The Handmaid s Tale started out as the tale of one handmaid June, who became Offred and gradually widened its view to include more of the people in her orbit. Eventually, we learned more about the other characters the Marthas, the Aunts, the Wives, the Commanders as well as what their lives had been like pre-Gilead. This showed us how the theocratic state came to be, and what events had shaped the main characters assigned roles within it.
For the first few seasons, the Hulu series had only one of Margaret Atwood s books to use as a guide. But the author s 2019 sequel,