If Gilead happened tomorrow what do you think would happen to you? Handmaid? Aunt? Wife? Econoperson? Unwoman? Why?

I believe I would have 3 options: Aunt, Martha, Aunt or Martha at Jezebels. I'm a widow, twice, solid background as a sous chef, bartender, worked in strip bars years ago, and was raised uber religious so I could fake being a true believer. I've also had 4 daughters. I did serve a prison sentence, but, for possession of weed so I don't think that would put me in the sinners camp, but, rather reformed...I got clean, sober, started my own business and all that jazz. I always think about this when I re-read the books.

(Reposted to fix accidental spoiler in title. Please forgive me for that.)

On the surface the intentions of the proposal are obvious: he needs a wife, she's not treacherous like Serena so she's a safer pick, and he sort of has a moral debt to her and the baby after he had Putnam executed over a political intrigue and left them at the mercy of Gilead. BUT. When he was standing there putting his hand on her shoulder and staring down the other commanders....... is that part of his game? Is he threatening them? "Don't F with me; I'm the sort of guy who will kill you, take your wife, and be your kid's new daddy."

Hell of a power play if that's why he picked Naomi. He could have arranged a marriage for her to another commander, and married a different widow himself, in order to avoid an awkward living situation. But he took Naomi for himself. This feels precisely calculated.

I know this is an unpopular opinion but I think it makes more sense. They have two children together. I know that Nicole is Nick’s daughter but she knows Luke as her father and he loves her as his own child. I’m also still confused on what Nick is up to. I agree Nick understands June better due to their time together in Gilead but Luke has stuck by her and raised her child. If June ends up with Nick surely the situation would be too complicated.

Saw this edit of Janine on tikitok and wanted to share, she's probably the only character in the show I 100% like, and I really hope we see her escape the Gilead with her baby girl in season 6, istg if she doesn't have a happy ending I'm throwing hands. What do you think will be her story arc in s6? Also wanted to ask, my memory's kinda blurry and I didn't read the books but what happened to her son that she had before Gilead??

Creator's tt: jenniflower

What are you imagining for Naomi in S6?

So I’ve made a flow chart based on, from what I can see in both the book and the TV show, how the women of Gilead are divided into their castes at first (I know that every one of these women can be sent to the colonies eventually). Please look over and let me know if I’m mistakes.

Ok, bear with me. I've been rewatching the show and it has left me with a lot of different thoughts. I know we've sort of discussed this before, but that was a few yrs back and the landscape of our world has changed a fair amount.

We are currently dealing with inflation. Things are much more expensive and even those with means have been resorting to shopping cheaper venues (Dollar Tree, Outlets, etc) for food & toiletries. Food bank usage is also rising. Housing prices have skyrocketed to a point that a lot of (younger) adults have to house share with room mates because even working full time, they just can't afford rent plus food and utilities.

Birth rates are dropping. Granted, this has little to do with pollution and whatnot, but active choice to remain childless either because one does not want children or because they just cannot afford to have children. And there are now those who are actively shaming women and couples who refuse to have children, even claiming it goes against a woman's sole purpose.

Extreme right wing groups are pushing to dismantle the rights of marginalized groups and some are succeeding. Even some of our high court justices openly speculate about overturning previous rulings that would lead to women, minorities, LGBTQ folks, etc losing rights to their body, to marriage, to higher education, to birth control, etc.

We know Gilead did a slow burn at first before going all in. As far as the real world goes, I don't think it could be as extreme as what Gilead becomes, but it feels pretty close.

Spoilers maybe?? Edit: i would like to see depictions in the show of different perspectives of handmaids who were glad to be Eid of their state sanctioned rape babies, or who were child free before gilead and maybe had successful pregnancies and aborted or adopted out.

I’m tired of seeing the June and Janine style, I’m hoping they expand more on Esther not wanting a kid or showing any adult handmaid not wanting children or pregnancy, much like Moira i guess? There’s such a one sided view and i guess in a world where fertility is coveted, i can understand it, but i wish they showed more sides to it. I’d love to get more world building, I’m sure those women were turned into Jezebels instead but I’m sure there’s women who just don’t want kids at all or pregnancy (someone like me) I’d like the show to depict these differences. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Edit: for those misunderstanding, what i am saying is: would you be interested in seeing the perspectives of handmaids who do not want their children? Who want to be child free and never experience motherhood or pregnancy? Do you think showing something like that or how gilead may react to trans men who did not receive gender affirming care, how they may fare in gilead were they “salvaged” and turned into handmaids? A lot of child free women have had successful pregnancies, adopted out, or abortions. Edit: for those of you being rude or willfully obtuse in the comments, please stop taking things at face value bad hiding behind your computers or phones. Rude as hell for no reason.

Also thank you to the commenter who is explaining my post btw! <3

Everybody wants Hannah to be reunited with her real parents and live a normal and happy life, but so much time has gone by and she was so young when she was stolen from her family. This is the home Hannah has known for much of her childhood life and she probably wouldn't want to be ripped away from the only parents she really knows to go live with crazy ass June. I'm sure the figures in her life have drilled it into her that June is a dangerous and immoral person to be avoideded at all costs. It reminds me of Mormon FLDS women that escape their terrible lives and then try to get their daughters out, but the daughters have been raised within the cult and strongly distrust the outside world. The brief glimpse of the woman who is her "mother" in Gilead actually seems pretty kind and reasonable (I am 100% NOT pro Gilead, just making an argument). As much as we don't like it, this is the mother Hannah has known for most of her life, and I doubt she's pining for her biological parents. I could totally see her being interested in finding June when she becomes a rebellious teenager, but not right now. Thoughts?

Just a heads up that I’m only in season one and on episode 3 (don’t mind spoilers) but these are my initial thoughts on the handmaid system and I probably lack the naunce given by later seasons

If one of the main objectives of creating the Gilead Nation was to tackle the infertility crisis. The handmaid system is illogical and doesn’t actually solve the problem.

• Handmaidens are intialy only selected from a pre-existing pool of mothers or people that previously had abortions. Completely ignoring women that could potentially be fertile but are married to infertile men. Wouldn’t a screening process made more sense, to establish correct numbers of fertility if fertility was to be considered a resource.

• Women bare the sole responsibility for the infertility crisis when it’s obvious scientific knowledge that men can also be infertile. So the rotation scheme between the commanders ,whose whole plight for creating Gilead was their anger for being punished (being infertile) for the sins of the rest of the nation, which is a pool already been established to be largely infertile doesn’t make sense for handmaidens to be soely for the upper echelons when it’s apparent they can’t produce children.

This is more inhumane but a “better” solution is to screen the US public for potential fertility and force partnerships or have a selection process where marriages are formed and provide incentives e.g. status to increase the amount of babies to produced.

• Other routes for producing children primarily artificial means would have been more effective then the handmaiden system and would have probably costed less then the manpower required to keep the system in check and the training required especially for a nation that very destabilised economy and the value of their currency is slipping as well an apparent inability to produce basic crops or maintain supply chains.

• What exactly is the cause for the infertility crisis, I don’t understand what exactly could have lead to such widespread infertility that entire cities can only expect a couple births a month and why their is seemingly no treatment or cure. If it was such a major issue. Especially since that it seems to only be effecting this one specific generation and not the previous generation since population is supposed to be exactly the same as real time 2017?

We see she had Hannah baptized, and then she asked for Nichole to be baptized as well. We see her pray earnestly and even tells Serena that God is punishing her.

Obviously June was some kind of less fanatic Christian, as she had sex before marriage and even had an affair with a married man. She seemed pretty much like most casual Christians in our world.

I mean, I obviously know why she still believes jn God, she’s believed it before and seems to have genuine faith. She knows that PEOPLE are at fault for Gilead, not God, and she hopes God will help fix things. She’s clinging to her belief, her situation possibly just strengthened her faith.

When someone goes through something this traumatic, I’ve seen people either cling to their belief or completely abandon them. I was already kind of agnostic as a kid, and when my dad died when I was 13, I figured there is no way there is a God or a higher power or whatever that would do that to a family. My mom, on the other hand, became more and more religious.

Like I said, we kinda know the why, I’m just hoping to get a conversation started about people’s beliefs while living in that system. Not just June, but everyone, the other handmaids, the econopeople.

I just finished watching Season 4 of the show, and something that I've been thinking about is how Gilead was able to usurp the American government. I feel like in the show it's never quite fully explained how the world gets into the situation it is in with Gilead, as a lot of the flashbacks we see are about specific moments in characters' lives, rather than about the whole past of the US being (mostly) replaced by Gilead.

A big part of me wonders if maybe the US came under some sort of big attack right before Gilead's leaders staged their coup. The main thing making me think this way is the Colonies, because they seem to have been caused by nuclear bombing. Although I've seen some people say this was Gilead in the early days attempting to fight the US, I wonder if perhaps the US itself was bombed beforehand by another country and that created an opening to Gilead to take over a weakened US.

Furthermore, sometimes it seems like when the Colonies are explained and why Gilead is working to rebuild those areas into useable land, it feels like it would be odd for them to put so much emphasis on sending people to dig up all the radiated rubble if they were the ones themselves who did it. Alongside all the religious stuff Gilead does, the Gilead government seems very focused on "rebuilding", not only through repopulation, but also through efforts like the Colonies to make irradiated wastelands into useable land again. In other words, if the US was bombed before Gilead, perhaps the US government didn't have any way to rebuild those areas, but since Gilead doesn't care about human rights, when they took over they got to work on it by sending people there who could die without them caring.

And I feel like there's a lot of other indicators as well throughout the show that Gilead didn't take over the US as we know it today, but rather they took over a US that was already severely weakened.

In defense of Gilead and the horrible things they do, Fred and Serena say that it is a success because they have the highest birth rates in the world. I do not get how that makes sense because Gilead handicaps itself to start by refusing to acknowledge that men, according to Tuello and the doctor June sees in Season 1, are primarily the sterile ones.

They hide this truth behind some sort of wild biblical justification such that you can’t even talk about men’s sterility. So basically, handmaids are passed around to mostly sterile commanders and that system is lauded as their success story.

Furthermore, Gilead is skeptic to modern science and medicine. Things like IVF are not an option because it is ungodly. Yet, secular nations are not able to compete with Gilead, a country that doesn’t acknowledge male sterility? Is it just assumed there aren’t humane systems in place in other developed countries where fertile men and women procreate supported by the state? (e.g. sperm donation, IVF, modern medicine, welfare, food/housing allocation)

Seems to me any country that is secular could easily beat Gilead in birth rates while not resorting to the atrocious things Gilead does.

the power of postpartum hormones. I feel zero sympathy for Serena, nor do I feel she deserves any redemption. She will flip that evil switch back on in no time. Luke did the right thing.

I think Gilead is going to find a way to claim Serena’s baby belongs to Gilead and take it from her so she can finally feel betrayed by the system she helped create once and for all. It would be the perfect poetic justice she deserves and maybe the only thing that will satisfy June.

I’m convinced her helping people is a savior complex created by her trauma. She couldn’t save her daughter so she’s compensating by helping others.

I’m also thinking about how after she got those women to help her kill Fred, she left them to fend for themselves once she got what she wanted. Her trauma obviously makes her very selfish but what if she had just escaped with Hannah in the beginning? I don’t think she would even think twice about the others left in gilead.

Let the replies start ripping me apart

In Season 4 we see a grocery store after June arrives in Canada. I made a post a few days ago asking about a brand of water we see there which gives June flashbacks to Gilead and she has a little bit of an almost-breakdown. However, something else I was thinking about with the grocery store is how we see that a lot of brands still exist, like if I remember right there's Pepsi and a bunch a cereal brands on the shelves.

It had me wondering, how do you guys think big American companies would react to the Sons of Jacob taking over, and also how they would continue to operate after Gilead?

It seems like Gilead itself has effectively a command economy. There's not really any branded food or anything around Gilead. Tbh I think the only brand we see consistently is Mercedes and one can assume that those would have just been vehicles already built and ready to drive in the US that the government commandeered.

I suppose a lot of big companies already have offices in other countries and so would have just switched their major operations to a different branch and continued running from there?

But I also wonder if maybe some companies would've helped their employees escape the US as it became Gilead by doing stuff like transferring them to overseas branches so they could get visas to leave and stuff like that.

In watching the premiere episodes of S5 I took note of Nick’s wife, Rose. She seems like a kind woman. She’s ordinary looking and walks with a cane and I think Nick married her because he had to marry someone and she seemed nice and he thought that he’s fine with giving her a nice home to live in and she’s someone he can easily get along with. And she’s kind to the Martha by not wanting to wake her up.

But then my brain wheels started to turn. I wonder, knowing this show, if at some point we will find out that Rose is actually a Gilead operative assigned to spy on Nick.

To me it makes sense because I would assume that all of the other commanders HAVE to be somewhat suspicious of Nick and Lawrence given their relationships with June. The same June who is #1 on Gilead’s hit list.

Hi everyone! One of my favourite things about The Handmaid’s Tale, especially S3 and S4, is the show’s incredible use of side-characters. Not only do they often add some comic relief, but they also add to the plot in interesting ways (RIP Beth and Alma!). So my question is, who do you want to see more of in S6? Or who’s a character that was mentioned offscreen that you’d like to actually see?

A few of my top picks (in no particular order) are: 1. The women from the Handmaid’s Support Group (tbh, I was shocked we didn’t see them again after S5E1) 2. Mayday. All the women of Mayday. I want nothing more than to see the trio of Marthas again. And Mayday at the boarder!!! 3. Billy (I want to see him with his Picassos!) 4. Dr. Yates (With Esther pregnant, it would be cool to see him return) 5. Naomi Putnam (I read on here that she’s been upgraded to a main character so woo!) 6. The guardian who’s leg got blown up in Fairytale

Tbh I’m hanging onto this series primarily to see aunt Lydia get the Justice she deserves. Serena and the other Gillead nuts too of course. I worry about the show trying to give her a redemption because in the most recent season we see her having sympathy for Janine. This opens the door for her to have a come-to-Jesus-moment. Which I’d be furious to see. There is nothing she can do to redeem herself, in my opinion.

I also think the last episode of the last season tried to gain our sympathy for Serena, painting her as a victim of Gillead too. Personally I think that’s an insult to her intelligence and her capacity for evil. I think Serena should be given the dignity to go down with the ship.

Anyone have theories on where is it? They say an island... and judging by how nice it looks I'm guessing it might be Nantucket. I'm from MA and I know that Nantucket is /fancy/ and those housed looked /nice/.

Any other ideas?

Edit: I do not mean where it was filmed. I meant where is supposed to take place.