History Series / TheHandmaidsTale

** Season 4 introduces the lavender-clad "Plums", young women in training to be Wives who are either attending or have completed their domestic arts education. The color is halfway between the soft pink of their childhood and the vivid blue of their future, but [[spoiler: the audience is introduced to the idea fully as Hannah stands at Serena's side, creating an air of PurpleIsPowerful and GracefulLadiesLikePurple.]]

* ArmorPiercingResponse: Being one of the most, if not ''the'' most eloquent character on the show, Serena's occasional run-ins with this trope tend to be the kindling to moments of character development (or at least humility, however temporary).

** Handmaids wear red, symbolizing menstrual blood, and serving as a ShoutOut to Mary Magdalene.
** Wives wear blue as a ShoutOut to the Virgin Mary.

* ArmorPiercingResponse: While attending a summit in Canada with Commander Waterford, Serena is confronted by a representative of the American Government in Exile, who offers her a chance to escape Gilead and even have her own child. Serena makes a weak attempt to counter him.

* BrokenAesop: June has her child baptized into the Catholic Church, which has been implicated in major sexual abuse, undermining her opposition to the similarly sexually abusive Gilead. InUniverse, her own mother points this out. To be fair, the Church is portrayed as violently persecuted under the Gilead regime, and June probably also does this because her father was Catholic (it's possible she was raised as one too).

** The beginning of Season 3 implies that June is getting ready to start her own resistance cell of Mayday, personally hand-selecting women, who were going to be sent to the colonies, to instead be spared to become Marthas, based on their individual skills. There is also a heavy implication that these Marthas are going to be either part of/connected to Lawrence's house staff. It turns out that, offscreen, these women were actually distributed to jobs throughout Boston, and June never tries to use them for help. One of them later appears and helps June, but this is nothing but pure luck, and none of the others come into play.

* AcceptableFeminineGoalsAndTraits: Gilead enforces the view that the men are meant to be the breadwinners of the household, while women the caretakers. A lot of the [[StayInTheKitchen traditional housework]] is reserved for lower class women, and the wives have female domestic servants (known as Marthas in Gilead) to do it for them. Wives are encouraged to knit as a pasttime, and young girls are raised learning how to knit, embroider, make preserves, etc.

* AdaptationalDiversity: The novel ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' has an all-white cast because the Gilead regime was explicitly white supremacist, and had all black people ReleasedToElsewhere; the [[Series/TheHandmaidsTale Hulu adaptation]] dispenses with this aspect in order to avoid MonochromeCasting. A number of significant roles (Moira, Luke and his and June's daughter Hannah, Nick, Rita) are played by actors of color; there are also actors of color among the smaller roles and extras, especially the Handmaids and Marthas. In addition, Ofglen (named Emily in the series) is shown to be a lesbian, which isn't mentioned in the book (although Moira being a lesbian is book canon). We also see some black Commanders, Wives, and Guardians (though in the background mostly).
* AdaptationalHeroism: At least in comparison to the original book, courtesy of character expansion. Serena Joy remains a villain in the original novel, while in the Hulu series she's a victim of a HeelFaceRevolvingDoor. She shows genuine pity for Offred and even helps her a few times, but then reverts to her old ways of abusing her not long after. [[spoiler:By Season 3, it's clear that she's now solely motivated by "her" daughter, i.e. the child she forced June to conceive with Nick. She betrays Fred to the Canadian police in exchange for visitation with her, but at the expense of forcing June to act in Gilead's campaign to get baby Nichole back.]]
* AdaptationalJobChange: In the original novel, Serena was a former televangelist, but in the series she is a former conservative political pundit and author in the vein of Ann Coulter or Tomi Lahren.
* AdaptationalSexuality: Ofglen is a lesbian here, and was in a same-sex marriage. Her sexuality is not mentioned in the book at all.

** When oppressors like Aunt Lydia, Serena Joy, and even Commander Waterford show a semblance of empathy or kindness, it's hollow in the long-run.

** For sneaking into the [=MacKenzies=]' house to see Hannah, June's feet are beaten bloody and she's forced to scrub the floor without interval afterward. She doesn't care though.

* AnArmAndALeg: One of the punishments enforced by Gilead is removal of limbs. Women reading is punishable by them losing a finger, then a hand if they continue. [[spoiler:Even a Wife like Serena is not spared this when she reads the Bible in front of a court of Commanders. Warren Putnam also undergoes the surgical removal of his hand as punishment for his sins. Note that Serena is implied to have had her finger removed painfully, while Putnam's amputation was done while he was medically unconcious, further emphasizing Gilead's double standard in their punishments.]]

* AsTheGoodBookSays: The fundamentalist regime cites the Bible as the source of all of their laws (though as Offred recognizes, they do it [[QuoteMine quite selectively]]), and authoratative Gilead figures like Commanders and Marthas often quote Bible verses as explanations for their deeds. Fred cites a passage from the Bible shortly before he [[spoiler:whips Serena Joy for reading, as though he ''has to.'']]

* ButNotTooEvil: In the original book, Gilead was racist, sexist, militarist and generally they fulfilled every possible negative stereotype of the RightWingMilitiaFanatic to the maximum extent. This adaptation actually ''amplifies'' the regime's misogyny, or at least the attention it receives, but seemingly omits the racism, even showing the system actively promoting higher black birthrates. Unlike the above examples (''The Handmaid's Tale'' being a million miles from kid friendly in the first place) this change was made for pragmatic reasons, as the makers reasoned that a society built around plummeting birth rates could ill afford to deport fertile women based on racial grounds. They also have black people in their ranks, and are fine with interracial marriage (this is also practical in that it allows the show to avoid MonochromeCasting). Still, a disproportionate number of black people are in low ranking positions and almost all Commanders are white. Remember this is in Boston, a city which is about 25% black. It indicates that black members of the regime are in a secondary position overall. The only explicit racism is one white Commander and Wife who refuse to have Handmaids of color though.

** The idea that the Handmaids were first enslaved for "serious" crimes, then less and less serious, until they could be taken for any little thing, echoed the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum Magdalene laundries]], where women who got pregnant out of wedlock were sheltered and used for labor. The practice perhaps began as punishment for prostitutes, but came to include pretty much any woman that was "improper". In some cases, their children were adopted to other families. One of the last Magdalene laundries was located in Waterford, Ireland - Fred's surname thus seems to be more than mere coincidence.

** Despite Gilead being a misogynistic hellhole, women like [[FemaleMisogynist the Wives and Aunts are complicit in female exploitation and oppression]]. This doesn't sound too ridiculous with real-life reports of women ''willingly'' flying to Syria in order to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, drawn with promises of status and purpose to their lives even if it boils down to StayInTheKitchen much like Gilead. They also approve the sexual enslavement of "infidel" women like Yazidis and Christians just like Handmaids are picked from "women that lost their way" (adulterers, prostitutes, lesbians etc), with one infamous ISIL pamphlet justifying this activity being allegedly written by a jihadi bride similar to Serena Joy's book "A Woman's Place", which served as inspiration for the Sons of Jacob to shut out women from any positions of authority or being in control of their lives..

* TheEiffelTowerEffect: As with seemingly anything taking place in Boston these days, there's the obligatory scene at Fenway Park. However this scene is significantly more disturbing than watching the Red Sox — it's used in a mock hanging to punish defiant Handmaids.

** Serena Joy's occasional glances at Offred and the manner in which she tries to de-stress after the Ceremony suggest she might have a smidge of empathy of Offred's plight, but is too stuck in egotistical delusion to even acknowledge it.

* FeministFantasy: Not only is the main character a woman along with most supporting characters too, the series revolves around women's issues. Most particularly is bodily autonomy, since the Handmaids are {{breeding slave}}s, though also other rights which women have gained (at least in part of the world). They struggle both to resist and survive under a misogynist regime that's horrifically oppressive, in which the smallest freedom is denied for them. Given that many issues in the series have come back into prominence with a number of US laws curtailing many reproductive rights, actual American feminists have even taken up the Handmaid motif to protest while wearing their garb.

** Luke tries to hold off the soldiers while June and Hannah run, with just a revolver. He's quickly shot, but manages to survive and escape into Canada.
** The Season 3 finale has [[spoiler: June and the Mayday women distract the Guardians from the children who they're rescuing by throwing stones at them, resulting in some being shot. June leads a Guardian into the forest after this by running from him, resulting in her being shot by him in the back. She plays dead, and shoots him when he comes to check her non-fatally, forcing him to radio the all clear, then shooting him dead. Her Handmaid friends take her away for help on the next day.]]

* IllegalReligion: Being Catholic or Jewish is apparently a capital crime now. We see a priest hanged from the Wall, along with a man wearing a Star of David symbol. Catholic cathedrals are demolished. Later on, June hides out with a family of closeted Muslims, finding they hid their Quran and prayer rug while they make a point of attending church to publicly fit in. [[spoiler: The man, Omar, is hanged with the green crescent and star symbol of Islam, indicating this is illegal as well.]] We can surmise all religions but the official one of the regime are banned and punishable by death.

** Fred finds out that June had a past with Moira, and arranges for them to meet in Jezebel's when he visits again, thinking they were lesbian lovers. June corrects this, though, and Fred lets them have some time together anyway (he seems oddly okay with the idea they were lovers in the past, despite echoing the usual anti-gay stance of the regime by calling Moira "degenerate").
** Eden thinks that her new husband [[spoiler: Nick]] is a "gender traitor" because he won't have sex with her; however, this is actually because he has problems sleeping with a 15 year old, and is in love with June.
* TheMole: Nick is an Eye of God (i.e. part of Gilead's intelligence service), but also with the resistance. Joseph Lawrence is a Commander, though he too gets revealed to be working with them. The first sign he's a good guy is his [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil refusal to rape Emily]] as part of the Ceremony. However, he still acts harshly to June (especially while his fellow Commanders are there), though it may be an example of GoodIsNotNice or so they won't get suspicious.

** When [[spoiler:Emily]] meets a Wife who was sent to the Colonies, the Wife assumes that she was sent there for that reason, and tells her that she opposed the "university purges" because "getting an education doesn't make you a sinner." [[spoiler:Emily]] doesn't correct her assumption until [[spoiler:right before she kills the Wife]].

** Climate change is also mentioned to be very rampant in the series to the point that there is no snow in Boston now during the winter. The Gilead regime took steps to combat climate change, from limiting their industrial production to war production to cutting carbon emissions by 78% in three years, and establishing an "entirely organic" agricultural model. This is more or less to do with the fact that climate change can have a negative impact on fertility rates and Gilead hopes reducing the climate change effects can boost their fertility rates. In fact, it's said that the widespread sterility is a result of "environmental toxins", making this a top priority.

** Emily seems to have experienced something of one, following the trauma of undergoing clitoridectomy; she is shown to be capable of spontaneous acts of violence against authority figures in Gilead (e.g. her "joyride," poisoning the Wife in the Colonies, kicking a Commander in the groin after his heart attack, and brutally beating Aunt Lydia).
** June undergoes this more than once, although she does recover both times. In season 2, she has a breakdown after she's captured after nearly escaping and discovers that both her fellow Handmaids and the family who helped her are being severely punished; she begins to get better when she realizes her baby has managed to survive both a lot of bleeding and a (possible; it's ambiguous) suicide attempt. In season 3, she's made to remain in the hospital keeping vigil over a brain-dead Natalie/Ofmatthew, who is being kept on life support until her baby can be delivered, and it's clearly taking a massive toll on her mental health. [[spoiler:By the end of the episode she is doing better, and volunteers to stay at the hospital with Natalie until she dies.]]

** The concept of June recording secret messages onto a cassette tape disguised as a music mixtape was the main framing device of the novel, but wasn't utilized in the first or second season of the show. June finally uses a cassette recorder to send a message to Luke in the guise of a mixtape in the third season.

* SexualExtortion: In "Milk", the rebel leader who June meets makes it clear he'll only let her and Janine stay if one of them pleasures him. June tries to give him a blowjob but can't go through with it. Janine later does instead, offscreen.

* ShelteredAristocrat: Pretty much all the Gilead wives are varying shades of this. Serena is probably the most worldly, and she easily comes off as dense and childish for much of the story. Seeing one former wife explain to Emily she's in the colony for 'love' is like a hen complaining to a wolf about having access to too much food in the hen house.

** In "[[Recap/TheHandmaidsTaleS3E10BearWitness Bear Witness]]" after Lawrence allows use of his truck for June's extraction scheme she sees the boatload of muffins from Marthas willing to participate.

* TheSocialDarwinist: In a meeting with the other Commanders, Joseph Lawrence cites Darwin himself in ''The Descent of Man'' to implicitly argue that women are inferior. Oddly, despite them being part of an ultra-fundamentalist Christian regime, no one appears to have a problem with this (most American fundamentalists completely reject evolution, and view Darwin as evil). It's unclear if he really believes this, or is just making himself look good for the rest so they won't grow suspicious. [[spoiler: Subverted though considering the book is about female superiority over males in the mate selection process. It was also edited by Darwin's wife and daughter before publishing (this may have been an inside joke from Lawrence).]]

** A curious example with [[spoiler:June's husband Luke; in the novel his fate was left ambiguous, with Offred uncertain if he was alive or dead. In the series he survives his wife and daughter's capture, and manages to get to Canada.]]

** This may have been enforced by Canada during the Waterford's visit in Season 2. No active guards were present around the Waterfords, considering the visitors were responsible for murdering and enslaving hundreds of thousands of relatives of people who were forced to flee up north. Plus Luke being allowed to nearly an arm's length of the man who has enslaved and is systematically raping his wife. On the other hand, perhaps that's what the Canadians wanted, eh?

* TraumaCongaLine: This is naturally a part of the series. June is fired, stripped of rights, has to flee along with her family, separated from her husband, then her daughter, ritually raped each month, escapes, gets captured again etc. Of course this also goes for other characters as well, like Luke and her fellow Handmaids.

** [[spoiler:Commander Waterford's funeral]] is being broadcast around the world. Serena parades Hannah and even gives her a forehead kiss in front of the cameras, knowing June will bee watching.

** In the first episode, “Offred,” Aunt Lydia is training the Handmaids to endure monthly ceremonial rape. Then during the Particution, she says, “the penalty for rape is death.”

* KillEmAll: The regime deals with protesters by just shooting them.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: June wrestles with the agony of deciding which five women will survive the planned purge to the colonies. She picks a solid crew to assemble a resistance cell. Halfway through Season 3, they have yet to be introduced or even ''mentioned''.

** Episode six of season one (“A Woman’s Place”) reveals that Gilead is planning to sex traffic fertile Handmaids to Mexico as part of a “trade deal.” To top that off, it also seems that at least some of the Mexican dignitaries were spies for the American Government in Exile. So far, nothing came of these story threads and the trade deal has not been mentioned since, not even in the episode where the Waterfords visit Canada to discuss Gilead’s international relations.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Thankfully played straight. [[spoiler: Gilead has a habit of hanging dead bodies everywhere. Hanging bodies don’t stay nearly that clean. Once all the bodily functions shut down, there’s a lot of leaking. Later, comes something known as the “seaweed effect.”]]

* BodyHorror: Be female and read a book; that’s a finger amputation. Talk too much, and Gilead will pluck out the person’s eye. Infidelity is handled with getting a hand amputated at best (usually death). Too important to kill, but still causing trouble? Genital mutilation. Standing up for someone results in tongue removal or getting your mouth literally wired shut. Then there’s DC. [[spoiler: Every Handmaid’s mouth (as well as several Marthas' mouths) is wired shut.]]

* DidntThinkThisThrough: This happens a ton with the people who wanted Gilead - the flaws continue to be revealed as time goes on. They all seemed to assume they would be the exception to the rules. It hardly ever turns out that way, and in the instances where its true, it doesn’t stay that way.

* TheEiffelTowerEffect: As with seemingly anything taking place in Boston these days, there’s the obligatory scene at Fenway Park. However this scene is significantly more disturbing than watching the Red Sox — it's used in a mock hanging to punish defiant Handmaids.

* {{Fetish}}: The Handmaids are this to some of the Commanders (like Fred) and also customers at the brothel (they have prostitutes dressed as them there). Plus women kissing each other, and many forms of dress from the old days which we see them wear too. There’s also a brief moment where a man kisses a woman’s arm stump, implying he’s fetishizing her amputated limb.

** In the Season 4 episode “Milk”, flashbacks to Janine’s life before Gilead zig-zag this trope. A few years after having her son, Caleb, she got pregnant again by accident. She planned to have an abortion, being as she was an unmarried diner waitress, the father was her on-again-off-again boyfriend who was implied to not be ready, and she would not be able to raise two children alone. However, when she went to a crisis pregnancy center, the person who met with her was a HolierThanThou woman who twisted the perspective to make abortion sound worse than it was. She told Janine about the process for vacuum aspiration, leaving out that Janine is too early for that, and adds that she can become infertile if the process fails. Spooked by this, Janine decides to get a second opinion; this time, an actual doctor is completely honest with her and prescribes her abortion pills for her early stages. She also tells Janine straightforwardly that crisis pregnancy centers actually manipulate women to keep unwanted pregnancies. Imagine how shocked and conflicted Janine must feel after this.

* MetaphoricalMarriage: Kit and Fiona are two women sent to work themselves to death to colonies and they are in a relationship. Kit is very weak, on the brink of death, and Janine organizes a wedding for them. The ceremony is presided over by another prisoner, Sally, a female rabbi. It is their last moment to find happiness before Kit dies. The next morning Kit’s body is buried in the graveyard. Gilead ruled all same-sex marriages void and the state certainly doesn't recognize such unions as legal, but the wedding ceremony was very meaningful to all who witnessed it.

** The brief subplot of a Martha being accidentally shot by one of the Guardians occurred in the original novel, but wasn’t featured in the first season, which was largely based on it. It was later utilized, in a slightly different context, during the second season.

* ShelteredAristocrat: Pretty much all the Gilead wives are varying shades of this. Serena is probably the most worldly, and she easily comes off as dense and childish for much of the story. Seeing one former wife explain to Emily she’s in the colony for ‘love’ is like a hen complaining to a wolf about having access to too much food in the hen house.

* TheSocialDarwinist: In a meeting with the other Commanders, Joseph Lawrence cites Darwin himself in ''The Descent of Man'' to implicitly argue that women are inferior. Oddly, despite them being part of an ultra-fundamentalist Christian regime, no one appears to have a problem with this (most American fundamentalists completely reject evolution, and view Darwin as evil). It's unclear if he really believes this, or is just making himself look good for the rest so they won't grow suspicious. [[spoiler: Subverted though considering the book is about female superiority over males in the mate selection process. It was also edited by Darwin’s wife and daughter before publishing (this may have been an inside joke from Lawrence).]]

** This may have been enforced by Canada during the Waterford's visit in Season 2. No active guards were present around the Waterfords, considering the visitors were responsible for murdering and enslaving hundreds of thousands of relatives of people who were forced to flee up north. Plus Luke being allowed to nearly an arm’s length of the man who has enslaved and is systematically raping his wife. On the other hand, perhaps that’s what the Canadians wanted, eh?

* WellIntentionedExtremist: One could put forth a very good argument that Aunt Lydia is one of these. The other two primary antagonists, Fred and Serena Joy, are power-hungry and often self-serving. Aunt Lydia on the other hand just seems to thoroughly believe in the ideals of Gilead and in her own very twisted way believes everything she is doing is in everybody’s best interest.

->''"There’s still going to be a lot of pain."''

* AdultFear:
** Trying to escape an oppressive regime with your family, then having your husband shot [[spoiler: although he survives]], daughter taken, and being made into a sex slave... Before that, having your baby kidnapped in the hospital.
** Handmaids are forced to bear children, but have no legal rights to those children. Janine is clearly heartbroken over the fact that her newborn daughter was handed over to her Commander's Wife immediately after birth.
** The flashback of the regime taking over is disturbing. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, all the women find that their rights have been cut off; losing access to their money, being fired from their jobs, being monitored by heavily armed men.
** Finding out a friend and colleague is not only dead, but murdered because he was gay, while knowing you may be next as a lesbian. Then being forcibly separated from your family when trying to flee into Canada, since the state has declared your marriage invalid and is keeping you as a breeding slave.
** Even if you do manage to escape and find refuge in Canada, there is still the possibility of getting separated from your family members as Luke and the other American refugees proved when they held up pictures of their loved ones trapped in Gilead in the protest against the Waterfords. Made even worse when you either don't know what happened to said loved ones, know that they've been killed, or know that they're alive but also exactly what they're being subjected to (such as a female friend or family member of yours being made a Handmaid and forced into ritualistic rape), are powerless to stop it, and all you can do is wait to be reunited with those who you may very well never see again.
** In the later seasons, extradition back to Gilead becomes a central fear. Imagine surviving getting shot at, nearly frozen to death in a river, possibly a few body parts removed, being forced to kill during your escape, only to potentially be sent back.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Moira and June are an adult version. They're so close, a couple people mistake them for lovers (though Moira being gay probably adds to the confusion). They even tell each other "I love you" more than once. However, they're just very close friends.

* SocietyMarchesOn:
** The series appears to have done away with the blatant white supremacy in Gilead as described in the novel. Not only did they want babies, but the goal was also ''white'' babies, with black people being "removed to North Dakota" (quite possibly [[ReleasedToElsewhere getting killed there]]). In the novel, [[RaceLift Moira was white]], while African-American actress Samira Wiley plays her in the series. We see some photos of black Commanders and Wives in the clinic. No one thinks anything is odd when Moira impersonates an Aunt, either. There are some black men among the Guardians and common workers too. There are some Commanders and Wives who do explicitly want white babies (Aunt Lydia mentions a couple who explicitly requested not to have a Handmaid of color) but it's less institutionalized than in the novel.
** The series also (so far) removes the criticism of radical feminists present in the original book. In the book, Offred's mother was a radical second-wave feminist who believed that all men were sexist and also that pornography should be banned. In the feminist community there was fierce debate about that point of view; however, nowadays it's more of a fringe belief. Additionally, since the series received a SettingUpdate to the 21st century, it wouldn't make sense temporally for Offred's mother to be a second-wave feminist (since the second wave started in the 60s, and at this point, Offred's mother could've been ''born'' in the early 60s[[note]]Her actress, Creator/CherryJones, was born in 1956[[/note]]). When she's finally introduced in season 2, she is a feminist (who takes Offred to feminist rallies as a child), but not an extremist like her book counterpart.
** Serena Joy's pre-Gilead profession is changed from ultra-conservative televangelist to BlondeRepublicanSexKitten political pundit/author (in the vein of Tomi Lahren or Ann Coulter), reflecting the decline in the relevance of televangelism during the 2010s.

* MixedAncestry: Offred's husband Luke appears to be mixed race in this series (as is their daughter Hannah).

* NotSoDifferent: June and Janine in "Milk" are sheltered with a resistance group fighting Gilead in Chicago. Their leader expresses disgust at them being sex slaves... right before extorting sex from them, saying this is the price of staying with his group.

** When oppressors like Aunt Lydia, Serena Joy, and even Commander Waterford show semblance of empathy or kindness, it's hollow in the long-run.

!!''The Handmaid's Tale'' contains examples of:

Major supporting roles include Creator/SamiraWiley as Moira, Creator/JosephFiennes as Fred, Creator/YvonneStrahovski as Serena Joy, and Creator/AlexisBledel as Emily.

* RealityEnsues: Nobody is spared from this. The female resistance within Gilead is constantly confronting false starts and setbacks. Those who escape, find themselves going through an extensive refugee process in another country. The wives of Gilead find themselves missing the freedoms they helped remove. The male elites have systematically angered everyone outside their narrow demographic, effectively painting massive targets on their backs for all non-state sanctioned acts of violence.

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: This appears to be a hallmark of Gilead's security forces. Multiple episodes appear to have established them as quite incompetent, considering they allowed a suicide bomber to attack the Commanders in Season 2. Not to mention that they allowed June to escape twice in Season 4, once from the van carrying June to a Magdalene Colony, and the second on a boat tryitng to return to Canada, with ''June in front of them the entire time''. See SwissCheeseSecurity for other instances of this incompetence on a broader scale.