Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers about “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 5 finale, “Safe.”CNN —“The Handmaid’s Tale” certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of media exposure or cultural capital, with recent turns in the battle over abortion rights generating regular references in progressive circles to the threat of America becoming Gilead, the repressive patriarchal society featured in Margaret Atwood’s novel. Appropriately, the finale wrapped up aboard a train, because while the show didn’t quite go off the rails, it at times seemed to come perilously close. Ultimately, the last episode, “Safe,” reunited the two characters whose bond — forged in pain and hatred — completely defined Season 5. A gruesome attack on June and botched military operation to recover the lost girls, underscored that this is indeed a war, with casualties as the inevitable byproduct. “And then it was too f**kin’ late.”In that moment, anyway, “The Handmaid’s Tale” offered a riveting reminder of what made the series such an Emmy-winning sensation when it began.

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