The Handmaid’s Tale debuted on April 26, 2017, the 97th day of Donald Trump’s first presidential term and, coincidentally, First Lady Melania Trump’s 47th birthday. Within weeks, activists around the country donned the long red robes and white, tunnel-vision bonnets worn by the women forced to serve as baby-making machines for the ruling class in Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel. The costumes quickly became synonymous with resistance to the first Trump administration and continued to surface so often throughout the show’s run, perhaps most notably in the lead-up to and aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, that they bordered on cliché. Still, the subtext remained clear and ominous: The United States is at risk of becoming a real-life Gilead, the totalitarian regime that rules over what used to be America in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Cut to 2025 and the arrival of the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, which debuts its first three episodes on April 8, the 89th day of Trump’s second term and a point that feels like the America-to-Gilead transition is speeding closer than ever before to completion. The most therapeutic thing The Handmaid’s Tale could do right now is deliver a swan song in which handmaid-turned-revolutionary June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and her fellow women finally, after many attempts over six seasons, overturn the government that stole their bodily autonomy without even a hushed whisper of remorse. But The Handmaid’s Tale has never been therapeutic, and the series, created by TV vet Bruce Miller (ER, The 100) and currently overseen by co-showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang, remains committed to making things difficult for its characters. Plus, we already know going into this final season that Gilead ain’t going to topple anytime soon: Hulu is moving forward with a TV adaptation of The Testaments, a sequel series based on Atwood’s follow-up novel of the same name set 15 years after its predecessor, when Gilead still very much exists. The final Handmaid’s season clearly isn’t going to give us a triumphant conclusion to Gilead’s reign of terror.

What it does instead, based on the eight out of ten episodes provided to critics, is what The Handmaid’s Tale has always done: move its narrative in fits and starts toward a resolution that will most likely fall a few notches shy of fully satisfying. That approach has led to some repetitive plotlines over the seasons — how many more times can June decide to stay in or return to Gilead so she can continue to participate in the resistance? — and, at times, a reduced sense of narrative urgency. Being a regular viewer of The Handmaid’s Tale has often meant waiting for catharsis that seems destined to be forever withheld. But that’s because The Handmaid’s Tale understands how hard it is to dismantle a totalitarian system once its foundations are firmly in place, which makes it an especially timely reflection of the frustration and anger rippling across the country right now as U.S. leaders wreak global financial chaos, stifle freedom of expression, and target the most marginalized among us.

Like its first season, the drama’s sixth one arrives designed to meet this moment, showing us the risks that must be taken, again and again, to dismantle an out-of-control, overreaching power structure. It can’t happen overnight, or even during the course of a season or two or five of streaming television. It takes a long time, and the effort is emotionally and physically crushing. Even when progress is made, that progress is often undone. This may not necessarily make you emotionally eager to watch these final episodes, but it does make this season as attuned to where we are in 2025 as the first was to the Zeitgeist in 2017.

As the new season opens, June and her younger daughter, Nichole, are aboard a train bound for Vancouver, where they plan to sail to Hawaii and safety from Gilead enforcers eager to take June’s life. June’s husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle, whose whole body radiates stress in these episodes), gets arrested before he can even board the train, charged with attempting to kill a Gilead-aligned truck driver who tried to run over June. While on the train, June runs into Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), the ultimate Gilead trad wife for whom she once served as handmaid. Seeking freedom after having been silenced and disregarded by Gilead higher-ups, Serena sees herself as a victim standing on the same side as the women who were raped and forced to birth babies for their commanders’ families. Needless to say, June doesn’t exactly see it that way. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Serena says of her relationship with June while the two sit in a crowded train car, earning a look from June that may as well be a bullet fired at point-blank range into her perfectly unwrinkled forehead. “On a case-by-case basis,” June responds coldly.

All of this setup leads exactly where The Handmaid’s Tale usually leads: prolonged arguments between June and Serena over how much either can trust the other, more attempts by the Mayday rebels to disrupt and overthrow the Gilead government, and plenty of shots of Moss, who directs four of the last season’s episodes while continuing to play June with committed ferocity, staring defiantly down the barrel of the camera lens. But amid all the plot machinations propelling the conflict between Gilead and those seeking to reform it, this season also raises a question that many viewers may be grappling with themselves: Is it possible to forgive those who enabled an extremist, cruel government to function with unchecked power if they feel remorse for what they’ve done? Or is it impossible to meet in the middle with those who actively, callously engendered so much pain and suffering?

Certainly June and Serena struggle with this, particularly as they continue to occupy roles in each other’s lives as both saviors and adversaries. But it’s an issue that hangs over other key relationships, like the one between June and Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford, perpetually and amusingly beleaguered by everything), whose alliance becomes more precarious as he attempts to establish New Bethlehem, a community best described as Gilead Lite. Similarly, Nick (Max Minghella), the Gilead commander who continues to risk his life trying to help June and her Mayday compatriots, is often depicted as a stealth hero worthy of sympathy, but more than one character reminds June not to forget exactly who Nick is: a modern-day Nazi. There are impasses and breaches of trust that seem impossible to overcome, certainly before the series finale concludes. The Handmaid’s Tale refuses to both-sides anything or succumb to the impulse to forgive simply because that’s what allegedly “good” people do. Its stubbornness on this point is admirable and, especially right now, necessary.

Even as The Handmaid’s Tale is dealing with life-or-death matters in every episode, however, it doesn’t feel like the series is taking itself quite as prestige-drama seriously as it has in the past. A refreshing current of gallows humor runs through this season, as in a scene when June’s best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) admits that, like June, she probably would have fallen in love with a commander who tried to save her from her devastating past in Gilead, but only “if he was, like, hot enough.” Such levity not only provides welcome relief from the crushing gloom; it underlines how even small jokes can help maintain a sense of normalcy when the entire world has become abnormal. That’s what sustains those continuing to summon the stamina to fight for women to regain the fundamental rights this country once promised them. That, and a belief that one more mission, one more protest, one more aggressive attempt to push back, could be all it takes to eradicate Gilead for good.

 That’s the point.