Watching The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time, the inevitable question soon rises: how did a place as oppressive and cruel as Gilead come to be? Over six seasons, we’ve learned the Gilead origin story through flashbacks sprinkled into the main narrative—something that feels increasingly like a cautionary tale for American viewers in 2025—and the Hulu show has also filled in blanks for its main players. But in a recent episode, it gave us another fresh glance into one character’s life “before.”
We’ve long been fascinated with Serena Joy Waterford, deftly played by Yvonne Strahovski as a woman who backed Gilead’s right-wing Christian agenda from the start and married Fred Waterford, who became the powerful Commander Waterford once the United States underwent its forced transformation. Though Serena was once a popular author and political speaker, she willingly put her career aside and became a dutiful wife—for a time.
As The Handmaid’s Tale has progressed, we’ve learned Serena is far from a one-note zealot. Her desire to become a mother guided some of her most odious actions, but she eventually proved she wasn’t too rigid to realize her failings as a human being—and began to feel deep regret about her part in turning the world upside down.
In episode two, “Exile,” viewers got to meet Serena’s father for the first time. (Her mother, who lives in Gilead, made an unpleasant impression back in season three and hasn’t been seen since.) There are two flashbacks in the episode, which in the show’s present day follows Serena’s decision to return to Gilead—specifically, the more reformed New Bethlehem region, where she thinks she’ll be able to ease her guilt and get back on the path God has envisioned for her.
Her relationship with her father, a pastor, is a part of the Serena puzzle the show’s been wanting to explore, according to The Handmaid’s Tale creator Bruce Miller. Speaking to the Wrap, he explained, “We’ve learned about her, but this is really interesting, because it’s not about a relationship she chose, like with Fred … Here, you’re like, how did you become the woman you are? I think that’s the really interesting question now, because you’ve plumbed the depths of Serena to know what’s there, you know the woman that’s there. So when you get to season six, you’re asking the question of, what was her father like? And I don’t think you are at the beginning, because I think she has a million relationships in her life, but that one gets much more interesting when you realize how much steel she has.”
The two scenes with Serena’s father unfold a few years apart; in the first one, she’s just met Fred and her father is congratulating her on her book tour. In the second, her father—who is much older and more frail-looking—listens as she excitedly tells him “We’re about to change the country!”
At that point she thinks she’s making good on her father’s earlier urgings to be a beacon for the movement—but of course we know her marriage to Fred will be filled with misery, and the “changes” she helped spearhead will bring horror and tragedy, not “a new Garden of Eden” as she envisions. Perhaps she’s hoping New Bethlehem will be that instead? You can never predict what Serena will do, but she does have an amazing way of always landing on her feet.
You can watch new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale Tuesdays on Hulu.
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