Everything We Know About The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Season two of The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu ended with a major cliffhanger: June (Elisabeth Moss) opted to stay behind in Gilead to rescue her daughter, Hannah, even though she had a clear way to escape. It was a jaw-dropping moment, and now her battle with the country's higher-ups is on the horizon.
Season three of The Handmaid's Tale will undoubtedly feature the same urgent, politically charged narratives that made the first two chapters such a success—but how much do we know about what's to come?
At last, we have the first full-length trailer for the new season—and it's a doozy. June says in a voice-over, "Heresy. That's what you get punished for, not for being part of the resistance. Not for helping people escape, because officially, there's no such thing as escape." She'll need allies if she's going to change things, and from the looks of the trailer, Mrs. Waterford, along with Nick and Bradley Whitford's Commander Lawrence, will be among them. We also catch a glimpse of Alexis Bledel's Emily attempting to get June's baby to safety.
Watch for yourself below. Blessed be the fight.
Read on to learn more about The Handmaid's Tale season three. Of course, we'll update this post as more details come in.
1. The release date. Wednesday, June 5. This was confirmed at Hulu's presentation during the Television Critics Association gathering in February.
2. June's fight will be a central story. "She's ready to rise up, and ready to take some chances and use all the skills she's learned over the last three years," showrunner Bruce Miller told The Hollywood Reporter.
In fact, she'll be on a mission this season. “You have to fight fire with fire,” Elizabeth Moss told EW. “That’s become [June’s] journey in season 3. To fight against the people she has to fight, she has to become more like them.”
She'll be put to the test when she faces off against Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), who helped Emily (Alexis Bledel) escape at the end of season two. However, it turns out he might have ulterior motives. “He has a big brain, and it has overwhelmed his humanity,” Whitford said. “But his humanity is trying to fight back.”
“He’s testing her,” Whitford added. “Is he going to open up to her? Is she going to be a partner in something I don’t think he even understands?”
It also seems like June and Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) might join forces to bring down the men of Gilead. “They know one another too well,” Strahovski explained before Moss said that Serena's "power" could change a lot.
“Together? Oh my God, they could topple the whole thing. Unfortunately, nothing is that simple," Moss added.
3. Christopher Meloni and Elizabeth Reaser will appear as guest stars. You probably know Meloni as Detective Stabler from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Reaser from The Haunting of Hill House. On The Handmaid's Tale, though, Meloni will play Commander Winslow, "a powerful and magnetic commander who hosts the Waterfords on an important trip," according to Hulu. Reaser plays his wife, who "becomes a friend and inspiration to Serena Joy [Strahovski]."
4. We'll also see Emily and baby Nicole's escape from Gilead. That's where we left off in season two, after all. "There's a lot of people who want her, including the whole country of Gilead—if she happens to get out," Miller told CNN. "She's the next generation that they're all doing all of this for."
5. Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is alive. She survives Emily's knife attack, and the incident, according to producer Warren Littlefield, "transformed" her.
6. It will stay true to Margaret Atwood's source material. "People talk about how we’re beyond the book, but we’re not really," Miller told The Hollywood Reporter. "The book starts, then jumps 200 years with an academic discussion at the end of it, about what’s happened in those intervening 200 years. It’s maybe handled in an outline, but it’s still there in Margaret’s novel. We’re not going beyond the novel; we’re just covering territory she covered quickly, a bit more slowly.”
7. Commander Lawrence is returning. Known as the "architect of Gilead's economy," Commander Lawrence was one of the most erratic new characters from season two. He'll be back. "You never know what he's willing to do and what he's not willing to do," Miller told CNN.
8. And so is Rita (Amanda Brugel). She was instrumental in helping June almost escape from Gilead. "At the end of season two, I know where she’s going," Brugel told Vulture about her character. "Now I have her voice, so I’m ready to use it."
9. It looks like June is now a Martha. Hulu released a short clip—ahead of a longer trailer that aired during the Super Bowl—that shows June walking down the street in the more drab gray-green uniform worn by Marthas in Gilead, as opposed to her red handmaid cloak and bonnet. The reason for the apparent shift in status is not yet known.
10. Morning's over, America. Hulu took its latest trailer to one of America's biggest stages: the Super Bowl. What started as a serene-sounding voice-over stating, "It's morning again in America," took a turn for the worse as the voice described more women than ever heading to work, over shots of the enslaved women of Gilead. Next came mention of "dozens of babies being born to happy, healthy families"—and we all know that happens. As the voice-over becomes more warped and the images more horrifying, June arrives to say, "Wake up, America. Morning's over." Could a revolution be starting soon?
The Handmaids head to the Capital. In the final images of the show's Super Bowl commercial, June and other handmaids are seen standing in formation in Washington D.C.'s National Mall with a crosslike Washington monument in the background. Just a few weeks after the promotional commercial aired, city dwellers, tourists, and government workers got to see the cast and crew filming new shots for season three in person. The photos of the hundreds of handmaids are haunting, to say the least. One fan even witnessed June kneeling apologetically in front of Commander Waterford and his wife Serena in front of the Lincoln memorial. Is June back in the situation she so tirelessly tried to escape in seasons one and two?
Christopher Rosa is an entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisrosa92.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
