Are you ready to return to Gilead? And for the next season of The Handmaid’s Tale?
That’s a little gallows humor as we head into the fifth season of the Hulu show, and its first in a post-Roe world. It’s inevitable that this season will hit different.
[Spoilers ahead, but you knew that because you’re watching the trailer for the fifth season of a show.]
At the end of the fourth season, Fred (Joseph Fiennes) went from “I’m a man! I have rights!” to having no skull to keep his brains inside. It shifted the entire premise of the show from one where June (Elisabeth Moss) wanted to escape to safety and family reunions in Canada. Now, she’s chosen to dig two graves, and the trailer for the fifth season promises that Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) won’t let the husband she apathetically deigns to Zoom with die in vain. June is an insult to her way of life — looking perfect as a family unit on the outside while rotting from within. June is also an existential threat to Gilead itself because she’s fighting back, and if there’s one thing the bullying, fascist bastards dislike, it’s people who fight back.
Even in this brief glimpse, the acting work from Moss and Strahovski looks outstanding. It fell off the Emmy watchlist last year, but it might be undeniable this time around.
The fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale hits Hulu September 14th, topical as ever.