'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 4 Trailer: The Resistance Is Heating Up

It's a new day in Gilead, and the Resistance is slowly heating up.

Hulu has released a brand new trailer for The Handmaid's Tale season 4, as well as a premiere date for the return of the Emmy-winning drama series: April 28, 2021. The most recent episode was released back in the summer of 2019, 20 months ago – and maybe that's enough time for absence to make fans' hearts grow fonder.

A strong case could be made that The Handmaid's Tale should have been a limited series that only adapted what was contained within Margaret Atwood's classic dystopian novel. But that's not what happened – the writers chose to extend the story into new and unexplored territory, and after a great first season, the results have been very hit or miss ever since. (To be completely frank, there has been an awful lot of "miss.") And while many people have criticized the show as "grief porn" or "misery porn" because of its bleak and relentless tone, I've personally been more bothered by what I judge to be some inconsistent decisions made by the main character. Elisabeth Moss's June spent the first two seasons desperately wanting to escape Gilead with her daughter, but inexplicably decided to stay behind at the end of season 2, seemingly just to punish herself further. Season 3 turned her into a leader of Gilead's version of the Underground Railroad, and now it seems she's stepped into becoming a full-blown freedom fighter. Okay, sure! I guess!

During Disney's big investor day presentation this past December, the company announced that Hulu has already picked up The Handmaid's Tale for a fifth season. Showrunner Bruce Miller has previously indicated that the show could last for as many as ten seasons (!), which I happen to think would be a huge mistake – but then again, I'm not the showrunner of an acclaimed, Emmy-winning television series. And don't forget about The Testaments, either: after The Handmaid's Tale comes to an end, there's a strong chance that the show will roll directly into adapting Margaret Atwood's sequel novel, which is set fifteen years after the events of her original novel. So it seems audiences will be spending a lot more time in Gilead before all is said and done.

The first three episodes of The Handmaid's Tale season 4 will premiere on Hulu on April 28, 2021, with the subsequent weeks airing one episode each until the ten-episode season is complete.