The scene echoed a moment in Season 1 when Lydia tased a pregnant June for quoting a Bible passage in protest. Aunt Lydia has cut out handmaids' eyes and tongues and, as a form of ritualized punishment, chained one of them to a gas stove so her arm could be burned.
Aunt Lydia's asserts that Handmaids should always use the front door as befits their honored status. This subtly indoctrinates the Handmaids into thinking their lives are better and more worthwhile than before, one of many examples of Aunt Lydia's master manipulation.
Aunt Lydia is one of the least likable faces of the Gileadean regime. Armed with a cattle prod, she is responsible for some of the most misogynistic statements in the novel, and also some of the most extreme distortions of religious ideas.
Type of Villain
Aunt Lydia trying to brainwash June. Aunt Lydia is a major antagonist in Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale and the TV adaptation of the novel.
“The Testaments” is set 15 years after the events of the first book (which ends nearly beat-for-beat the way Season 1 of the series does). In the story, we learn that Lydia had a direct hand in the fall of Gilead, supplying critical information to to the resistance organization Mayday.
She was detained, tortured, deprived of food, light, and answers, and eventually given a choice: Cooperate or face the consequences. Lydia sees herself as someone who did what she had to do in order to survive. Eventually, she becomes integral to the fall of Gilead.
Lydia sees Janine as a good girl who is unfairly judged and misunderstood. This is the first inclination of a softening heart that audiences preview for Aunt Lydia.
The childbirth scene is primal and intimate and prompts the women to confess their secrets: June tells Serena that she didn't kill her when she had the chance because she simply didn't want to, and Serena realizes she has been forced into essentially being a handmaid in the Wheelers house and begs June to take her baby ...
After publicly beating Janine, Lydia excuses herself from the company of the commanders, their wives and all the other witnesses in attendance. Alone in a quiet corner of the Putnam household, Lydia cries to herself, overwhelmed with the enormity of her own actions.
In theory, the rings are removed so she can drink and eat. In reality, even Gilead wouldn't do this - they need the women at peak health. Can't risk someone choking on phlegm or suffocating because you want to keep her quiet.
This is ironic because the Aunts - instead of being protective, familiar allies - are some of the fiercest supporters of Gilead and commit the most atrocious acts of violence. In The Handmaid's Tale, Aunt Lydia is arguably the character who is responsible for the most misogynistic beliefs and horrific punishments.
Blue is often associated with the Virgin Mary and purity and serenity - it used to be considered a very feminine colour, so perhaps that is why the Wives wear it. Red is considered the colour of life, due to the association with blood, and Handmaids are all about bringing forth new life and fertility.
Following Aunt Lydia's stabbing, Emily was last seen on screen escaping Gilead in a major storyline twist. The handmaid helped June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) take her daughter Holly out of Gilead and into Canada, but at the last moment, June chose to stay behind and ushered Emily off.
“Gender traitor” is the slur used for homosexuals in Gilead, but women like Serena Joy and Aunt Lydia are gender traitors in the most literal sense.
Revealing herself as Mayday's mole, Aunt Lydia enlists the three young women to smuggle incriminating information about Gilead's elite into Canada. Nicole is tasked with carrying the files inside a microdot on her cruciform tattoo.
Fred Waterford is the main antagonist of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, its film adaptation, and its Hulu Network adaptation.
She was raped and her children were taken away from her, as is the practice for handmaids in Gilead, but she was also told the rape was her fault, she had her eye plucked out in an attempt at Biblical justice, she suffered breakdowns, and most recently, she was poisoned by a young handmaid she took under her wing ( ...
Williams and Alexis Ohanian shared their pregnancy publicly at the Met Gala. Serena Williams announced her second pregnancy publicly at the 2023 Met Gala. Now, she is sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how she and her husband Alexis Ohanian told their daughter, Olympia.
Noah Waterford is a character in The Handmaid's Tale. He is the son of Serena Waterford and Fred Waterford.
No. Sex is only performed to reproduce and thats what the Handmaids are for.
The second episode of the season saw Esther poisoning Janine with chocolates and telling an unaware Janine after she ate them that she wanted to hurt Janine for her role in Esther's handmaid life.
After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an “Unbaby”—and there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child.
Obsessed. June is having a restless night and thinks about Serena, prompting her to bury her gun under a tree. During a game night with Luke, Moira, and Rita, she spots the Scrabble box and flashes back to when she played with Fred. But again, Serena comes back in mind.
Aunt Lydia is one of Gilead's enforcers, one of a tribe of older, infertile women whose job it is to train, discipline, punish and, if necessary, torture and kill the fertile handmaids.
Handmaids who refuse to comply are punished both with physical torture (at one point June is locked in a box) and with spiritual abuse (Aunt Lydia tells her that it is God's will for her to be punished in this way). June knows that Aunt Lydia's “holy” words are hollow.