--- title: 'The Testaments' Season 1, Episode 6 Recap: About Aunt Lydia description: An episode devoted to the character Ann Dowd played in six seasons of 'The Handmaid's Tale' muddles the sequel's tone and story canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/04/24/testaments-recap-episode-6-stadium/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-04-29T13:39:20.289Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-12T07:05:38.583Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'The Testaments' Has an Aunt Lydia Problem og:description: An episode devoted to the character Ann Dowd played in six seasons of 'The Handmaid's Tale' muddles the sequel's tone and story og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/04/24/testaments-recap-episode-6-stadium/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98147b66bdb7be62/69eba2d4ffa3d763b30e418b/178058_0293RT.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 178058_0293RT.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Testaments' Has an Aunt Lydia Problem twitter:description: An episode devoted to the character Ann Dowd played in six seasons of 'The Handmaid's Tale' muddles the sequel's tone and story twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98147b66bdb7be62/69eba2d4ffa3d763b30e418b/178058_0293RT.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # _The Testaments_ Has an Aunt Lydia Problem > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Apr 29, 2026 1:39 PM UTC  Ann Dowd in The Testaments Ann Dowd in The TestamentsRuss Martin—Disney  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Apr 29, 2026 1:39 PM UTC “Was I a phoenix rising from the ashes?” Aunt Lydia asks in a voiceover midway through the sixth episode of[_The Testaments_](https://time.com/article/2026/04/08/the-testaments-review-hulu/)’ first season. “Or was I a cockroach?” The character, played by the formidable [Ann Dowd](https://time.com/5668052/the-testaments-audiobook-aunt-lydia-ann-dowd/) in [_The Handmaid’s Tale_](https://time.com/4732788/handmaids-tale-review/)as well as this sequel, is reflecting on the choice she made, years earlier, to save herself by collaborating with the mass-murdering, right-wing misogynists who founded Gilead. But the question—of how much blame she deserves for choosing to survive by inflicting pain on other women over a noble death—has always been implicit in both [Margaret Atwood](https://time.com/collections/finding-hope-coronavirus-pandemic/5820595/margaret-atwood-coronavirus-uncertainty/)’s novels and the Hulu series based on them. The motivations of the other Gilead-aligned woman we got to know in _The Handmaid’s Tale_, Serena Joy, were clear: A fervently religious ideologue, she helped foment a revolution that she hoped would make America godly again and provide a means for her to have the baby she so desperately craved. Then she was blindsided by the cruelty of her male co-conspirators’ brand of patriarchy. From the beginning, Lydia was different. Her thirst for power coexisted with a genuine, though usually unreciprocated, affection for the Handmaids she alternately tortured, coddled, and pimped out to her repugnant allies the Commanders. Yet we rarely got close enough to her perspective to perceive how much of her behavior came out of self-deception, how much out of sadism, how much out of an instinct for self-preservation, how much out of real ideological overlap with the regime, and how much out of a heartfelt desire for harm reduction. In Wednesday’s episode, “Stadium,” _The Testaments_ attempts to give us some answers. The sole installment of Season 1 told through Lydia’s eyes, it juxtaposes scenes from her current gig as the eponymous headmistress of a finishing school for Commanders’ daughters with her traumatic entry into Gilead’s hierarchy. And taken together with everything we learned about her in six seasons of _The Handmaid’s Tale_, it only makes the character more confusing and contradictory. In terms of tone as well as continuity, _The Testaments_ has an Aunt Lydia problem.  Ann Dowd in The Handmaid's Tale Steve Wilkie—Disney ## **Aunt Lydia in** **_The Handmaid’s Tale_** “Stadium” is not the first glimpse [Bruce Miller](https://time.com/4754200/the-handmaids-tale-showrunner-changes-from-book/), who created both series, has given us into her past. In the [third season of _The Handmaid’s Tale_](https://time.com/5614125/the-handmaids-tale-season-3/), an episode titled “Unfit” establishes that Lydia Clements was, in her former life, an elementary school teacher and before that a family lawyer. So, yes, she adores kids. She cares so much, in fact, that she stays for hours with a boy in her class whose mom is a no-show at pickup. When the harried young woman finally arrives, she invites them both to her place for dinner. By Christmas, Lydia has become a surrogate aunt to the family—which seems to enhance her lonely life as much as it supports them. Then, suddenly, she turns on the mother, reporting her to Child Protective Services on the grounds of food insecurity and promiscuity. The latter charge is telling; just before the betrayal, we see Lydia out on a rare date with her school’s principal. It’s a lovely night until they go back to her place, start getting physical, and then he, a tender widower, pulls back. He just needs more time to get comfortable, he says, and would like to take her out again. But Lydia clams up. Soon, she’ll pressure him to corroborate her CPS complaint. The parallel between her former life and her Aunt era is a bit tooneat. Must a woman who, in the extremely pressurized setting of Gilead, uses her proximity to powerful men to control women she perceives as being more sexually desirable than herself have done exactly the same thing in less dire circumstances?  Ann Dowd, in human and statue form, in The Testaments Russ Martin—Disney ## **_The Testaments_** **’** **“Stadium” reveals how Lydia invented the Aunts** More than who she was before, “Stadium” is interested in how Miss Clements became Aunt Lydia. In a flashback that hews closer to [Atwood’s _The Testaments_](https://time.com/5667821/margaret-atwood-the-testaments/)than many other storylines, Dowd (this time wearing a long, limp, mousy, terrible wig, for some reason) is in a teachers’ lounge, fuming about a colleague’s failure to buy coffee. That person turns out to be a character we’ve already met: Vivian, or as she’s known in Gilead, Aunt Vidala (Mabel Li). Before Lydia can go full Karen, revolutionaries raid the school and cart off the women to a stadium, where the unmarried and infertile are held prisoner in the bleachers. Made to subsist on the occasional slice of bread, they periodically watch a dozen or so “sinners” get shot to death at center field. Eventually, Lydia gets an audience with Commander Judd (Charlie Carrick), who has been put in charge of Gilead’s neo-Victorian women’s sphere. Unmarried and with a “person-murder,” a.k.a. abortion, in her past, she seems doomed. (His file lists her as “never married,” though in “Unfit” she said: “I was married. It was a mistake.”) But, as we know, Lydia is crafty. Thinking on her feet, she persuades Judd to liberate himself from the trifling affairs of women and let _her_ take responsibility for her sex. “Who is gonna teach the girls to be women?” she points out. “And the women to be better women—women of God?” He confirms her loyalty by setting her up to shoot Vivian in the stadium; she pulls the trigger, passing the test, but the gun isn’t loaded. Soon, she’s designing uniforms for what he calls her “new disciples.” The fabric she picks is giving burlap sack—the kind of thing an ascetic monk would wear to mortify the senses. “My biggest gripe with the old world,” she reflects, “was the emphasis on comfort, ease, convenience. We had all become entitled little brats.” This jibes with the Aunt Lydia we know. She’s obsessively responsible and resents anyone who fails to exercise the same conscientiousness. Even if she was manipulating Judd when she vowed to make women better, we know how earnestly she believes her tough love will help those charges survive Gilead (see: _The_ _Handmaid’s Tale_’s Janine, played by Madeleine Brewer). “Teaching these girls was like a recipe for a tough steak: hammer it with a mallet, then marinate and tenderize,” she narrates. What, exactly, did she teach them? “I learned quickly that having friends in Gilead was a liability. It would only bring pain and suffering.” That, apparently, was the lesson of Vidala—who, it seems, hasn’t forgotten Lydia was ready to kill her and is now scheming to get out from under her boss. I was frustrated by the episode’s incomplete rendering of their relationship, which could have been one of its most fascinating threads. Lydia must’ve played some role in her old colleague not just becoming an Aunt, but also working at the school. Was it guilt or affection that made her help Vidala? And why would she want to keep her so close? Does she really believe Vidala could forgive her enough to become a true friend—those so-called liabilities—or is this more sense mortification, a daily tough-love reminder of the shameful thing she did to survive?  Ann Dowd, left, and Chase Infiniti in The Testaments Steve Wilkie—Disney ## **Why Aunt Lydia’s return in** **_The Testaments_** **doesn’t work** This and the odd continuity error aside, the tone of “Stadium” clashes with the rest of _The Testaments_. Although Lydia is one of three narrators in the novel, along with Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and Daisy (Lucy Halliday), who get roughly equal attention, Miller’s adaptation plays more like a dystopian teen drama, complete with debutante season. And it [works pretty well](https://time.com/article/2026/04/08/the-testaments-review-hulu/). But the insertion of Lydia’s joyless adult point of view just after the halfway point of the first season disrupts the Bizarro [_Bridgerton_](https://time.com/7358167/bridgerton-season-4-review/)vibe that distinguishes this show from the repetitive torture porn of _The Handmaid’s Tale_. As brilliant as Dowd’s portrayal of this complicated character has always been, I’m not sure it even made sense to bring Lydia back for this version of the sequel. Its predecessor spent five of its six seasons diverging from [Atwood’s 1985 classic](https://time.com/4759957/handmaids-tale-book-vs-show-differences/). During that time, just like every other major character, she got trapped in a cycle of behavior. She’d be a nurturing mentor until someone crossed her, and then she’d devolve into a sadistic tormentor. She would be an ally to Gilead’s rapists-in-chief until they did something that offended her highly specific sensibilities. In later seasons, she and Bradley Whitford’s Commander Lawrence became like-minded reformers. Finally, just as it did with Serena Joy, the series redeemed Aunt Lydia. She let herself be persuaded to help her beloved Handmaids escape Gilead’s leaders. At their public execution—and hers—she begs God to forgive the women, “for they have been prisoners of wicked, godless men!” Maybe she wasn’t a phoenix, in the final accounting, but neither could you call her a cockroach. The [last time we see her](https://time.com/7288786/the-handmaids-tale-finale-explained/), she’s returning to Gilead, presumably to face grave consequences. If these brutal totalitarians wanted to hang her _before_ U.S. forces liberated Boston, why would they spare her after a humiliating defeat she abetted? And yet, there she is in _The Testaments_, immortalized by a life-size statue in the entranceway of an academy named after her. When you think about it, the story of how she went from teacher to supreme Aunt isn’t an especially surprising or illuminating one; most of us could have surmised that she survived by selfishness and cunning. I’m more curious about her path from _The Handmaid’s Tale_ finale to this show’s premiere—how she got back into Gilead’s good graces after so publicly betraying it. Instead, the past four years of her life are waved away with Agnes’ introduction: “Aunt Lydia was a legend. She’d been worshiped, then vilified, then worshiped again.” More salient backstory is conveyed in [_Lolita’s_ “(picnic, lighting).”](https://lithub.com/these-are-the-5-er-10-best-parentheses-in-literature/) Maybe more details will come out in Season 2\. By revealing that Lydia has been writing down the dark secrets of Gilead’s elite as insurance against future persecution, as she did in Atwood’s novel, “Stadium” is clearly setting up some kind of storyline. For now, though, I’m not convinced the character’s return makes sense as anything but a tether to the book and an enticement for adults who watched _The_ _Handmaid’s Tale_ but might otherwise skip a YA spinoff. It’s possible Aunt Lydia will get a satisfying resolution in _The Testaments_. 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