The first trailer for The Handmaid’s Tale season 2 brings audiences back to the horrifying universe of Gilead. The dialogue-free video is set to the chilling Malia J cover of Buffalo Springfield‘s “For What It’s Worth” and briefly reintroduces the dystopian world.
In the minute-long trailer, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) is now wearing a muzzle and her full Handmaid uniform. Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) is still up to his dark ways, approaching a bloody man in the woods, gun in hand.
Audiences do get one look at a happier moment as June and Luke (O. T. Fagbenle) share time with their daughter Hannah. This shows that season 2 will continue the flashback setup it used during season one. Luke is also with Moira (Samira Wiley) in Canada and June finally meets up with the father of her unborn child, Nick (Max Minghella).
As for the season 2 tone, showrunner Bruce Miller says it won’t shy away from the real-life parallels going on in the world with President Donald Trump.
“You can’t avoid the influence. Our writing staff is a news junky bunch, very politically active and thinking a lot about politics, very engaged in the world. Most of [the writing staff] has children and they think about what the world will mean for them,” Miller told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Monday, January 18. “It’s a big influence on the way you think about everything in your life, which definitely bleeds into the story-making process. But America has its own issues that don’t necessarily align with the issues at play in Gilead, or even a pre-Gilead America. You have to be careful not to draw too many parallels. Being worried and having lots of anxiety and having a government that’s trying to split us into groups and pit one of us against each other, those are things that take place both in Gilead and in here [in our country]. But the harder part is trying not to draw too many direct parallels, and be happy with the parallels that do exist without trying to create other ones out of thin air.”
The Handmaid’s TaleTake Five/Hulu
This season will also bring up parallels between the #MeToo movement going on in Hollywood and the battle of gender power.
“Inevitably, when you do a show where one of the big aspects is a very, very sharp divide between the role of men and women and the power structure, you can’t help but be pushing up against the same thoughts and ideas that are going on behind this movement. It would be asinine not to. Relationships between men and women are fascinating and complicated, and have made great television for years, and great theater for about 5,000 years. You would be dumb not to see the parallels between that world and this world,” he said.
Miller admitted that while the show is female-driven, it is “run by a man,” so there have been many conversations internally at Hulu. “We’re constantly trying to create a safer and more comfortable work place, and this has opened our eyes to how unsafe and uncomfortable it can be for some people,” he said. “We’ve redoubled our efforts to make sure we have an environment where people can talk about this stuff, so that if there are problems, we can solve them, so they aren’t hidden from view for years and years and people have to suffer. The only way to solve anything is for people to talk about the problems.”
The Handmaid’s Tale returns to Hulu on Wednesday, April 25.
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