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Bruce Miller's The Handmaid's Tale is currently on its final run with season 6, which premiered on Hulu on April 8, 2025. The show centers around handmaidens who are forced to be surrogates to the government's leaders in Gilead. They can often be seen wearing a red dress with white bonnets, stripping them of their identity.
In season 6 episode 8 of The Handmaid's Tale, June decides to attack Serena Joy and Commander Wharton's wedding as part of the revolution. She uses the red dress to deliver a message, giving the storyline a new thematic significance. The dresses now act as a symbol of union, uniting the handmaids as a fearsome army fighting for their freedom.
How The Handmaid's Tale changed the meaning of the red dress
The long flowing robes were used as a symbol of oppression by Gilead by hiding the bodies of the women who wore them. They were meant to make the women look alike, taking away their individuality.
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In a monologue at the beginning of episode 8 of The Handmaid's Tale, June reveals that they chose the color to make the handmaids look like they were dipped in blood. She says:
"They wanted us to look like we'd been dipped in blood. Some fairytale figure in a red cloak. It seems ridiculous now to contemplate how important clothes were to us before. We had closets full of them. We took jobs we hated so we could buy more of them. So we could be fashionable. So we could be on trend."
She goes on to say that the women couldn't figure out how to get rid of their excessive clothing. So they threw them in landfills and poisoned the water, which eventually brought on ecological collapse. All because they believed that their garments dictated who they were. June emphasizes that this was all a lie that Gilead believed and used against them.
"So they assigned us colors. They dictated what we wore. Who we could be. They used our clothes to divide us. To dehumanize us. But tonight, those clothes will be our weapons. Tonight, we will use these clothes to start a war. They put us in red, the color of blood, to mark us. They forgot that it's also the color of rage," she adds.
In The Handmaid's Tale, June's agenda was to turn the red dresses into a symbol of rebellion. To use it to hide knives that the handmaids would use in their attack during Commander Wharton's wedding. The dress would allow them to get away with murdering the Commanders and blending back into the crowd. It would now become a symbol of union and rebellion.
What comes next in The Handmaid's Tale
Serena Joy realizes Wharton's true nature when he gifts her a fertile Handmaid, exposing his extremist motives. Seeing Wharton emulate her deceased husband Fred's abusive nature causes her to leave him, signaling a possible realignment of her loyalty.
The events in season 6 are leading up to the series' finale and propose further deconstruction of Gilead's power structures. June's insurrection gathers force, Serena's disillusionment may lead her to support the resistance, and internal dissent within Gilead's ranks could further destabilize the regime.
These narrative threads set the stage for a climactic confrontation and the potential downfall of Gilead.
Season 6 of The Handmaid's Tale is available to stream on Hulu.
