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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
20
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Jun 4, 2019
Season 3 Review:
[The third season] sustains many of the qualities that first made the show such a talker (and award winner), with memorable performances and a fascinating vision of government oppression and cruelty in the name of God. ...The bad news is that the first half of this season (six episodes were made available for this review) often lapses into the realm of the deadly dull, making long and redundant loops around its original premise and revisiting already established resentments and animosities between characters.
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Apr 25, 2018
Season 2 Review:
The first five hours of Season 2 offer little more than relentless misery, and they lean more into horror as a genre than the first season did, layering gory imagery on top of trauma on top of despair. ... The task for a show like this one is to offer not just more of the same, but some sense that women have the capacity to enact change. It’s highly possible The Handmaid’s Tale will do just that in the second half of the new season, but there’s an awful lot to endure before we get there.
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Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The problem with Hulu’s Handmaid is that nothing is dreadful enough. ... Ms. Moss’s Offred comments regularly on her condition with outraged, silent vulgarities, and seems appalled by rituals and outrages that had become routine in the book. ... But the original Offred was almost too terrorized to imagine defiance, much less exercise it. And such calibrated portraiture helped make the novel click.
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IndieWireApr 8, 2025
Sep 9, 2022
Season 5 Review:
June’s anxiety, grief, and guilt are all credible motivations for her violent actions, and Moss performs them convincingly. The problem with The Handmaid’s Tale is that there are a bunch of other stories swirling around Hannah’s, and they are increasingly straining the viewer’s ability to suspend disbelief. ... It’s also bonkers. But unfortunately, the show can’t commit entirely to camp mode.
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IndieWireSep 8, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Moss remains an aughts-era TV star, deserving all the acclaim and allegiance once given to stars of the silver screen (before movie stars were replaced by superheroes and intellectual property). But no matter your impression of the actor tasked with fueling a hit show for a few more seasons, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is spinning its wheels in Season 5.
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Jun 5, 2019
Season 3 Review:
What’s strange about “Handmaid’s Tale” three seasons deep is that it keeps hammering home its greatest hits to the detriment of the possible new avenues it could explore. ... Bledel remains a standout as she portrays Emily’s hesitation and longing. ... Her story is the kind of intimate horror that “The Handmaid’s Tale” once excelled at homing in on, but in its determination to make June a #resistance figure, it keeps leaving its most potentially effective moments by the wayside.
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May 29, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Maybe the second half of the season will turn things around. Unfortunately, six hours is a long time to slog through a story that just seems to get more and more depressing. June glaring into the camera with apparent promises of revolt, backed by a revolutionary-themed rock song (which happens more than once), doesn’t count as actual plot progression.
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The TelegraphMay 5, 2025
Season 6 Review:
If the gore is gone, there isn’t much to take its place. There are moments during these new episodes when a keener satirical edge might have made all the difference. But while it refuses the easy bait of drawing parallels between Gilead and Donald Trump’s White House, the alternative is to slog through the motions.
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Sep 14, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Despite Moss’ best efforts, the show is breaking at the seams when it comes to its larger narrative. ... Unless you’re already a dedicated Handmaid’s Tale fan, you can skip the drudgery of this season and check back in with June when the series comes to a close with Season 6.
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Apr 29, 2021
Season 4 Review:
While the fourth season moves toward breaking that old catch and release merry-go-round, it doesn't sufficiently persuade us to wholly invest in any hints at evolving beyond it. June despises Gilead and hates it more each time she's forced to go back, but without providing a vision as to where the story's headed the best we can muster in reaction to her plight is a yawn.
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Apr 27, 2021
Season 4 Review:
The show has become another one of TV’s never-ending stories, another “Homeland,” where seasons are crammed with action-adventure filler, as June runs from one safe house to another, always escaping from seemingly inescapable situations. ... By the time I reached the third episode of the new season, I remembered all the criticisms of the show’s excessive violence, and I had to concede. The show seems to fetishize June’s punishments.
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Oct 16, 2025
Season 6 Review:
Hearing and watching them [Luke and Moira] spell out how much her [June's] savior complex has depleted their patience in a few key scenes almost makes up for the tens of prior episodes flavored by their deference to her unstoppable will. .... You may lose count of the number of times you ask yourself why June and everyone else are doing what they’re doing again and expecting a different result. Watching the definition of madness in action can be maddening.
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Apr 28, 2021
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 teases something bigger, a pivot to the future, and then takes two steps back once again. By the end of the eight episodes made available for preview, there are hints of something different and promising. But to get there, viewers are subjected to the worst of the series' impulses, as if the first seven episodes were a thumb-twiddling waste of time. And in many ways, they are.
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