Expect to see more of Ofglen when “The Handmaid’s Tale” comes back for Season 2. Hulu announced Thursday that Alexis Bledel has been promoted to series regular on the show.
Bledel won rave reviews for her portrayal of Ofglen, one of the handmaids whose life intersects with Offred’s (Elisabeth Moss). She only appears in three episodes and is credited as a guest star.
When we last saw Bledel’s character, she had driven a vehicle into a crowd of people and was taken away by men in uniform. This was after she had been circumcised as a way to keep attraction towards women in check and had her lover executed in front of her.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” takes place in a fictional totalitarian society called Gilead, which has seen declining birth rates. In response, a fundamentalist regime imprisons women as “handmaids” and are only tasked with becoming surrogates for the elite.
Because Ofglen is one of the few remaining fertile women in Gilead, she was spared.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” coming back for Season 2 implies that there are going to be distinct diversions from the source material, since Season 1 ends around where the book does. Ofglen’s role had already been expanded, the writers delving into her personal life and her whereabouts after Offred noticed she disappeared.
The show was a hit for Hulu, becoming the most-viewed premiere of any series on Hulu in its first week. It was adapted to the screen from the classic Margaret Atwood novel of the same name by Bruce Miller.
Miller, Warren Littlefield, Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears, and Illene Chaiken are executive producers.
The 13-episode second season — three episodes more than the first — is set to go back into production this fall and will premiere in 2018. In the meantime, the entire first season is available to stream on Hulu.