‘The Testaments’ Reveals More of Aunt Lydia’s Harrowing Backstory
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Gizmodo
Latest In The Handmaid’s Tale, Aunt Lydia—played to Emmy-winning perfection by Ann Dowd—was one of the show’s most complicated and infuriating characters. We first met her as the cruel director of the Red Center, where freshly detained Handmaids learned the grim details of what their lives in Gilead would entail. But over the course of The Handmaid’s Tale, Lydia gained more complexity—a flashback episode in season three gave some insight into her particular thought process—and, as the show neared its finale, she also gained something resembling a conscience. When sequel series The Testaments kicked off, we saw that Aunt Lydia had somehow moved past all the Handmaid’s Tale chaos and her own near-death encounter and is now seemingly more powerful than ever: she’s running the Aunt Lydia Premarital Preparatory Academy, where upper-class Gilead girls learn how to be pious, tractable wives.
Published: April 29, 2026 5:15 pm
Source: Gizmodo — Read original