Elisabeth Moss in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Disney/Steve Wilkie)

“The Handmaid’s Tale” star Elisabeth Moss says the Hulu show’s “super meta” finale wasn’t quite an ending at all, but rather the beginning of June’s long fight to bring Hannah (Jordana Blake) home.

After an intense, emotional and heartbreaking Episode 9, Episode 10 titled “The Handmaid’s Tale” came in to wrap up the series with some sweet character returns, tender farewells and a final scene that serves as PSA that June will stay at the forefront of the resistance trying to take down Gilead.

“We put so much thought into it. We thought about lots of alternatives, lots of ideas,” Moss told TheWrap. “There were ideas that felt too convenient, or that wouldn’t lead to the sequel, ‘The Testaments,’ which we’re making. So there’s things that we just felt didn’t quite work. This was the ending that felt like when you sort of stress tested. It held up and it was felt emotionally right.”

Throughout the episode, June examines and reexamines her decision to continue with the fight, considering thoughts from her mother Holly (Cherrty Jones) as well as taking in the passion she sees in her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle). In the final scene, June decides to revisit the beginning of her life in Gilead, which was as the handmaid Offred in the Waterford home.

“We had to revisit the true scene of the crime, you know? And it’s such a complicated space for June,” Moss said. “Some terrible things have happened in that house, but she also fell in love in that house, and it’s also when the call was made. There’s also where she made friends, like Rita and Emily.”

While sitting in the nearly burned down home, she begins to record descriptions of her old room, words that will one day become “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a book June plans to dedicate to the families who have been torn apart by Gilead forces. Even though it’s the last episode, Moss says it’s merely the genesis of June’s next chapter.

“I love these characters so much, and I would never, ever let any of them not have the ending that I think is perfect for them,” Moss said. “For me, this is the perfect ending for June. But part of the reason why it’s perfect is because it’s not an ending. She’s sitting there and she’s just starting to tell her story, and it’s back to the beginning. She has a huge war to fight ahead of her, and she is never, ever, ever going to rest until her daughter is safe.”

Moss, who pitched the idea for June to return to the Waterford home as the final scene to creator and executive producer Bruce Miller, said the dark homecoming was the most suitable way for June to tell her story.

“I felt like, if you really wanted to do what [Miller] wanted to do, which was sort of end where we began, we had to end in that room. That’s where Offred’s ghosts live. When you think about the original voiceover, ‘a chair, a table, a lamp,’ I think about that room, and I think about that window seat, you know — we had to go back there,” Moss said, referring to the first lines June records while sitting in the room, which are also the first lines read in Margaret Atwood’s book of the same name.

“It kind of represents what Luke is saying in that fantastic final moment that he has where he talks about, ‘It’s not just about the bad things, but it’s about the people that you love’ and, ‘Tell the whole story this time.’ And so she kind of has to go back into that space to tell the whole story,” Moss explained. “It felt very like sacred, I think, filming in that space again. We built the interior of the set. But I had the opportunity to go back inside the real house, when we were shooting the exterior, because that’s where I was getting ready and stuff. It was very it was very meta. The whole filming of Episode 10, by the way, it was super meta.”

What was also meta for Moss was the return of Alexis Bledel’s character Dr. Emily Malek. Together, like they did nine years ago, the two walked side by side as they visited the old landmarks they used to stroll by as handmaids and as the actresses playing them.

“It felt like not a day had gone by. It was just one of those things where it just [fit] with meta nature of that finale,” Moss said. “Here I am … I hadn’t been back to that, what we call ‘The Wall’ set next to the river. Like, I hadn’t been back there in years. And so here I am, like June, back in this place I had spent so much time filming and scouting and just living in. Here I am back in the neighborhood that like I’ve spent so much of my life in for the past nine years, and now Emily is there. I’m feeling all of the same things that June is feeling. And I’m also saying goodbye to a part of my life, just like June is. So it felt like this kind of beautiful full-circle moment. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to this show without having Alexis be a part of it. She was in my first shot on day one. Like, it was her and I … So it just wouldn’t have felt right without having her come back and be a part of it.”

All episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” are now streaming on Hulu.