The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 finale: Star and showrunner react to shock death as key character perishes

Warning: spoilers ahead for the season 4 finale of The Handmaid’s Tale.

One of the stars of The Handmaid’s Tale and the drama’s showrunner have reacted to the shock death of a key character in the season 4 finale as they meet a grisly end.

The Handmaid’s Tale has continued to deliver hard-hitting shocks in its new season, with the finale delivering a gruesome death fans of the dystopian thriller may not have seen coming.

In season four, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) testifies about the crimes inflicted by those in charge in Gilead, including her former captor, Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes).

However, rather than be punished for the atrocities he committed, June learns that Fred isn’t being sent to prison, as he has revealed valuable information about Gilead as a government informant.

After all that she’s been through, June isn’t prepared to accept this outcome, and so organises a bait and switch to exact her revenge.

In the end, she – as well as several other former Handmaids – are able to unleash their fury out on a man who likely never expected to receive any form of comeuppance.

After June finds out about Fred’s role as an informant, she works with her allies to set up a plan to serve him his just deserts.

At first, it appears that Fred is going to be sent back to Gilead, so that he can be tried and punished for his crimes in the same cruel way that he has penalised others in the past.

However, he is left with June in No Man’s Land… and she has very specific plans for him.

June tells Fred to ‘run’, as women emerge from the trees, including fellow former Handmaid Emily (Alexis Bledel), and chase after him.

After killing who was once one of the most powerful men in Gilead, Fred’s body is left to hang up on a wall, while his finger is cut off and put in an envelope addressed to his wife Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), who is pregnant.

Afterwards, June returns to Luke’s (O.T. Fagbnele) house to say goodbye to her baby daughter Nichole.

In Fred actor Joseph’s opinion, June is now ‘a different woman, much to the horror of Luke’, as ‘she is the product of Gilead now’, he told The New York Times.

While it’s not revealed where June is going now, considering Nick (Max Minghella) told her of her daughter Hannah’s (Jordana Blake) whereabouts, it could be that she is embarking on a mission to finally get her back.

Joseph said that in his opinion, it was ‘great for the audience to have that catharsis’ of Fred’s death.

Describing the character as an ‘ugly, pathetic, misogynist monster that will never change’, the actor added that he ‘felt like Fred wouldn’t redeem himself in the way that we want to see in movies’.

The Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller added to Variety that despite Fred’s death perhaps seeming like the beginning of the end of Gilead’s brutal regime, that may not be the case in the series going forward.

‘Sometime we think if X happens, everything will be all right: “Once Trump is gone, once the pandemic is over, things will be fine.” But life doesn’t work that way,’ he said.

Although Fred is done and dusted in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, Joseph joked that he could return to the show in some form in the future.

‘He is dead, but there are flashbacks, so who knows?’ he said laughing while speaking to The New York Times.

Nonetheless, the actor added that he ‘might have even overstayed my welcome’ on the series.

‘But in one’s life as an actor, you get one or two wonderful breaks. And as dark and difficult as this is, this has been one of those breaks,’ he said.

The Handmaid’s Tale season four premieres on Sunday June 20 at 9pm on Channel 4.

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