The Handmaid's Tale Season 1 Recap: Normalizing Brutality
A recap of the first season of the Hulu Original The Handmaid's Tale
As the final season of Hulu’s hit show The Handmaid’s Tale approaches, I decided to rewatch the previous five seasons as an opportunity to refresh my memory on where the show is picking up and to offer a quick recap for those who may not want to rewatch a show about the collapse of America, especially this time around.
Season 1 of The Handmaid’s Tale is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel. In the story, the American government is overthrown by The Sons of Jacob to establish the Republic of Gilead, and this new government enforces strict fundamentalist Christian rules. It is a patriarchy so intense that women can have no voice and are forbidden to read. The wealthy wives of the leaders are exclusively homemakers, hosting parties and knitting groups and overseeing the other women in their homes. “Marthas” are compliant women who are unable to bear children and serve as maids and cooks for the leadership. “Aunts” are the women who enforce the rules onto other women.
And then there are the handmaids. These are fertile women who are forced into sexual slavery as breeders for leadership. During their fertile times, they must perform “the ceremony” where the wives hold them down while the husbands rape them. It is as disturbing to watch as one might expect.
There are also the “unwomen.” Some are sent to the nuclear wastelands called “the colonies,” something that isn’t explained in Season 1. The remaining women are sent to “Jezebels,” a kind of brothel where the leadership continues to enjoy all of the debaucheries of the previous life in an open secret.
The season (and the following seasons) focus on Offred (Elisabeth Moss), so named because handmaids are “of” the patriarch of the house. In this case, she is the property of Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), one of the highest-ranking members of Gilead’s leadership. His wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), is desperate for a child, having written books prior to the collapse of America about the moral imperative of women to conceive children.
The first season expands on the Atwood novel by providing more backstory about Offred, whose real name is June. We see the slow collapse of America, with stricter rules implemented following the establishment of Gilead. Women are not allowed to access their bank accounts unless a man’s name is on them, and they are summarily fired from their jobs. When people protest, they are fired upon by the new police force. Eventually, we see June and her husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), try to escape with their daughter, Hannah.
The show also introduces a best friend, Moira (Samira Wiley), who helps bridge the gap between the old life and the current reality they are living in, which is a really engaging choice from showrunner Bruce Miller. We also get a much deeper look at the other handmaids, which fleshes out the story of Gilead and allows us to examine some of the atrocities alluded to in the book more personally.
Still, much of the novel is left intact. When June is captured, she is sent to a center for handmaids run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd). There, these women are prepped to become subservient vessels for sexual assault. They are stripped of their identities, their sexual preferences, their names, and their children and are forced to become bodies to carry children for the wealthy, powerful members of Gilead.
Because they are mere breeding tools, handmaids are brutalized by the aunts in charge of the centers. These women beat the handmaids, gouge out their eyes, stun them with cattle prods, and constantly demean them in ways that make it harder and harder for them to recognize their value. It is brutal and terrifying.
Serena Joy treats June as a child, at times confining her to her room and, at other times, bestowing her with a small gift: a music box with a little ballerina inside. This is contrasted with Fred, who uses June not only during the Ceremony but also invites her into his office, where he gives her magazines and plays Scrabble with her, only to later dress her up and take her to Jezebel’s. All of it is deeply dehumanizing, which is absolutely the prevailing theme of the first season.
Early in the first episode, Aunt Lydia talks to the women (whom she always calls girls) at the Rachel and Leah Center (named after the biblical women Rachel and Leah, sisters who married Jacob). It is early, before the women have been fitted with their handmaid uniforms. One of the handmaids, Janine (Madeline Brewer), struggles to accept what is happening, and after using the cattle prod on her, Aunt Lydia says, “This will all become normal soon enough.”
The first season aired in April 2017, just a few months into Donald Trump’s first term as president. I remember people pointing to this show as a talisman for the direction of the country. Atwood has said that the story was based entirely on events that had already occurred in the world. The Handmaid’s Tale is, of course, a work of fiction, but she based every cruel act on things women and racial and sexual minorities have had to endure.
Certainly, the first Trump administration laid the groundwork for some of what we are seeing today. His nominees for the Supreme Court have stripped away voting protections and abortion access. The tax cut widened the already wide gap between the haves and the have-nots. The administration emboldened groups to enact more state and local laws targeting the rights of LGBTQ citizens, especially trans citizens.
But as bad as things were eight years ago, watching it right now feels much more frightening.
And it all feels like it is becoming normal.
When the military opened fire on protesters in the show, I was reminded that Trump asked about shooting protesters, and the new head of the Department of Defense refused to answer if he would allow that.
When I watch women being fired simply for being women, I am reminded that Trump recently fired four-star general Charles Q. Brown, Jr. and Admiral Lisa Franchetti simply because they were “too woke,” which was code for “a black man and a woman.”
When lesbians in the show are called gender traitors and “things” that are an offense to God, I am reminded that Trump has called transgender citizens “sick” and “deranged,” and there have been multiple executive orders directly attacking trans Americans in addition to the firing of more than 100 LGBTQ intelligence officers.
When I see women being treated as children, I think about the tweet from the new undersecretary of the State Department, saying that competent white men must be in charge in order for things to work.
Watching The Handmaid’s Tale in 2017 was hard because it felt like something we could see coming but also something that could be prevented. Watching The Handmaid’s Tale in 2025 feels like watching something we are very much in the midst of right now.
All of the horrors aside, Season 1 has some exquisite storytelling and performances. Moss, Dowd, and Strahovski are all just phenomenal, and I desperately want to see the three of them in some really fun girls trip kind of movie after the trauma this show has put them through. The changes to the novel serve the story without detracting from what Atwood was saying. The visuals are impeccable and incredibly striking. And while there is violence in the first season, it feels as though it serves a purpose, not just for the purpose of traumatizing viewers (though it can certainly do that).
I don’t know if I can necessarily recommend watching or even rewatching The Handmaid’s Tale, but it uses the medium to its fullest potential, and that’s something we don’t often see.
And it serves as a stark reminder that even the unthinkable can become normal.
When this first came out I couldn’t watch past the first episode. Now I’m watching the horrors unfold in the real world. It’s too much.
When I watch it I think of the poor women in Afghanistan. Forced to wear burkas, unable to openly speak in the streets and not allowed to have jobs, be educated or leave the house unaccompanied.