A grisly flashback episode ends in one of the most shocking scenes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” spinoff’s first season. The episode’s stars take EW inside the action.

Ann Dowd and Mabel Li break down *The Testaments *nightmarish execution scene: ‘How does Lydia live with herself?’

A grisly flashback episode ends in one of the most shocking scenes of "The Handmaid's Tale" spinoff's first season. The episode's stars take EW inside the action.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

EW's editorial guidelines

April 29, 2026 6:32 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Ann Dowd on 'The Testaments'. Credit:

Disney/Steve Wilkie

- *The Testaments *stars Ann Dowd and Mabel Li are giving EW a behind-the-scenes look at "Stadium," the shocking sixth episode of *The* *Handmaid's Tale *spinoff series.

- Li, who plays the cruel Aunt Vidala, details the "deep betrayal" and "trauma" Dowd's Lydia inflicts on her in a flashback in "Stadium," ominously noting, "You can't go back from that."

- Dowd puts her character's treacherous decision in the episode's closing moments this way: "How does Lydia live with herself?"

***Spoiler alert: The following contains spoilers for *The Testaments* season 1, episode 6, "The Stadium."***

"Was I a phoenix rising from the ashes, or was I a cockroach?"

This question, spoken in narration by Ann Dowd's imperious Aunt Lydia, does more than encapsulate *The Testaments*' shocking sixth episode, "Stadium." It gets at the fundamental questions of power, compromise, and survival that haunt the dystopian new series and the Emmy winner it spun off from, *The Handmaid's Tale*.

Little is resolved by the time "Stadium" ends with one of the series' most chilling moments. But by that time, Lydia is already well on her way into Gilead's rotten core, so must content herself with this answer: "I wasn't sure anymore. But I was alive."

Speaking with * *before Wednesday's latest *Testaments *episode drop, Dowd has a question of her own: "How does Lydia live with herself?"

Mabel Li and Ann Dowd on 'The Testaments'.

Disney/Russ Martin

Dowd was joined in conversation by Mabel Li, who plays the vicious Aunt Vidala, Lydia's second-in-command at *The Testaments*' central girls' school. Weeks ago, when Dowd and Li first told EW about the rollercoaster ride of a season to come, Li teased a coming bit of context that explains "that resentment, that deep betrayal, the shock, and the trauma, that permeates their relationship."

That finally arrives in "Stadium."

*The Testaments *picks up four years after the climactic finale of *The Handmaid's Tale*. All the faces fans grew to love and hate over nine years have faded from the tapestry that a rebuilt Gilead presents to the world in *The Testaments*. All except Lydia's. Dowd is the sole member of the core *Handmaid's Tale* cast to return in a regular spot on *The Testaments* (Elisabeth Moss does make exciting cameos in the first and third episodes of the series).

On the spinoff, Lydia and the underling she loves to disrespect are charged with rearing the next generation of Gilead's elite class, played by an ensemble featuring Rowan Blanchard, Lucy Halliday, and *One Battle After Another *breakout Chase Infiniti. "Stadium" flashes viewers back to the moment when Gilead's fascist forefathers first executed the coup that plunged the North American northeast into a misogynistic new dark age, shown harrowingly through Lydia's eyes.

Isolde Ardies, Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Chase Infiniti, and Lucy Halliday on 'The Testaments'.

Disney/Steve Wilkie

*The Handmaid's Tale *creator and showrunner Bruce Miller, who serves in the same capacities on *The Testaments*, made a bold choice in adapting this particular segment of Margaret Atwood's 2019 novel of the same name (itself a sequel to her 1985 *The Handmaid's Tale*). Rather than Lydia working in the before-times as fiercely independent judge, on the TV *Testaments*, Lydia is a kindly schoolteacher — and close colleagues with Vidala.

"The history is so rich and so useful for our dynamic in the show," Li says. "I feel like I was always pulling from that, actually. As soon as I found out about that backstory, I was like, 'You can't go back from that.'"

"Stadium" viewers had to steel their stomachs to learn exactly what Lydia and Vidala might never be able to go back from.

After hundreds of women are rounded up and temporarily housed in the episode's titular stadium by the nascent Gilead's footsoldiers, the sadistic Commander Judd (Charlie Carrick) orders them all to be interrogated. When many invariably fail a draconian purity test, they're lined up and shot in front of their friends and colleagues. Vidala, too, is marked for execution, and her undertaker would be Lydia, who scrambles to collaborate with Judd in order to save her own life. But when Lydia pulls the trigger on her friend, no bullet comes out. Though Lydia also failed her purity test, with this unforgivable act, she's passed the ultimate loyalty test.

'The Testaments' stars and creator break down 'full-body chills' of 'Handmaid's Tale' sequel premiere

'The Handmaid's Tale' ending explained: Is Gilead destroyed in the series finale?

"How does she get to the other side of that?" Dowd wonders aloud. Some of her character's dialogue, drawn straight from the novel, supplies an answer: "Life is long. The real brutality is when it asks you to endure knowing what you have done and what has been done while you stood by. But what choice do we have? Enduring is the only way we have through."

"Yes, to endure," Dowd laughs ruefully. "She's very good at that."

Li reasons that Lydia "is doing what she has to do in that moment. But I also think Vidala, on the other side — it's horrific to see someone you've bonded with be prepared to kill you."

Mabel Li and Ann Dowd star on 'The Testaments'.

Disney/Russ Martin

"If someone said to me — I've often asked myself this question — if I had a gun in my hand, and it was either my life or their life, what would I do?" Dowd asks. "If it were my children, of course, I know what I would do. But even a perfect stranger, can you live with yourself?"

Beyond Lydia demonstrating she was willing to commit the ultimate act of personal betrayal, she also betrays all future women living under the Gilead regime by furnishing Judd with the concept of "separate spheres." Sure, Lydia is able to carve out some autonomy for one class of Gilead's women, the Aunts, but that same social structure condemns all others to relentless subjection and servitude.

"I don't know how Lydia expects for Vidala to forgive her," Dowd continues. "I think she makes it completely clear — 'I'm going to survive. That's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to be Aunt number one, just by the way. I'm not going to be in the lower ranks. That's not what I'm doing.' Lydia catches on very quickly to how things are going to run."

The Aunts convene on 'The Testaments'.

Disney/Steve Wilkie

But as *The Testaments *hurtles toward the grand conclusion of its very first season, there's no telling how quickly things may change, either.

*The Testaments *premieres new episodes Wednesdays on Hulu.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Drama”