This show first hit screens in 2017, based on a book by Margaret Atwood. Gilead is not exactly a vacation spot. Women are basically baby-making machines. Offred is our main gal, stuck serving a high-ranking official. With performances that hit hard, visuals that are stunning and music that haunts your dreams, The Handmaid’s Tale is like a masterclass in what happens when society goes off the rails.

Meet the characters from The Handmaid’s Tale

June Osborne

June is this fierce, exhausted, brilliant tornado of a woman who refuses to be written off — angry, tender, wildly pragmatic, and strangely tender in the quiet moments. She plots, resists, and keeps tiny rebellions like souvenirs (she’ll tuck a matchbox under a sweater like it’s a treasure). Sometimes she’s furious and uncompromising, other times you catch her laughing at something silly and it breaks your heart — she’s a contradiction and that’s the point. You can never predict her next move, which is part genius, part terrifying, and all her.

Serena Joy Waterford

Serena is elegant and brittle and somehow completely shattered beneath the fine gloves — proud, lonely, and rigidly convinced she’s right even when she’s obviously not. She used to write and preach and now she waters her plants with the kind of intensity that suggests ritual or revenge (maybe both), and she collects teacups though she never drinks tea, which is weird. There’s a strange, tragic yearning to her — she wants control, children, meaning — and that hunger does terrible things. She’s both villain and victim in a way that makes you want to shake her and hug her at the same time.

Fred Waterford

Fred is the kind of quiet, polished menace that creeps in wearing a smile and a suit; outwardly dignified, inwardly monstrous, stubbornly religious and hypocritically cruel. He will speak softly about order and godliness while doing the worst kinds of damage, and he genuinely believes in his own righteousness which is terrifying. There’s an old-fashioned, almost grandfatherly air about him — war medals, minty cologne, the kind of man who keeps things very tidy — and yet he’s corrosive. He oozes entitlement and power, and that combination is what makes him so dangerous.

Aunt Lydia Clements

Aunt Lydia is relentless, officious, and terrifyingly persuasive in her certainty — she can smile like a hymn and slash like a ruler, all in the same breath. She loves rules the way some people love music, and she believes the system saves people (she also carries little mints and sometimes hums, which is oddly human). She’s cruel but convinced she’s doing necessary work, which makes her both fascinating and infuriating; she’s a bureaucrat of punishment with a knack for psychological torture. Quietly charismatic in the worst way, she can make believers out of the wavering and straighten the spines of the terrified.

Janine Lindo

Janine is wild, fragile, and startlingly honest in the body language of someone who’s been both broken and oddly remade — she flits between childlike glee and terrifying clarity like it’s a second language. She sees visions or meanings where others see chaos, laughs at the most inappropriate moments, and will tell you a story that makes you feel like crying and applauding at once. She’s unpredictable and brave in a small, luminous way, and she’s got a habit of writing messages to no one on napkins or tearing up at commercials (or maybe that was a dream I had about her). You never quite know if she’s lost or liberated, and sometimes she is both.

Rita

Rita is the quietly practical backbone — no-nonsense, steady, and a little world-weary in the best way; she keeps things running and believes in small decencies like hot meals and clean floors. She doesn’t do drama but she has opinions and she will, absolutely, swear under her breath when necessary (surprising and delightful). There’s a domestic heroism to her that often gets overlooked — she watches, remembers, and is quietly moral without grand speeches. She’s the person who notices small cruelties and makes them harder to stomach, which is its own kind of resistance.

Nick Blaine

Nick is broody and soft and suspiciously competent, like a man with a locked trunk nobody should open but everyone kinda wants to. He’s got this awkward, shy charm and a fierce loyalty that shows up in the smallest gestures — a protective hand, a cigarette stub left in the sink (he might not even smoke, I can’t remember). Ambiguous loyalties make him interesting, he’s both danger and refuge depending on his mood, and oh boy does he brood in a handsome way. He’s the kind of quiet who speaks volumes when he finally does speak, usually haltingly and with regret.

Luke Bankole

Luke is a steady kind of hero — calm, principled, the kind of man who builds things and also builds safety for his family, quietly heroic without fanfare. He’s tender with a fierce protective streak and carries grief like a second skin, which makes him both heartbreaking and admirable. He seems like the most sensible person in the room and then occasionally will do something impulsive out of love, so he’s not boring, I promise. There’s a grounded dignity to him, also a soft laugh he tries to hide but fails at, and that’s exactly what you’d expect from him.

Moira Strand

Moira is an absolute force — sharp-tongued, wild, and incomparably brave, she refuses to be small and it’s like watching a live wire. She has that nightclub, flip-your-hair energy and a survival instinct that’s equal parts cunning and sarcasm; she collects lipstick colors like trophies. She panics sometimes, sure, but mostly she pivots, escapes, and makes you wish you had her courage (and maybe her wardrobe). She’s fierce, messy, funny, and unwilling to play along with any BS for longer than a minute — a joy, honestly.

Alma

Alma is quietly observant and prickly in a way that keeps you on your toes; she’s small-town practical with a reservoir of bitterness and sharp memory. She gossips a little, holds grudges, and yet there’s a surprising tenderness she reserves for select moments — like she’s saving it for emergencies and anniversaries. She seems resigned but she notices everything, which makes her dangerous in a slow, knowing way. She’s the kind of person who will correct your facts and then unexpectedly help you, because she’s complicated and human and not easily categorized.