The Handmaid’s Tale burst onto the TV scene eight years ago and launched its sixth and final season earlier this month. From the start, it was an exercise in blunt-force storytelling, eschewing moral subtlety in favor of a didacticism intended to remind progressives of their inherent goodness. The Sons of Jacob, rulers of the Christian-nationalist dystopia called Gilead, are evil. They have replaced America with a slave state dedicated to systematic sexual assault. Those who resist, led by protagonist June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), are righteous. And into one camp or the other, every character goes. 

Even in its early seasons, the series was ridiculous: a bloated, hysterical attack on exactly the wrong target. Yet even conservatives have to admit that its world-building is not without the occasional point of interest. The program’s costumes, particularly its resistance-appropriated handmaid robes, are overdetermined, improbable, and deeply stupid. Its geopolitics, less so. Forced with other young women into rape-abetted gestational surrogacy, June hopes, in an early episode, that a visiting Mexican delegation will carry her to freedom. Alas, no. The Mexican officials have come not to liberate handmaids but to purchase some of their own. As for Canada, its humane treatment of refugees gives way, by Season 4, to a nascent pro-Gileadean sentiment.