'The Handmaid's Tale' season 3 will center on a rebellion by the handmaids of Gilead under the leadership of Offred-June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), but there is more to the upcoming season than meets the eye. Even as audiences try to gauge what Offred is going to do, especially after the release of the recent teaser that features Offred having a conversation with Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) about equality and Freedom, there will be other plot points that merit attention.

Aunt Lydia's (Ann Down) back story is one such character arc creators will pay attention to in the coming season. At the end of season 2, we saw Aunt Lydia getting stabbed by Emily (Alexis Bledel) and pushed down a flight of stairs at Commander Lawrence's (Bradley Whitford) residence.

With regards to whether she is dead or alive, showrunner Bruce Miller confirmed, "Aunt Lydia doesn't die, she's transformed by this event." According to The Wrap, when the previous season concluded in 2018,  he said, "She’s transformed by this event, one of her girls — she has, you know, twisted herself into thinking there is a love between her and her girls — has literally stabbed her in the back. And that kind of, you know, alters your workplace feelings on a day-to-day basis. You don’t want to turn your back on them. So I think in some ways, there’s a lot of possible effects, but in her case it makes her double down on that she feels she just wasn’t strong enough in her discipline. So she’s decided it’s time to get tough."

Recently, Executive producer Warren Littlefield confirmed to USA Today that the upcoming season will also spotlight Aunt Lydia's backstory. "A lot of our fans have asked for this for a while, and we're really happy that midway through the season we get to share some of Aunt Lydia's backstory. And we begin the understanding of who she was before she wore that horribly brown drab outfit and carried her cattle prod," Littlefield said.

The third season will pick up ten minutes after the events that took place in the last episode, 'The Word,' with Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). Littlefield explained, "We'll also pick up with Serena Joy and where is she, what happens to her with the knowledge that Nicole, who she considers her baby, has gone off to Canada, but not with June."

He also added that Serena's decision to let go of her baby Nichole (named Holly by Offred) and Offred's decision to let the baby leave Gilead with Emily, has now resulted in unbelievable ramifications. The executive producer of the show, according to Digital Spy, said: "And so that has really far-reaching ramifications, and Nicole becomes a multinational (interest). Everybody wants Nicole. And the question is who legally and morally presides over that." Nicole, a newborn baby has now become a tool which can be used as a political pawn against Commander Waterford. 

After helping Emily and baby Nicole escape to Canada, we will also see more of Commander Lawrence. Miller told The Hollywood Reporter, "We always had plans of building that character out." He is one of the men who helped Commander Waterford create the toxic doctrines of Gilead in the first place, but he is now set to destroy the same out of guilt. He will support the Mayday resistance.

Adding further about the character's development, Miller said: "He's a character that was modeled after some of the academics in Germany (during World War II), who had come up with a lot of the plans and did calculations, and came up with the theories that ended up informing both the war and the Holocaust and the kind of Nazi racial policy. For Lawrence, he feels like an architect of a system that in a lot of ways broke his wife, and (that) makes him feel sick to his stomach."

Speaking of the villains of the show, it looks like Waterford is not the biggest fish in the pond for Offred. A meaner villain is expected to make an appearance and we got a first-hand look at this character in the latest teaser that dropped May 28. Littlefield revealed this detail when he said, "There are bigger players, Fred Waterford is not the biggest fish in that pond. It's a little bit of Gilead on steroids."

Setting aside the rebellion, the show will also see a hint of a happy ending for its lead characters as Littlefield explained, "I think there are a lot more rays of hope in the battle that we'll be feeling and experiencing in season three... against some overwhelming (odds) there is a sense of purpose and a sense of light in that tunnel."

And finally, the show will also portray how the ideologies of Gilead begin to bleed into Canada as well. This results in Moira (Samira Wiley) and Luke (O. T. Fagbenle) starting their campaign to fight the system that they desperately fled from. Littlefield said, "What we're seeing is that some of the philosophy and strains of Gilead are even bleeding up into Canada," and added that Luke and Moira's fight, "becomes a really important part of our story." 

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