Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6, Episode 1.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” star Yvonne Strahovski opened up about her character Serena Waterford’s explosive, pro-Gilead speech that ultimately led to her having to jump off a refugee train heading west before Gilead survivors clenched their revenge during the Season 6 premiere.
“It’s got everything you love about the character … I mean, everything I love about the character in that one scene,” Strahovski told TheWrap. “You think she’s sort of making headway, and then here she goes again. She can’t help but get on her podium and come right back down to her belief system. She genuinely thinks that she’s doing the right thing, and she was trying to inspire women in her weird, twisted way … She really can’t read the room, which really gets her into a lot of trouble.”
You can take the girl out of Gilead, but you can’t take the Gilead out of the girl. That sentiment showed to be true for Serena in the first episode of the Season 6, titled “Train.” Toward the end of the hour, just as things seemed to be going well for the former teal blue dress-wearing, high-profile wife, a doctor on the train discovers her true identity and reports her to an officer on the cabin. But instead of apprehending her, he leaves her fate to the people on board who are blood-thirsty for vengeance. However, just before they attack, Serena gives the group a piece of her mind.
“Before Gilead, America was full of whores,” Serena tells the angry crowd. “Women were getting raped and killed every day and nobody cared and that was your country. You were unfit. I am not responsible for your tragedies, your children were not taken from you, they were saved. God hated America because America turned their back on God, and God took your country away. God bless, America!”
Strahovski says the scene was devastating to read in the script.
“I remember reading the episode and feeling very, very nervous and very terrified,” Strahovski said. “The genuine fear of the mob coming for her, and it’s just so heightened because she’s got a baby, and you just are terrified for the child. It’s not even necessarily, what are they going to do to Serena? They’re going to rip her apart. Are they going to rip the child apart as well? I mean, your brain goes there and it that’s just terror. Sheer, sheer terror.”
By the end of the episode, June (Elisabeth Moss), who tried her absolute hardest to get Serena to “shut up,” tells her only way to escape the mob is by jumping off the train with baby boy Noah. As she looks back on the past five seasons and reflects on Serena and June’s relationship, Strahovski joked that said she advise June to rid herself of Serena for good.
“After seeing some old clips [at the 2025 PaleyFest event], I want to say June needs to run and never look back, because I was reminded as to just how cruel Serena was, but this is the dance we’ve done for so many years,” Strahovski said. “It’s a credit to the writers and what they’ve come up with in this relationship and just how intense and crazy and reliant they are on one another, how much they hate each other but need each other for different reasons.”
She continued: “I think deeply, Serena wants someone to love her and to have a friend in somebody. I think June is the closest that she has because June’s seen the most, and they have the biggest history together. June has been one of the few people who has consistently shown up for Serena in the way of having hope for her that she can and will redeem herself and change herself for the better. So I don’t think that’s lost on Serena — I don’t think she’s conscious of that, but I don’t I think the feeling of it isn’t lost on her in some kind of a way. There’s so many layers to it.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6 releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.
