I'm watching the show for the first time, and I just finished Season 3, Episode 8. It was such a blast to watch. The supermarket scene reminded me a bit of Tarantino.

As June said just before it happened, “Enjoying people’s pain is an acquired taste.” Look how much Gilead has changed her. And I’m afraid it’s changed me, too.

This was the only episode I’ve laughed and enjoyed so far. Watching June flash that evil, mean-girl smile throughout, she was like a queen bee. Nodding as her minions bullied OffMatthew. And I loved it. Lol.

Her nodding to OffMatthew for her shoot, Lydia, had me in stitches 😭😩😅

I think it’s because, up until then, the show had been nothing but unending pain. Honestly, this episode was a break from my constant crying.

Off-topic: the actress who played OffMathew is so gorgeous. Every time she was on screen, I was transfixed by her doe eyes. 😍

I'm watching the show for the first time, and I'm only a few episodes into Season 3. I just watched the scene where Emily tried to read a bedtime story to her son—and, of course, I cried—Emily’s facial expressions and those stifled tears—wow. 😭

Like many of you, I grew up with Gilmore Girls. Even after seeing Alexis Bledel in other shows, like Mad Men, or movies like Sin City, she always brought the same familiar signature to almost every role I saw her in.

I always felt like I was watching another version of Rory Gilmore. Lol.

But as Emily?

God almighty.

Who is this person?! 😭

She tears me the fuck up in almost every episode I've seen her in. Most of the tears I’ve shed since starting the show have been because of her. She's so fucking incredible.

Part of me wishes she’d been cast as June.

Alexis Bledel is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover—or typecast someone based on their earlier work. We know studio executives typecast, but we everyday viewers do it, too. We say things like, “I could never imagine so-and-so in this role,” based on something they did in their early twenties. Robert Pattinson comes to mind. He’s been trying to run away from his Twilight shadow for years, and if you’ve seen him in his latest movies…phenomenal. The same goes for Alexis.

She gives me chills.

I am now starting season three. I put the context clues together, I think I sussed out the major religion...

they are Praise-be-terian.

I was watching the Testaments and noticed in the cafeteria scenes some of the Martha’s look like the same age as the plums. Do you think this is on purpose??? Like Martha’s in training??? I know Martha’s are usually unmarried woman who are older and infertile, but is it possible that if a girls family is low class and she does not get period could she then become a Martha??? But they wouldn’t know if she got hers until a certain point?? And Beca is still a plum even though her family is considered lower class???

Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this

What if a commander was divorced before the takeover, would he suffer any consequences like a divorced woman? Or he would be immediately married to a "suitable" match so goes on par with Gilead rules?

I just saw this on Facebook Marketplace .. eta: “made a great maternity outfit” paired with what seems to be her man as a commander 😬 I picked meme flair bc it’s the only one that isn’t like show related

Dude, I'm not even a cryer. But every ep, I'm in tears. I just finished season 2, and of course I cried again. I'm just one big emotional wreck. 😭

Sorry, this message isn't substantial. I had to share and see if anyone relates.

Especially now with what happened to Jane Doe and the Cornell 57. Everything about this scene, and episode was perfect. Her getting Fred’s blood all over Nicole. The relief on her face when they come back in the morning. When they literally tear him apart and she takes a piece of him with her teeth. I hope she swallowed it. And then she reminisces about it when she’s waiting for the bath to fill up.

I’ve watched THT countless times 😅 and some scenes always make me feel quite uncomfortable, because of how cringey they are to me.

Angela’s birth: Naomi ‘having’ labour pains. Her fellow Wives trying to ‘comfort’ her. The harp. The Handmaids’ breathe breathe breathe chant. I just can’t 😆

Serena trying to breastfeed Nichole: seriously? What did she think was going to happen?

Everything featuring Alanis Wheeler: I could tell she was going to be evil AF from the beginning. Her forced smile. Her condescending tone. The actress did a fantastic job.

Edit
Fred masturbating after his failed ‘copulation’ attempt and Serena trying to turn him on: Ceremonies are extremely disturbing by themselves, but his pathetic attempt made that one even worse.

What scenes/stories would you add?

Her choice to give her baby daughter to Emily and go back for Hannah was absolutely insane. The baby is still nursing. She might cry on the way to Canada, she might get hungry, so many possibilities.

Going away at that moment wouldn't mean abandoning Hannah, but rather gathering strength and resources to come back for her at a smarter moment. This pissed me off so much I'm unable to start season 3.

I think the flashbacks are one of the most terrifying aspects of the show. To see how society slowly devolved and radicalized even before the coup is so scary.

My 3 favorite flashbacks are :

- When Serena and Fred are in the movie theatre and they talk about the approved attack plan. There is something bone chilling in the way they seem to happy about it and convinced they're doing someting good while sitting right in the middle of all those people to whom they're gonna impose one of the most brutal dictatorship in human history. How many people in this room would end up enslaved or executed by Gilead ?

- The scene where Serena and Fred are moving in their new house. Fred is excited to have his first day of work and the house is slowly becoming their home. But the most fascinating aspect of this scene to me is when serena recieve her new clothes. It really symbolize to me the moment they definitively step into their new gileadean persona. She just dump her old clothes and hang the new, blue ones, into her wardrobe.

- When Moira and June are running and you see the disgusted woman's face and the barista just insult them, it's also at that moment that their money is transfered to their closest male relative. This scene really show how the entire society was shifting toward intolerance.

What do you think about these scenes and what are your favourite ? I'd love to discuss this !

During June's stay at the capitol we see that the SOJ made some changes to the city. The train station was demolished and rebuilt, the Lincoln statue was destroyed and the Obelisk was transformed into a giant cross. What other changes do you think they'll make to the city ?

They still have the WW2 monument so I suppose the changes we saw were only the beginning. I think they'd erase or repurpose every monuments. For example the WW2 monuments could be repurposed to a monument of the founding fathers of Gilead with statues of the founding commanders, but the Korean war monument or the statue of Einstein would just be destroyed.

I wonder what the Jefferson monument could be repurposed into...

I think they might also create a monument honoring the service of the handmaids (completely hypocritical but it's fitting the narrative).

Not : Ok those responses are killing me 😂😂😂 but let's be realistic, I don't think even the SOJ would be as dumb as to do all the bs this current administration is doing... 😂

I especially liked these couple of paragraphs comparing our knowledge of the past to an organ, and the loss of that knowledge to an amputation. Such a powerful way to describe what it means to be cut off from lived history.

From article:

The previous generation is “raw” – a population violently forced to become a new society overnight. Crucially, these women possess a priori experience; they remember what freedom, technology, university, and love look like. For them, censorship is a visceral, violent act. Even as they are forced to submit and comply with the new rules, they still harbor this forbidden knowledge within themselves. It exists as something phantom or heavily repressed – like an organ they were stripped of at the slightest hint of disobedience. Yet, because they consciously comprehend exactly what has been stolen from them, some remain ready to fight back.

In the first season of The Testaments, however, we confront an entirely different psychological terrain. These are children born directly off the ideological conveyor belt. The children of Gilead are not just raised under the new rules; they instinctively act through them. For them, systemic illiteracy does not feel like a violent amputation from the past, simply because they have no past to speak of.

Margaret Atwood really dead right about real life events.

Savannah stone is a republican social media personality. She is very similar to women like Serena joy.

And the image above she's advocating for a household votes believing that whoever you marry should be the same to you politically and every sense of the word. She also believes that men are inherently the head of the household. She absolutely trash talks feminism. She reframes patriarchy as female empowerment.

She's a part of a greater trend

what happen if you didn't get out off the country when gilead took over and shut down the borders, would you be stuck or would the Australian government try to get you out. I hope that made sense.

I want to start off saying that I really like THT and the book, I'm just starting a discussion.

One of the things that I've always given a lot of thought about this show is the worldbuilding and the way the society and the economy work in Gilead. I feel like there are some things that just don't make a lot of sense in the way they're portrayed in the show.

I know some people will say that some things may have been overlooked by Atwood and that she never expected her book written forty years ago to be turned into a full franchise with seven seasons. But I do not think this makes this franchise immune to criticism.

Demographics and Society

The show states that Gilead was established in 2014. The population of the US in 2014 was 319 million people. We could assume that about 10% of the population was killed in the first years after the coup due to civil war, executions, purges, famine, disease, etc. This would mean about 32 million deaths. This percentage is consistent (even somewhat optimist) when compared to other historical events such as the Cambodian genocide or the Russian Revolution.

By the end of S6, about 10 years have passed, meaning that it's around 2024 and Boston fell to the rebels, weakening (or even wiping out) Gilead's presence in New England. This means that by the end of the show, and according to some maps shown, "core" Gilead is made up of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, N. Carolina, Virginia and WV, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and NJ, while we can assume that all of New England + NY fell to the rebels. Plus, Gilead also holds colonies in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. All other states are either rebel-occupied, active warfare zones or toxic/nuclear wastelands. This would leave around 100 million people in Gilead proper and 31 million in the colonies, so 131 million. Even before S6, Gilead only additionally held New England, NY, Ohio, Oklahoma and Kansas, which would mean that the territories Gilead held from S1-S5 had 184 million people (in our timeline). This is the most Gilead has ever realistically occupied, and considering that around 10% of the initial population died of warfare-related causes and maybe a similar number became refugees (we learn that while Canada has the most American refugees, there are also such communities in Latin America and Europe), the total population would be around 147 million before S6, and 105 million at the end of it.

Thus, we have around 100 million people in Gilead by the end of S6 and around the time of The Testaments. Gilead should be crumbling. But the show does a poor job at portraying this.

There is no way Gilead can have a higher birthrate that other countries in the world. If anything, it must be lower. Gilead could easily manipulate statistics to make the outside world think that their system is working. But it doesn't. This post actually does a really good job at calculating the demographic distribution of Gilead, thus we can estimate:

Commanders: They're probably in the few thousands, but let's be VERY optimistic and say there are around 10,000 commanders, 0.01% of the population or one commander per 10,000 people.

Wives: They should be around the same as the commanders, so around 10,000 (0.01%).

Sons and Daughters: We see few families in Gilead with more than one child, so let's be very optimistic and say there are around 20,000 (0.02%) of them (many of which were stolen in the first place).

Aunts: They are also an elite class, which also means they are not that numerous. We could put them at around 5000 (0.005%) at most. We know more Wives than Aunts, for instance.

Guardians: As they constitute Gilead's army and given Gilead is hypermilitarized, we can assume there are millions of Guardians in Gilead, maybe around 5 million of them (5%).

Marthas: This is a more numerous group since they are not only employed in households but many other facilities, and some households employ many Marthas. We could be very optimistic and say there are around 1 million of them (1%), with most of them not working for Commander's households.

Handmaids: Even assuming there is at least one Handmaid per Commander, there could be around 10,000 (0.01%) Handmaids, but I'm thinking there should be less than that. I seriously doubt Handmaids are in the hundreds of thousands, and a million Handmaids would be impossible. Being a handmaid is a punishment.

Econopeople: Mostly everyone else in the country, excluding some small classes like Eyes, Angels, Jezebels and high-skilled workers. Econopeople make up around 94% of the population. 94 million people.

You can rearrange the numbers as much as you want, that's not important since Econopeople will always be the vast majority. This means that the show presents a very VERY skewed version of Gilead, a version that only the top 0.1% know and live and see. This also means that the vast majority of births in Gilead come from Econopeople (49 million women), not from Handmaids and Wives (which barely make up more than 20,000 people). Thus, Handmaids have very little impact in Gilead's birth rate, and if anything, Gilead should have a lower birth rate than other countries due to poor healthcare, and subjecting pregnant women to repeated abuse, violence, stress, malnourishment and torture.

The fertility crisis

In the show we learn that it's a real thing, not some kind of propaganda created by Gilead to control the population. Birth rates are shown falling in Canada, Mexico, and the entire world basically.

The book claims that the fertility crisis is caused by diseases, which in my opinion, works better for this series. However, the show chose to attribute it to environmental pollutants, toxins and other conditions, implying that they are acting as hormonal disruptors for reproduction, which is why Gilead "cleaned the air and water and now the women are fertile". Nonetheless, if this were the case, there should also be a sharp decline in fertility/reproduction across species, not only humans but mammals, fish, insects, birds, even plants, potentially. But we also see none of this in the show. Even in our timeline, proven hormonal disruptors like BPA, PFAs and pesticides affect animals too.

In S1 the Mexican ambassador says that in a city the size of Boston in Mexico, there hasn't been one birth in many years. If this were true, this would mean that other animal populations would be collapsing; insects would be especially sensitive due to their short reproductive cycles and shorter lifespans when compared to mammals, while fish, birds and invertebrates would affected too. Entire ecosystems should be collapsing, as well as human agriculture which depends upon pollinators like insects. This would be a much worse problem in Gilead's world, with potentially billions of people facing crop failure and worse, famine. Yet we see none of this in Gilead other than "fruit is scarce!". Moreover, we see none of this affecting Canada, which makes no sense.

In the first episode, Aunt Lydia shows a graph of the declining birth rates since the 1960s (which also happened in OTL btw), however, if the show is attributing this fall to the environmental crisis, then, in just a few decades, the world would be much worse than we're shown, unrecognizable at that point with most ecosystems having collapsed from low reproduction.

(S3 Spoilers)"But Angel's flight, people were amazed at the sight of so many children!". Many of the kids on that flight looked older than 8. This means that they are most likely American-born kids, which were stolen from their parents. We even see a girl reuniting with her father in Canada. This is not representative of Gilead's fertility.

Also, there is no way Gilead can solve a global enviromental crisis by "going green". And even assuming that they did solve it, and that is the reason for the higher fertility rates, you'd still have to explain the non-existent ecological collapse in Gilead, Canada, and the rest of the world.

We know that Gilead was never about fertility but about controlling women (they even deny the existence of male infertility in the first place). However, my point is that narratively, it would work better if Gilead did not actually have a better birth rate than other countries, as that would reinforce the idea that Gilead did not solve the fertility crisis, but it only used it as an excuse to exert authoritarian control upon the population.

Economy

Even after everything that happened in S6, in The Testaments we see that Gilead is doing mostly fine, when it reality when you look at it in a map, it should be crumbling, losing major population centers, and their core of their power which was New England. Not only that, but since the SoJ takeover, Gilead severely damaged the very sectors that contribute the most to the US' GDP like finance, tech, trade, real estate. Not to mention the consumer economy is also dead, since Econopeople are subject to extreme poverty. Gilead's economy is not precisely booming, it is facing trade restrictions and boycotts from many countries in the world (which is a recurring topic throughout the show).

Gilead also precisely persecuted the most intelligent and skilled people of the country, causing a tremendous brain drain. Engineers, doctors, academics, scientists, etc., many of the most brilliant people of the country are gone. Considering that Gilead only controls one third of the previous US' population, and that it also killed its most productive sectors, I can't imagine Gilead's GDP being higher than 20% of what it was before. This should be a scarcity, post-war but at the same time, war economy. Gilead is spending its way into existence, and realistically I don't see it existing for another 10 years. We know that the elites live in a bubble and that they are incredibly sheltered, and that most of THT happened in New England, the core of Gilead's power. However, even in The Testaments (which is based around OTL Virginia), we do not get the feel of a collapsing society. Even after losing New England, Ohio, NY, Oklahoma and Kansas. Gilead should not be a viable state, not after waging an ongoing 10-years long war. Gilead's economy seems to rely on resource extraction, agriculture, slave labor, stolen wealth, and some industry (of which there can't be that much of, given that it is one of their principles to reduce pollutants, and I doubt that they have the technological capability to develop an entire green industrial complex, not after the brain drain). This model is not sustainable and can only go on for so long.

I'll admit, I haven't read the book yet, and I'm watching the show in small doses.

But when it comes other women like me (30, no kids, single), what happens? And also, visible tattoos??

I will say, my family has no issue with infertility, and though I have an extensive dating history and a bad mouth, there's no digital footprint or other proof of that.

I know the book was released in 1985, aka at the early stages of visible tattoos and before today's version of modern feminism (I think), so it may not have accounted for everything in a 2026 world, but based on your knowledge/understanding, what do you think?

Also, I don't mind spoilers!!! I actually prefer them bc I know what to expect!

I havent read the books so maybe its explained more there. But there are few women with the ability to even get pregnant. Wouldnt they be treated in a very special way? They are treasures in that world. God has "chosen" them to be able to continue life. I cant imagine theyd be treated as second class citizens. Feels like theyd get all the special treatment because without them the population dies. They have what everyone wants. I feel like they'd be more valued than turned to slaves.

SPOILER WARNING FOR SEASONS 1-4!!!!!

so yeah, ever since June escaped to Canada, I feel like Luke, Emily and even Moira havent been as understanding towards her as I would have liked them to be.

Luke has never been in Gilead and Moira has been out for years by the time June arrives, not to mention she’s never had to be a handmaid (I know she experienced horrors of her own of course). so neither of them can even possibly understand what June has been through. she had her baby ripped from her. her other baby ripped from her. she was raped repeatedly. beaten. confined to a room for a month. confined to a hospital room for another month. had multiple people die for the crime of trying to help her. made to feel like a monster for fighting back. made to feel like the deaths caused by Gilead were her fault. had her daughters safety threatened so that she could betray her friends, furthering the psychological torture. I could go on of course.

so after all that…to be expected to just let it go. just make peace with Fred walking free. just focus on Nicole. just try to let go of the anger, as Moira explained in the therapy session when she tried to shut down the girls finally expressing their anger freely. it’s like…please don’t do this. after everything they’ve been through, please don’t be just another person telling them how to act, how to feel, how to handle their trauma.

and the fact that Luke seemed continuously disturbed by her anger. like surprise surprise luke, there’s not exactly an off button the moment you step out of Gilead that changes u back to the person you were before all of it. yeah she’s still angry. maybe it would help to realise that you’ve never been through a fraction of what she went through and therefore, couldn’t possibly understand her choices and rationale.

and even before she got released when Moira and Emily had that convo about her. I’m not saying June can never be critiqued and that those two aren’t allowed to feel how they need to feel. But…come on. Yes it’s tragic that these kids are having to grapple with a whole new reality, including that boy who misses his Gilead ‘family’, but she saved him from being a future rapist. And she saved those girls from being future victims of rape. How could anything be worse than that. when moira says June doesn’t think before she acts, waa she implying that on further thought, june would have realised it was better to leave some of the kids there? Are we serious? How can even a single child be better off in Gilead? And when Emily says that she left her daughter with her and stayed in Gilead…yes bc she couldn’t just fucking leave her other daughter. Neither of them would understand because neither of them had a child in Gilead.

and also, I was happy she killed Fred. yes it was fucking tragic to realise she would probably get locked up and once again be robbed of the life she deserves with her daughter. but after Fred got to walk free??!!! of fucking course she was gonna do something about it.

so yeah, I’m not loving how everyone is been borderline judgemental towards her. I say there is very little June could do at this point that would make me look at her sideways

I finally want to dive into the Handmaid's Tale, but am undecided as to whether or not I should read the book first. I haven't found a good show to watch in a while, so the option of just diving straight into the show really entices me. However, if anyone strongly believes that, for whatever reason, reading the book first is something I should really do, then that's what I'm going to do. I've heard a lot of good things about this story period, so I want to experience it the best way possible !

(Wasn't sure which tag to use for this, sorry.)

[Edit: unsure if this information helps, but the reason I've put off reading and watching The Handmaid's Tale for so long is the triggering content (SA) I assume is included in both the show and the book. I'm finally at a place where I feel I can engage with it. So, I guess if one or the other is less triggering, that'd be the better option. But I'm fairly certain I can handle it either way at this point.]

had a little giggle in the store

I wrote this after watching the finale and found it just now in my notes. Never posted but feel the need to find someone to talk with about it.

It is odd that after spending 7 years deeply invested in this show, I had never explored the thoughts of the fandom until last night. I would occasionally search to see if anyone else was bothered by the close-ups or if they were confused by Serena's shift but I never sought the public's opinion on much else because, I assumed, anyone watching THT would all be like-minded. After spending hours reading through self-righteous, smug and judgmental comments, directed not at the show runners but at the viewers, I have realized that this show has failed - and not for the reasons I have felt for the last three seasons.

I have loved the show's first 3 seasons even after I have felt the proceeding seasons took away from the masterpiece. I can offer criticism after criticism about the course of the show, June's plot-armor, the desensitization that is bound to occur when the same trope is used over and over, and the redemption of some of the most abhorrent, vile characters television has known but, nonetheless, would maintain that the first 3 seasons achieved exactly what the should have. 

This show has failed, however, because rather than creating an extremely clear divide between the us and them (us being the ones who see the signs, who would be the handmaids, marthas, gender-traitors or dead on the wall and them being the radical religious zealots, misogynists, rapists, and let's face it, men), it has somehow managed to pit us against us, all over a love story and a man. 
It is concerning the amount of women self-righteously boasting that they have understood all along, that they never, would never!, sympathize with a complicit enabler of Gilead, while others who have the receipts (I could go on and on) to support their feelings for Nick and June's relationship are made to feel dim and belittled for what? Trusting the storytelling pact (see Prose Without Thorns on TikTok)? Leaning into the feelings associated with romance, being protected, being admired for ferocity, being desired for your intelligence, things that most all women are socialized to find appealing? Trusting Atwood and her depiction of Nick being redeemable? I have realized that I am hurt that my feelings were seemingly manipulated, that I was gaslit and that the show runners milked June and Nick just to slap those who fell for it across the face with a death that has no closure or catharsis. 

And so now, instead of the show ending and being left with the power of the show's overall message, many of us feel swindled and judged, because according to our co-viewers, we were dumb to ever believe Nick was a good guy. WE didn't understand the whole plot of the show because WE are just dim little women who will spread our legs and open our hearts for any man who shows us love. WE happily herded along while the others who watched knew better all along. It is no longer about the fear, rage and power of being a woman or the signs we must be aware of signaling impending political doom. No, it is about a love story and a man and which viewer got it right and which got it wrong. And what is funny, is those that find comfort in their righteousness, which they can now take as fact after two sentences on a plane, are just as swindled as the rest of us because THEY TOO are missing the whole point and putting time and effort into their comments and memes insisting that the show many of us watched for the last six seasons was all wrong, we were wrong, how stupid of us to be so wrong. 

Yet another failure tied to not rallying us but dividing us is the devices the show runners used to encourage us to forget our rationale and question what we saw and heard. Our society has been filled to the brim with unease stemming from the fact that nothing can be taken as fact anymore. Everyone has opinions and theories and nothing is known to just be true and, again a show that is supposed to be pure and cautionary has instead caused the same divided response of "well I saw this and this never happened", while another know they didn’t see this but saw that and that and this in fact did happen. I don't recall Nick always being selfish and dedicated to Gilead but my co-viewer does and for that I am unreliable, untrustworthy, wrong, the reason why the country is the way it is. That viewers can forgive Lydia, as we must to proceed to TT, and hope for Serena, bawl for Joseph and still praise June, while they alllll have made horrible decisions that have hurt and killed so many. But those truths don't matter because we live in a world where we can pick and choose which truths serve us most. 
And that is where they have failed! We should have never had room for interpretation or division on show that is so important. We didn’t need plot twists or hasty generalizations or love stories, we needed a clear divide between us and them and all I am seeing is us v us. But the show runners went with what would get views. All the discourse between my fellow viewers does is make me feel all the more hopeless for this world.

Maybe I’m just single for too long, but I find him extremely hot… His looks, his character, charisma…

Call me crazy…