Days after sharing a few photos from season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale , Hulu dropped a teaser for the upcoming season, which premieres April 25. From the looks of it, The Handmaid's Tale season 2 is all about the revolution — and this is one that is going to get dark.
That's clear from the opening shots of the new trailer, which show June (Elisabeth Moss) constrained with that same Hannibal Lector leather mask over her mouth that we saw Emily (Alexis Bledel) wearing last season. What is different here, though, is it seems many of the handmaids have decided to take things into their own hands after June was loaded into a black van by The Eyes. It's something that should make Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) very, very nervous.
Though, don't get too hopeful just yet that the Mayday resistance is going to bring down the patriarchy. Moss has already warned fans this season is full of surprises. "I have been saying, about the opening [scene] of season 2, that whatever you think it's going to be — just throw it out," she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. "It's gone in a completely different way that I never would have expected."
The tagline for this season is "Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard," which hints that the handmaids are going to use their voice to fight back and maybe some other skills. Why yes, there is a shot of the handmaids with sticks doing some serious training.
Look close at the trailer, though, and you see that every character seems to be struggling. Aunt Lydia looks exhausted, Moira (Samira Wiley) is in tears, and June is ready to burn this mother down — which means we might be surprised where they come out after the show's all said and done.
According to Hulu, this new season, which will go beyond Margaret Atwood's source material, will focus on “Offred’s pregnancy and her ongoing fight to free her future child from the dystopian horrors of Gilead.” While the first season gave fans some context for how this dystopian civilisation formed, in this upcoming season we're venturing beyond Gilead into the labor camps of the Colonies, Hulu explained, "Offred and all our characters will fight against – or succumb to – this dark truth.”
There seems to be a parallel between this new season, where women will not be silenced, with what's going on in our world, where women are letting the world know Time's Up on sexual harassment and assault.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Bruce Miller told reporters at TCA that this "darker" season, which will feature a cameo from Maria Tomei and focus heavily on motherhood, is leaning into current events, but it's not specifically about the Trump administration.
"The scary things in this series, some of them are happening today," Miller told reporters, but this season is already written and they don't plan on changing things to echo the times we're in. "We're separated enough [from reality] that it's never going to feel like it's happening out there in the world."
While the series isn't an allegory, it's clear that right now there's more than one revolution being televised.
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