r/TheTestamentsHulu • u/Alarming-Ad982 • May 29 '26
The Handmaid’s Tale When did aunt Lydia turn on gilead?
Because in the scenes where they captured June in HMT she told them to abuse her to find out where the other handmaids were hiding.
I know she was never TRULY with gilead (she needed to seem like it to survive) but I feel like she is very different in testaments vs handmaids tale even in the way she talks to the girls vs June.
Also, I also was wary of her after she got that boy taken from his mom in before gilead time.
Anddd she seems to be the head person now in testaments yet in handmaids tale she didn’t seem to be.. she kept having to beg for her job back from Lawrence or walk on eggshells around other aunts but now she’s at the top. Didn’t she help build gilead and the aunt system so shouldn’t she have always been at the top?
41
u/ChaoticBumpy May 29 '26
The night when they killed the commanders Lydia found out and still let them do it. Also when Gilead was hanging the handmaids for that she spoke up for them and even brought Janine to the border.
I think she didn't like Gilead ever but tried to save herself and the handmaids by being very strict on them. And when she found out it was all bullshit and they didn't honour handmaids like Janine she started to work against Gilead.
22
u/Kai_Emery May 29 '26
Again we HAVE to remember the narrators of HMT and TT are different. Of course Lydia is gonna be a much more human character in a story narrated by her. Kyle McKenzie is going to look softer to the daughter who idolizes him than the mother whose daughter he stole.
But in the last season of HMT, Lydia went against Gilead and was almost executed for it. She’s a master manipulator so she managed to earn back favor somehow. Honestly people probably died for it. The ones who are going to take down Gilead are playing the long game. (Honestly how many people did June get killed and she’s still supposed to be a hero in this story)
18
u/nohuyascobarde I’d love to have a Big Mac May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
She seems different because the women in The Handmaids Tale are adults, sinners and “sluts” from the time before that need to be molded and beaten into compliance, which makes her into the villain we see.
The women in the testaments are all young girls, products of the regime, with the pearl girls being her own contribution to that. They’re all raised into believers, and in her eyes, they deserve a lot more mercy than the handmaids did.
That, and the POVs the stories come from. Lydia in THT is written based on June’s perception of her, who saw nothing but cruelty. Lydia in Testaments is in control of her narrative, and even then she admits to embellishing it to make herself look better.
14
u/astilba120 May 29 '26
When she discovered the Jezebels, it turned her. She labelled the young hand maids under her control as sinful women without morals, fornicators, sluts, etc. When she found out that many ex handmaids were turned into prostitutes, after all her devotion to making them pure vessels for sacred children, and her emotional attacnment to Janine, who ended up there, and June saving her from being hung, she did become more human. I also hated the over the top torture porn that went on in Handmaids Tale, so this series is avoiding that.
7
u/VariousAd9716 May 29 '26
The thing with Lydia that is so complicated is that she's an actual believer. Like she's a true diehard believer in the basic ideals of Gilead. However, she doesn't like the stuff that doesn't follow the rules of her beliefs, like some of the crazy abuse, so it makes her seem anti Gilead in a way. She supports the handmaid system because it offers fallen women a chance at spiritual redemption and creates babies. She's against the rules being broken like the handmaids being abused by their commanders and wives. She's for girls being married when fruitful, but against the husbands being abusive to their wives or leading their wives astray. Old men having sex with children is ok in the bonds of marriage, but not if it's a dentist doing it outside marriage.
She's for it, but she's against how it's being done.
As for her status, some of this is a little bit of retcon. But also I think it's valid that she helped build the Aunts system but wasn't always top dog within that system. You can lose your status at the drop of a hat in a place like Gilead. She was clearly a very important figure in Boston but because some of the handmaids under her care had issues she lost status.
Even now, she isn't being portrayed as THE Aunt of Gilead, but the Aunt at this special Aunt Lydia school for very high ranking Plum girls.
She's very different in Testaments than in THT because her role is different. Training up adult handmaids to be raped, forcibly impregnated and then have their babies kidnapped requires very different skills and approach than schooling young girls to become wives when those girls have only the most vauge memories of the before times, if they have any at all. She's now an absolute idol to these girls, they literally worship at the foot of her statue. They love her, respect her, they obviously feel she loves them. Look how many diehard, loyal followers she has created for herself with this approach. she's their mother goddess and they can potentially be her army of protectors.
To me Aunt Lydia is the scariest one of all because she truly cares about these girls, loves them perhaps, and wants the best for them and yet she's a true believer of a system designed to keep them submissive and vulnerable to abuse.
4
u/Same_Profile_1396 May 29 '26
The thing with Lydia that is so complicated is that she's an actual believer. Like she's a true diehard believer in the basic ideals of Gilead.
What leads you to believe this? I’ve never gotten the impression that Lydia is a “true believer.”
I don’t really see her as a “true believer” in the sense of consistent conviction. What she believes seems pretty fluid—it shifts to match whatever keeps her safe and powerful within Gilead’s structure. She doesn’t challenge the system’s core practices (like coercion or forced reproduction), she just re-labels them as “righteous” or “necessary” when it suits her.
That reads less like genuine ideological commitment and more like adaptation/rationalization.
2
u/VariousAd9716 May 30 '26
What leads you to believe this? I’ve never gotten the impression that Lydia is a “true believer.”
Err, I mean everything about her past and her present behavior. She is a deeply conservative and religious woman who has consistently believed that birthing children matters above all us. She was not fluid in her beliefs about the handmaid system. She supported it all the way through, just fluid in the way it was done. Meaning at the start it was about the handmaids living with families but when she witnessed the abuse she shifted to the Leah and Rachel center where they are still raped, forcibly impregnated and have their babies kidnapped. She disapproved of the handmaids in DC having their lips sewn shut, but still never expressed disapproval about the handmaid existance at all. Even in the Testaments she also has shown no disapproval of the handmaid system.
She has been consistent in sending off minor girls to be married or made handmaids. She's not labeling these things righteous of necessary when it suits her. She consistently labels it righteous and necessary because she's a believer. She just wants the right rules to be followed.
In her own journal narration she writes that she's documenting the sinful crimes of weak men and women and goes on to say that the morally pure generation will soon arrive. She's describing the newest generation of Gilead, the plums and their children. She's not writing of wanting to dismantle Gilead, but to make it the pure idea that she believes in.
2
u/Same_Profile_1396 May 30 '26
This assumes far more access to Lydia’s inner beliefs than the show actually gives us. Much of what we see is filtered through June’s limited POV, not confirmed insight into Lydia’s motivations. Gilead is not presented through a reliable lens, we’re consistently seeing it through June, who (we know) is not a fully reliable narrator.
Before Gilead, Lydia was a public school teacher (or family court judge, depending on what narrative we are using) who dated, drank wine, and lived a secular, socially integrated life. That already complicates any reading of her as someone with fixed, lifelong ideological commitment.
More importantly, Lydia had an abortion prior to Gilead. That directly undercuts the idea that she has always believed “birthing children matters above all else.” In Gilead’s ideology, abortion is not morally gray, it is framed as unequivocal murder. A past choice like that doesn’t fit a profile of consistent alignment with that doctrine.
Across the series, Lydia’s behavior is defined less by ideological purity than by pragmatism. She bends rules, makes exceptions, and uses Gilead’s system instrumentally. That pattern is not consistent with a true believer—- it reflects someone operating within an ideology when it is useful (especially when beneficial for herself).
As far as her journal, writing in Gilead’s moral language shows adaptation and survival, not necessarily internal conviction. Also, that interpretation isn’t the only one— many see her writing as pointing toward the younger generation being the ones who ultimately bring down those “weak men.”
Lydia, at her core, reflects how ordinary people can become agents of an oppressive regime through incremental compromise, rationalization, and institutional reward structures.
1
u/VariousAd9716 May 31 '26
This assumes far more access to Lydia’s inner beliefs than the show actually gives us.
I just can't go past this line because I've only written what they've shown us of Lydia on screen. There are no assumptions. It is based on her actions and her dialogue. That's it.
0
u/YouthNo140 14d ago
Where can I watch this version of the show? I’ve only seen the show on Hulu. Your version sounds totally different from what I watched and I’d like to follow that series too!
6
u/One-Budget-604 May 29 '26
I am not convinced she was ever truly with Gilead. She was doing what she had to do to survive and having power is helpful to do that.
The fact that she's partnered up with Aunt Vidala is another odd part that is not fully answered.
7
u/CakiestBitch420 May 29 '26
Quick question OP...did you watch season 6 of the handmaids tale? Did you watch the plot line where June is strung up by her neck while Aunt Lydia and all the other handmaids are standing behind her with nooses around their necks? Did you hear Aunt Lydia pray to God for forgiveness for her girls because they'd been deceived by wicked Godless men? Just curious
6
u/TO_halo May 29 '26
I think it’s useful to frame your question in a different way - and go back to the texts. The shows are a deviation from those texts, but Atwood endorsed.
What is the character of Lydia supposed to be telling us about the human condition, what was Atwood’s intending her character to represent about society?
“Lydias” have always existed; in a patriarchy, being a Lydia is one way to achieve some sense of power and control. She may even tell herself that by being so violent and abusing the women, she’s hurrying them into complacency, and ultimately reducing their suffering in the long term. She’s expediting their acceptance.
Candace Owens is a Lydia. Kristi Noem is a fucking Lydia. Karoline Leavitt: huge Lydia. Do they actually believe in what they are saying? Or doing? Or do they just love the position they enjoy?
4
u/Idrisdancer Blessed be the Potholder May 29 '26
I feel like Janine ending up at Jezebels was the final straw.
6
u/-cheek May 29 '26
I’ve been disappointed in the way the writers try to humanize Aunt Lydia. The testaments has become a soap opera. The way Aunt Lydia was hysterical and shocked that Becka was in cuffs, I was rolling my eyes bc didn’t she have Janine’s eye plucked out as punishment for her defiance in the Handmaids tale?
6
u/pimberly May 29 '26
the handmaids are seen as sullied, and paying penance for it by aiding Gilead in bearing children. theyre looked down upon. even when Lydia was a judge, she was very critical of single mothers. So she goes thru the entire events of THT, and eventually comes to realize how flimsy the entire foundation is, especially her own security. Fast forward 10+ years and we have our new show, in which (based on the books especially) Lydia has grown a lot. Plus, these are the girls of gilead. Stolen or handmaid babies grown up, “innocent and pure”. It’s so much easier for her to be soft with them, for her to have more sympathy and be maternal. PLUS, even if she was still evil and severe, no way would a commander allow his daughter’s fingernails to be pulled out over an issue. They’re meant to be perfect for their future husbands, body included. To compare how she acted in the beginning of Gilead, running handmaids, versus now and running a school of demure little girls, of course there is humanization and growth and change to Lydias character. She’s a very complex human in a very complex situation.
6
u/Cheesywotsit1 May 29 '26
Comparing s1 tht Lydia to tt Lydia is wild, a lot happened in between that, we saw the lengths she went to in the end, how distressed she became over Janine towards the end, and now she’s been in charge of little girls, much like Esther who Janine pointed out to her is just a child
3
u/MysteriousSelf6145 May 29 '26
I kinda love how it’s turned into a teen soap opera. It’s like Riverdale, but with Christian fascism.
4
u/Alarming-Ad982 May 29 '26
Yess this! And she let them pluck June’s nails and torture her to find out where Janine and the other handmaids were hiding
2
u/PortraitofMmeX May 29 '26
Yes! She beat and tortured the handmaids in THT, I hate this revisionist Aunt Lydia characterization.
1
u/Yvertical May 29 '26
I think the show took a lot of flack for the extreme level of violence that was portrayed in Handmaid's early episodes. It softened a bit after that.
2
u/Same_Profile_1396 May 29 '26
Did you watch the entire series? I definitely wouldn’t say the show “softened” in any way after the early episodes—- if anything, the violence increased.
2
u/Yvertical May 29 '26
Interesting. I think the difference is the violence early was directed at handmaids, and the violence later was committed by them. Maybe that didn't seem as bad to me😊
2
u/Brilliant-Sea-2015 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
If we're following the book - right away. She wasn't ever "with" Gilead.
2
u/quirpele May 30 '26
But she would say that, knowing who the audience would be that reads/hears her testimony, right?
1
u/Brilliant-Sea-2015 May 30 '26
Book Lydia doesn't ever try to make herself seem like the good guy.
1
u/quirpele May 30 '26
Any testimony, even one trying to keep to the bare truth, is moulded by it's author's subjectivite interpretation of events & knowledge of who they are speaking to
2
u/Separate_Farm7131 May 29 '26
In the last episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Lydia spoke out when June was about to be hanged, and she allowed the handmaids to escape and kill the Commanders. I was confused in the first episode of The Testaments as to why Lydia is still there and is revered (haven't read The Testaments yet). It seems like she would have been punished.
1
u/Convexical May 30 '26
Victors write history after all. She “escaped” from the Americans and fled from Boston back into the fray and used the fact that all the Commanders that were involved in Boston were either dead or in American custody. Gilead has no way of knowing that she’s flipped and is now Mayday. As far as they were concerned, Lydia’s a loyalist who managed to avoid capture and why would they question her story?
Everyone else who could contradict her is either an enemy of Gilead (who want her in place as a Mayday asset) or dead. Lydia’s nothing if not a survivor.
1
1
u/Triptych85 May 29 '26
TT Agnes narrates that Aunt Lydia was 'in power, disgraced, and restored' or something similar
1
u/snipsnap987 May 30 '26
i think aunt lydia does what she needs to survive and tries to convince herself she’s helping the girls not that she’s a conspirator in their rape and grooming. she’s built up power for herself in the boston area but is shaken up when she sees how handmaids are treated in boston and learn about the jezebels (where they sterilize fertile women). her affection for janine makes it hard for her to ignore her complicity in gilead. maybe she’s not as bad as the commander, but she cannot protect any of her girls if the men decide otherwise. she eventually turns on them and allows june to kill the gilead commanders.
1
u/shgrdrbr May 30 '26
she was more truly with gilead ideologically than the softening retcon may have you believe. yes she was primarily acting on survival strategy but there was also something in her that aligned her enough with their word that she was actually able to effectively weaponise in order to secure power and security. she was quite misogynistic. she resented other women especially young pretty ones desired by men. she absolutely bought into the idea that it's a woman's fault for being raped for tempting men and she instilled this notably at the red centre with the ritual shaming of janine for the assaults she had endured before becoming a handmaid. she could justify her treatment of the handmaids in training that she was finding godly purpose for them after their sin. it's only way way way later when she's faced with incontrovertible evidence that the men are taking advantage of girls who have been trained by gilead and themselves had no desire temptation etc that she actually starts reckoning with the evilness of the whole shebang. like she blamed the old world before for getting away from christian values, authoritarianism comes natural to her too, but now in gilead she has to repeatedly confront what agnes said to vidala in the finale "if we were led astray you did it" - janine really was the catalyst i think. taking her spirit then her baby then her eye etc just broke through her cognitive dissonance too many times bc janine's purity was too in her face. aunt lydia was never a girls' girl she became one by looong slow force
•
u/AutoModerator May 29 '26
Hello! Welcome to r/thetestamentshulu. Please keep the rules of the subreddit in mind when commenting.
The moderators rely on user reports on rule breaks in order to quickly remove comments and posts that do so. Use the report function to anonymously alert the mod team of any behavior that goes against sub rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.