The Handmaid’s Tale Gets a Sequel About Indoctrination, and It Couldn't Be More Troubling

The first three episodes of The Testaments premiere on Hulu on Wednesday, April 8, with new episodes arriving weekly thereafter. This is a spoiler-free review of the first season. When Bruce Miller’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale dropped in 2017, we were three months into President Donald Trump’s first term. The show initially had a seismic impact on the zeitgeist as subsequent protests featured iconography and quotes from it, but attention waned as time went on and The Handmaid’s Tale’s cardinal sin was testing the resolve of viewers to watch heroine June Osborne/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) and her handmaiden kind weather the horrific slings and arrows of Gilead for six long seasons. No, it wasn’t a fun watch, but Atwood’s cautionary tale and Miller’s interpretation of her text remains important storytelling about what resistance looks like in action. It’s also why Atwood wrote the sequel, The Testaments, based in part on her appreciation for what actress Ann Dowd did with the Aunt Lydia role. Atwood wanted to flesh out the character’s path to Aunt status, and now Miller is back with another richly made series adaptation, this time focusing on the grooming of the