'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 3 To Premiere This June

Hulu is blessing us with The Handmaid's Tale season 3 premiere date. The streaming service announced The Handmaid's Tale will be returning with three new episodes in June 2019, with subsequent episodes released every Wednesday. But while this season premiere date is blessedly not too far away, it does mean that the third season of The Handmaid's Tale will not be in contention for the 2019 Emmy Awards.

Deadline reports that Hulu has set The Handmaid's Tale season 3 premiere date for June 5, 2019. The streaming service announced the series return at the TCA, where Hulu SVP of Originals Craig Erwich explained the decision to delay the show's season 3 premiere.

"We wanted to give the show as much time as possible to maintain the quality," Erwich said. He added that he has seen the first two episodes of the upcoming season, and they are "spectacular."

As spectacular as they are, they won't be getting any awards recognition in 2019. The Handmaid's Tale will be absent from this year's Emmy's because the season 3 premiere date has pushed the series past the eligibility date for the 2019 Primetime Awards. But that doesn't seem to matter much to Hulu, which earned accolades for the first season of The Handmaid's Tale, though last year they saw their star eclipsed by Netflix and Amazon at the 2018 Emmys.

The second season of The Handmaid's Tale was a drastic downgrade from season 1, taking the series on a bleak and torturous narrative arc that mostly spun its wheels. The third season — which debuted a promising first teaser during the Super Bowl — takes the series even further beyond the events of Margaret Atwood's novel, following June (Elisabeth Moss) as she gathers resistance against the dystopian regime of Gilead. The 13-episode season "will force all characters to take a stand, guided by one defiant prayer: 'Blessed be the fight,'" according to Deadline. Hopefully the upcoming season will be an upgrade from the slog that was season 2.

The Handmaid's Tale season 3 premieres on Hulu on Wednesday, June 5, 2019.