“I had another name, but it’s forbidden now.” So opens the first teaser for The Handmaid’s Tale, which Hulu dropped this weekend. We’re introduced to the dystopian Republic of Gilead through the eyes of Offred (Elisabeth Moss), but we also glimpse her former life, before her old name was forbidden. This makes the dystopian portions much more chilling, as we see Offred running with other protestors, being dragged away from her husband and daughter, and conditioned to become a Handmaid.
I imagine that those scenes, training with the Aunts, will be among some of the most disturbing: “I know this must feel very strange,” Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) says in the teaser, “but ordinary is just what you’re used to.” The unspoken implication being that the Handmaids, and the Wives, Marthas, Econowives, and Jezebels in Gilead’s hierarchy, will all come to see their world as ordinary. We glimpse Ofglen (Alexis Bledel) being abducted, and Moira (Samira Wiley) looking like she’s just itching to rebel. Because as Moss says at the end of the teaser, “My name is Offred, and I intend to survive.”
Watch the teaser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dre0wQmLGe8
The first of ten episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale will premiere April 26.
