Aunt Lydia Returns to Our Screens in 'The Testaments,' but Is She Good or Bad in the Show?

If cognitive dissonance were a person, it would be Aunt Lydia. The complicated Gilead resident seems to believe she's doing the right thing, constantly insisting that she's protecting her "girls," but she causes immense harm. Every now and then, the facade Lydia created for herself will break, and she'll seem to realize she's done something evil. However, the illusion slips back on quickly, and she never sits in that discomfort long enough to actually change.

Ann Dowd first graced our screens as the controversial Aunt in Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, and she's now reprised her role in the spin-off, The Testaments. While the actor did a fantastic job playing Lydia the first time around, fans weren't too pleased to learn they'd be seeing more of her, probably because she embodied the deplorable character so well. Now, fans can't help but ask: Is Aunt Lydia good or bad in The Testaments? Did she learn anything from her mistakes in The Handmaid's Tale?

It seems that Aunt Lydia has learned the error of her ways, as she fights to bring Gilead down in The Testaments. While the character would probably argue that she was "good" in The Handmaid's Tale, too, since she did what she believed to be right, she seems to be significantly less misguided in the spin-off series. The Handmaids, specifically Janine, confronting her in the final season, truly made Lydia see that she'd been hurting those women more than helping them.

Now, in The Testaments, Lydia uses her position of power to take down Gilead from the inside, as a double agent working as a Mayday informant. While there are still horrible acts she must commit in order to maintain her role, Lydia is careful not to step over certain lines she would've gleefully leapt over in The Handmaid's Tale.

Despite nearly being hanged to death at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, Lydia has become a beloved and powerful member of Gilead in The Testaments. One of her more redeeming moments in The Handmaid's Tale was her acceptance of her fate, and rather than beg for her life, she called the Commanders "wicked godless men." Right before her fate is sealed, the hangings get interrupted by a Mayday attack. To many fans' dismay, Lydia survives.

Years later, in The Testaments, Lydia has blackmailed and manipulated her way back into a position of power. This time, though, it's for a good cause. Poetically, she begins to actually protect the girls placed in her charge, which is what she had always delusionally claimed to do from the beginning.

Per Deadline, Ann was delighted to reprise the challenging role in The Testaments. She shared that this time around, Lydia "enters as a gentler self, that fierceness, that wall is no longer present." Further demonstrating that Ann understands the complicated character, she explained that Lydia always loved her girls "deeply."

Ann shared, "I’m sure people who have seen her in the beginning in The Handmaid's Tale don’t think of her as loving the girls, but I hope they see it a little bit." Actually, we do, but with love like that, who needs hate?