[Note: This article contains some spoilers for the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale]
Hulu has released new footage from the upcoming second season of The Handmaid’s Tale, their adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel about a fundamentalist dystopia that develops in the United States. They released some eerie images from the new season earlier this week, and now we have our first look at some actual footage.
We get to see more of The Colonies, the toxic lands where it looks like Janine (Madeline Brewer) has been exiled. We see that Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) still looks powerful and pleased with himself; we see more of the ritual shaming that Handmaids must take part in; we see Offred/June (Elisabeth Moss) gagged and looking like she’s on trial. As ever, the cinematography and directing drive home how haunting and bleak this world is, even in its most idyllic settings.
But we also see some suggestions that rebellion and resistance are brewing. From the pointed RESIST poster, to Offred’s face as she burns something in her wood stove, to the hammer dragging along the wall, this trailer also suggests that a reckoning is coming for the powerful in Gilead. If you’re anything like me, watching this series is a rough but terrifically affecting experience, and so I welcome those raw, angry glimmers of hope.
Season Two will move beyond the events of the original novel. Season One ended as the book does, with Offred/June in the back of a black van, unsure whether she is headed to safety or entrapment. The second season “will be shaped by Offred’s pregnancy, and her ongoing fight to free her future child from the dystopian horrors of Gilead. ‘Gilead is within you’ is a favorite saying of Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd). In season two, Offred and all the characters will fight against—or succumb to—this dark truth.”
The first two episodes of Season Two will be available on Hulu on April 25, 2018, and new episodes will air every Wednesday.
(Via Nerdist; image: screengrab)
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