The Handmaid's Tale (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Handmaid's Tale, an American dystopian drama made for the streaming service Hulu, made Emmy history in 2017. It became the first series on a streaming service to win Outstanding Drama Series. Four years later, it collected 21 nominations and won nothing, a record for Emmy losses.

  The show is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Its creator is Bruce Miller, and its lead is Elisabeth Moss.

  What kind of society does the series imagine, and what does it do to the people inside it? How did a project that one network turned away become a landmark? And how did critics, audiences and protesters respond over the years that followed?

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• 2. Inside Gilead

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  In Gilead, a Handmaid does not keep her own name. She is called Of, followed by the first name of the man who holds her, and the name changes whenever she is transferred.

  The series places this regime in the former United States, after a Second American Civil War. Fertility rates have collapsed, which the story blames on sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution. Into that crisis steps a totalitarian, theonomic government with a militarized hierarchy and newly created social classes.

  Women carry the heaviest burden. By law they cannot own property, hold careers, handle money, or even read and write. The Aunts are the only exception. Some women are pushed into severely limited roles, including natal slavery.

  The regime chooses its Handmaids from women it calls fallen, citing an extremist reading of the Biblical account of Bilhah. Women who remarried after a divorce are labeled adulteresses, because Gileadian law does not recognize divorce. Single mothers, non-Christians, and Christians outside the Sons of Jacob are swept in as well. So are political dissidents and academics. Lesbians are included, and homosexuals are branded gender traitors.

  Each Handmaid is sent to the home of a ruling Commander. There she must submit to ritualized rape, which the regime calls the ceremony, with his wife in the room. The goal is a child for the couple.

  Every class of woman is marked by a plain dress in its own color. The Handmaid wears a long red dress, a red cloak, heavy brown boots, and a white coif. Outdoors she adds a larger white bonnet known as wings, which hides her from public view and narrows her sight.

  Under one of those red cloaks is the woman whose struggle drives the whole series.

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• 3. The People Around June

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  Elisabeth Moss plays June Osborne, the woman renamed Offred when she is placed in the home of Commander Fred Waterford. Before Gilead, June was married to Luke, and they had a daughter named Hannah.

  The family tried to escape toward Canada and was caught. Because Luke had been divorced, the marriage counted as adultery under the new law, and Hannah was deemed illegitimate. June was made a Handmaid, Hannah was given to an upper-class family to raise, and Luke reached Canada. Much of the plot follows June's longing for both of them, and the way her strength hardens into something darker.

  Fred Waterford, played by Joseph Fiennes in seasons 1-4, helped found the regime that now rules him. So did his wife, Serena Joy, played by Yvonne Strahovski. Serena was once a conservative cultural activist and author. She is poised and deeply religious, capable of great cruelty, and desperate to become a mother.

  June's friends pull her in other directions. Moira, played by Samira Wiley, has been her best friend since college. Moira escapes the Red Center, is recaptured, and ends up as a Jezebel named Ruby. Emily, played by Alexis Bledel, was a university professor in cellular biology, and she has a wife and son in Canada. Emily is the one who first tells June about Mayday, an underground resistance movement.

  Then there is Janine, played by Madeline Brewer, who loses her right eye as punishment. Aunt Lydia, played by Ann Dowd, runs the Handmaids' re-education with brutal punishments, yet she seems to care for her charges. Before Gilead she was a family court judge.

  Nick Blaine, played by Max Minghella, is the Waterfords' driver, a former drifter from Michigan. He grows close to June, and she later learns he is an Eye, a Gilead spy. Rita, the Waterfords' housekeeper, becomes one of June's closest allies. Her son Matthew died at 19 fighting in the civil war. Bradley Whitford plays Commander Joseph Lawrence, who founded the Colonies and shaped Gilead's economy.

  Even the car radio carries a famous voice. In the second season, Oprah Winfrey appears uncredited as a newsreader.

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• 4. A Pilot Nobody Wanted

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  Showtime passed on the pilot that Ilene Chaiken had developed for The Handmaid's Tale, and Chaiken went on to become showrunner of Empire. The project did not die there.

  Steve Stark at MGM was determined to hire a female writer. After struggling to find one, he hired Bruce Miller for his enthusiasm. The strength of Miller's script drew in Elisabeth Moss and executive producer Warren Littlefield. Together they secured a straight-to-series order from Hulu, announced in April 2016.

  Miller serves as executive producer alongside Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears and Littlefield, and Moss is a producer too. Margaret Atwood is a consulting producer. She gives feedback on the places where the series expands on the book or modernizes it, and she plays a small cameo in the first episode.

  The team came together quickly. Reed Morano was announced as director in June 2016. Samira Wiley, Max Minghella and Ann Dowd joined in July. Joseph Fiennes, Madeline Brewer and Yvonne Strahovski followed in August, and O-T Fagbenle and Amanda Brugel in September. Ever Carradine arrived in October. Alexis Bledel was added last, in January 2017.

  Cameras rolled in Ontario from September 2016 to February 2017. Locations included Toronto, Mississauga, Brantford, Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville and Cambridge.

  Hulu put the first full trailer on YouTube on the 23rd of March 2017, a few weeks before the first episodes reached viewers.

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• 5. The Long Road

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  On the 3rd of May 2017, Hulu renewed the series for a second season, which premiered on the 25th of April 2018. Moss told the press that the new episodes would fill in unanswered questions and continue a story the book had left finished. The season ran 13 episodes and began filming in the fall of 2017, with Bledel back as a series regular.

  Miller had a bold plan. He said he had tried to imagine ten seasons, explaining that if you hit a home run, "you want enough story to keep going."

  The third season was ordered on the 2nd of May 2018 and premiered on the 5th of June 2019. Production began in Toronto in October 2018, and crews also worked in Cambridge, Hamilton and Washington, D.C. Colin Watkinson, the show's long-serving Director of Photography, made his directing debut with the episode "Unknown Caller". Cambridge, Ontario was nominated by the Location Managers Guild International for Outstanding Film Office, the first time a Canadian film office had been nominated for that honor.

  The fourth season was ordered on the 26th of July 2019. It was to have ten episodes, and filming began in March 2020 with Moss making her directorial debut. Work stopped after only a few weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It resumed in September 2020 and wrapped on the 25th of February 2021, with Moss having directed three episodes.

  Hulu ordered a fifth season on the 10th of December 2020, and shooting ran in Toronto from February to July 2022. In May 2022, Alexis Bledel left the show, saying, "After much thought, I felt I had to step away from The Handmaid's Tale".

  The sixth and final season was ordered on the 8th of September 2022. In March 2023 it was reported that Miller was stepping down as showrunner to focus on adapting The Testaments for television. Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang became co-showrunners, and Miller stayed on to write two episodes. The Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes pushed back the planned 2023 start. Filming finally began in September 2024 and ended in early February 2025, and the finale premiered on the 8th of April 2025.

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• 6. Premiere Around the World

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  Three episodes arrived at once on the 26th of April 2017, and the other seven of the first season followed weekly. Other countries joined within weeks.

  In Canada, CTV Drama Channel and the streaming service Crave carried it, with the first two episodes on the 30th of April 2017. Channel 4 launched it in the United Kingdom on the 28th of May 2017, and HBO Nordic offers it in Scandinavia. In New Zealand, the service Lightbox started it on the 8th of June 2017. After Sky acquired Lightbox and merged it into Neon on the 7th of July 2020, Neon took over the rights.

  Australia saw it on SBS On Demand on the 6th of July 2017, and the service Stan added it on the 12th of December 2018. In Ireland, RTÉ2 began with two episodes on the 5th of February 2018. RTÉ later became the first broadcaster in Europe to debut seasons 2, 3 and 4 after their showing in the United States and Canada. Paramount Channel launched it in Brazil and Latin America on the 7th of March 2018.

  India had a two-step path. AXN premiered the show on the 5th of February 2018 and ran two seasons before it moved to Amazon Prime Video for the third. On the 31st of January 2020, all three seasons were available there. HBO Asia brought it to Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan on the 15th of September 2018.

  On disc, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released season 1 on Blu-ray and DVD on the 13th of March 2018, season 2 on the 4th of December 2018, and season 3 on the 19th of November 2019. Season 4 came out from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on the 5th of April 2022, on DVD only, with no Blu-ray.

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• 7. Critics' Verdicts

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  Season one holds a 92 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 41 critics, a score that site labels universal acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 260 reviews were positive. Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter called it "probably the spring's best new show". Jen Chaney of Vulture praised it as suspenseful, writing that only at the end of each hour would viewers feel free to exhale.

  The second season scored 86 on Metacritic and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, from 339 critics. Yet some reviewers found the violence too much. Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic wrote that during the first episode, "it became too much." Lisa Miller of The Cut said it felt like "a beating that never ends." Rebecca Reid of The Daily Telegraph admitted that she had an anxiety attack while watching an episode.

  Season three earned 82% on Rotten Tomatoes and 68 on Metacritic. Kelly Lawler of USA Today gave it three stars out of four, calling it more propulsive than season two. Fienberg praised Moss and the cinematography but found the plot "frustratingly repetitive".

  The fourth season dropped to 69% on Rotten Tomatoes and 62 on Metacritic. Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+. Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe argued the drama had outlived the natural lifespan of its story. Chaney was kinder, calling it the best the show had been since its first season.

  Season five scored 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Tara Bennett of IGN gave it 7 out of 10 and called the series the canary in the coalmine of television, while saying it could not recapture the energy of its first two seasons.

  The final season did better, with 87% of 81 critics positive. Across all six seasons, the series sits at 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and 80 on Metacritic. The Guardian ranked it 25th among the best series of the 21st century, and the BBC placed it 38th.

  One reviewer for TheWrap closed her take on the last season with the Latin line Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

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• 8. Trophies and Protests

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  The first season's haul at the Primetime Emmys was eight awards from 13 nominations. It was also the first show produced by Hulu to win a major award. The series took the Golden Globe for Best Television Series in a Drama, and Elisabeth Moss won both the Emmy and the Golden Globe for her lead performance.

  The series also turns up in the award rolls of the Peabody Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Television Critics Association, along with many craft guilds.

  The politics around the show were just as loud. Commentators debated whether the series, and by extension the book, echoed American society during the Presidency of Donald Trump. Others compared it to practices of the Islamic State, such as throwing homosexuals from rooftops. Another comparison was to the Christian reconstructionist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which sought to push women out of the workforce.

  The costume became a symbol of its own. Protests around the world, especially those about women's rights, have used the red Handmaid uniforms.

  Not every use was welcome. In 2018, the online retailer Yandy.com marketed a sexualized Handmaid costume for Halloween. After widespread criticism, the retailer pulled it.

  Gilead's story did not close with the finale. A sequel series based on Atwood's 2019 novel The Testaments premiered on Hulu in April 2026.

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