted into a bid that reportedly began filming successful Toronto successful April, but it's unclear erstwhile it whitethorn beryllium released. 

Chaney says the information that Gilead inactive exists astatine the extremity of the series speaks to the lasting implications of oppressive and authoritarian governments erstwhile they've been in place. 

"You person to support warring implicit and implicit and implicit again," she said. "It doesn't conscionable spell distant magically."

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