The award winning television series, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” premiered its fifth season on September 14. Around the same time that the first two episodes were released, Hulu announced that “The Handmaid’s Tale” was renewed for a sixth and final season.
Adapted from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985 during the rise of the fertility crisis in the United States, both the book and the television series tell the story of the Republic of Gilead’s overthrow of the U.S. government and their control over women, especially as this society is faced with rapidly decreasing birth rates.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” has been quite relevant in today’s society, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in late June. The show and book have “[gotten] attention for being a frightening and foreboding vision of what worst-case scenarios for the loss of liberty might look like,” NPR stated in a review of the first episodes of the new season. Atwood, in an article she wrote for The Atlantic, shared that she “invented Gilead. The Supreme Court is making it real,” and that she “thought she was writing fiction.” Atwood even compared the denial of abortion rights in the U.S. Constitution to the witchcraft trials in Puritan Massachusetts and seventeenth century laws, which Atwood used as a background for her novel.
The first season of the show is based on Atwood’s book. It follows the story of Offred’s, a Handmaid and one of the few remaining fertile in Gilead, becoming a Handmaid and her eventual escape from her Commander’s grasp to find her daughter. Although Atwood published The Testaments in 2019, seasons two through five do not follow the storyline of either book.
Offred/June has three main goals throughout the show: escape and freedom, revenge on her captors, and reunion with her daughter. These three goals are stretched out through the first three seasons, but are seemingly achieved in season four. Escaping to Canada, June is accepted as a refugee. Later, she testifies at her captors’ trial, Commander Fred Waterford and Serena Waterford née Joy, who are arrested in Canada. The season finishes with June and several other Handmaids killing Commander Waterford.
June has now achieved two of her goals. She escaped from her captors, Serena’s in jail, and June beat Commander Waterford to death…literally. But now, she has to find her daughter. So what can we expect from season five?
Season five focuses on June searching for and protecting her daughter against the dangers of Gilead. Episode three of the new season reveals that June is getting ready to be sent off to Wife School, as she is twelve years old. Women who are not categorized as Unwomen (women stripped of their identity), Handmaids (fertile women assigned to families to give birth to their children), Marthas (household servants), or Jezebels (rebel women who do not follow the teachings of Gilead) have the chance to become an Econowife (married to a lower ranking male) or a Wife (married to a Commander). This is what June’s daughter will prepare for in Wife School and what June hopes to save her from.
New episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” are released every Wednesday on Hulu.
